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Archive 1Archive 2

Removal of unsourced section

Under WP:BOLD I have removed a section which has no sources at all. Before reverting kindly come up with a citation from a reliable sourceClosedthursday (talk) 16:03, 9 April 2013 (UTC)

Wikipedia "policies" should not be used as an excuse to simply delete chunks of correct information, and if you don't know whether it's correct or not, then you shouldn't be deleting stuff. Almost all the material in that section, apart from being well-known to those of us who can remember the period, is well-covered in the linked articles about the individuals in question and their specific scandals.MissingMia (talk) 00:30, 10 April 2013 (UTC)

Actually, WP:BLP at the top of the talk page clearly states that unsourced material on living persons must be be removed immediately - notice the words "must" and "immediately" - and as soon as it was removed you came up with a source, which is the whole point. The issue is not whether information is correct, it is whether a claim has a citation. Now let's talk about the section itself: "Sleaze" is a pejorative title which should be changed, and reading the section I fail to see how any of this belongs in an article about John Major. It lists isolated events for which Major cannot be blamed, and only mentions him when he took action to investigate. So it hardly represents "sleaze" on his part. Why does the section exist on John Major's article and not Queen Elizabeth's article? Doesn't she need to be blamed as well, since it happened during her reign? If not, then I would suggest that the whole "sleaze" section is meaningless to an article on John Major himself.Closedthursday (talk) 18:00, 16 April 2013 (UTC)

Actually, the policy refers to “contentious” and “potentially libellous” information (e.g. if somebody were to allege that Major had an affair with a rent boy and lied about it, or took bribes, that would justify immediate removal unless a source is provided), whereas this stuff is, as I pointed out above, historical fact from nearly twenty years ago (by definition, not libellous) and was already sourced, albeit indirectly – in the linked articles about the individuals in question.
The reason it belongs in a biography of Major is because the endless drip of “sleaze” scandals dominated the headlines for several years, which is why it is discussed in published biographies of the man. It is part of the story of his premiership, and of how the Conservative Party decayed in those years, not unlike the scandals of the early 1960s (Vassall, Profumo etc). The word “sleaze” was very widely used at the time, and was a centrepiece of Labour's election campaign in 1997 (see pp550 et ff of JM's memoirs). Major made a rod for his own back with the ill-judged "Back to Basics" campaign, launched at the October 1993 Party Conference, and supposed to be the start of the great relaunch after the humiliations of Black Wednesday (autumn 1992) and the passage of the Maastricht Bill (first half of 1993). The Conference in question went quite well but it soon went horribly wrong, and the way the whole thing got out of hand and turned into a media feeding frenzy was seen, rightly or wrongly, as a testament to his weak leadership – it’s easier to keep your balance on a bike if you stop worrying about balancing and pedal the ruddy thing forwards, as it were – whereas the scandals of the Blair era, of which there were plenty, never really dented Labour’s popularity for a long time.
Your point about the Queen is, as far as it goes, silly – nowadays the Monarch does not got involved in politics – but, by analogy, the scandals of the Royal Family in the 1990s (Fergie being photographed topless getting her toes sucked by her “financial advisor”, her childrens’ divorces, the unpopularity at the time of Diana’s death, etc etc) were part of the story of her reign, and were seen (fairly or unfairly) as casting aspersion on her leadership of the “Family Firm” and as such are discussed in published biographies of Her Majesty.MissingMia (talk) 10:06, 17 April 2013 (UTC)

Clarify, please

'...first attracting national media attention over cold weather payments to the elderly in January 1987, when Britain was in the depths of a severe winter.'

Doesn't make clear whether he was advocating or opposing these payments. Valetude (talk) 17:25, 25 April 2014 (UTC)

Titles

John Major had no title until 1979. He was therefore technically "John Major Esq." as noted. However after 1979 he still had not title, and was still "John Major Esq.". The MP is not a title as such.Royalcourtier (talk) 00:54, 29 March 2014 (UTC)

Esq. is never used with other postnominal letters. -- Jack of Oz [pleasantries] 01:45, 29 March 2014 (UTC)
How was Major an "Esq." from birth? His parents were not members of the landed gentry, as that courtesy title would suggest. Unless every male human born in Britain is somehow accorded that title at birth -- which would make its inclusion here irrelevant -- it should either be removed or added to every WP biographical article on male Britons. Bricology (talk) 16:08, 18 August 2014 (UTC)
Every man is nowadays an "Esq.", as we no longer have slavery or serfdom. So, really, it is pedantic and meaningless.MissingMia (talk) 17:58, 8 November 2014 (UTC)

If somebody has the sources to hand

A lot of my books are boxed up at the moment, but if somebody has access to books they might want to add back in:

A reference to how the opinion polls actually "came true" in 1997 and indeed in 2001. Any idiot could see that the polls were predicting a large Labour majority - opinion polls are a matter of public record. That didn't stop people suspecting that the Tories would do much better than the polls suggested, as they had done in 1987 (polls predicted slim Tory majority or even a hung Parliament: Thatcher landslide) or 1992 (polls predicted modest Labour majority or even a hung Parliament: comfortable Tory majority).
A reference to how Major's mild and consensual style was initially seen as a welcome relief after Thatcher's last few febrile years in office. "It's as though the poison has been let out of the system" as a member of the Cabinet famously said at the time. It soon wore off as people decided that he was weak and ineffectual. This was deleted two years ago as being "POV" by somebody whose username manages to broadcast to the world that he is probably not old enough to remember the early 1990s - but it isn't, it's a factual reporting of how Major's premiership was seen at the time, completely different from somebody writing "Major was ineffectual" as if it were fact.MissingMia (talk) 18:02, 8 November 2014 (UTC)
I certainly regarded Major's style as a vast improvement on Thatcher and regard her disappointment in him as a very positive statement. This view would I think be shared by the "301 club" of recently elected Tory MPs -mostly in marginal who seriously want to be re-elected, e.g. Anna Soubry, Charlie Elphicke.
Have a look at
Major, not Thatcher, should guide Tories Matthew Parris October 26 2013
John Major is the father of the “caring, compassionate, modern” Conservatism that is still struggling to be born, and which David Cameron has fitfully articulated. Unless and until this infant idea takes firmer shape, and grows, the party has no long-term future.

Best to stick to what commentators and politicians thought at the time. Major certainly had an upsurge of personal popularity when he first came in, which lasted for about a year, with a massive upspike in March 1991 after the Gulf War. From memory Labour and the Tories were level-pegging again in the polls by autumn 1991, and from then on most commentators were predicting a modest Labour victory. I was venting a bit in my comments above, as there are few things more irritating than revisiting an article and seeing that correct material has been erroneously deleted, especially by somebody who can't distinguish between "POV" and reporting the opinions of others.MissingMia (talk) 13:29, 10 November 2014 (UTC)

I found it difficult to assign particular statements in earlier versions of the article to specific sources. I also admit a preference for on line articles when available. Later articles have the massive benefit that one knows how policies work out. For example, Lawson has said the 2008 crash was an unintended consequence of the Big Bang (financial markets). I think we can & should use later documents. JRPG (talk) 19:38, 10 November 2014 (UTC)

Major & Thatcher

Apologies to Jaguar, my attempt to draw attention to the fact Thatcher regarded Major as a disappointment made it look like I was shouting and was not my intention. ..The full stop looked just too inconspicuous! The previous text was better English but was inaccurate.
JRPG (talk) 08:35, 29 July 2012 (UTC)

Hi Hedgefall. I appreciate you are a fairly new user but note you have made a series of edits, without either citing the reason or discussing it on the talk page. My real concern is that one of the reasons for Major's rise to power -Thatcher's well documented stated preference for a back seat driver -has been removed. It does deserve a brief mention in the lead and has been discussed. I'll reinstate the sentence in due course -and put a fuller explanation on the talk page. Please do ensure reasons for changes are shown.
Regards JRPG (talk) 17:11, 18 November 2013 (UTC)

It seems inappropriate to include the "back seat driver" comment in the lead of this article - which is, after all, a biography of Mr. Major. The opinion of someone else, coming from yet another person (Malcolm Rifkind) should not be so prominent. The disappointment comment comes before any biographical information, as if someone is trying to skew the reader's opinion against Major before knowing anything about him. It is good to remember that many people are too young to remember Major's years in office and they come to Wikipedia to learn about someone they don't know; thus, the article should be straightforward information first, with opinions of others later in the piece.Purplethree (talk) 14:37, 1 November 2014 (UTC)

Greetings PT. Firstly I welcome any effort to improve the article. My purpose was to show the only recorded reason (several sources) for his otherwise very surprising selection ..and this normally would go in the lead. The fact that he disappointed Thatcher is not a criticism, Thatcher was extremely unpopular at the time and for many ordinary voters, Major's personality was a breath of fresh air. Thatcher would not have won the 1992 election. However I'm sure many would agree he did disappoint Thatcherites. I'm quite happy to add another cited sentence saying that he "was his own man" JRPG (talk) 16:40, 1 November 2014 (UTC)

I have to agree with Purplethree on this. Thatcher's opinion itself (if it is true) is fine for the article, but is it so important it belongs ahead of all the other information on Major? Furthermore, did Thatcher herself ever say this independently of Mr. Rifkind, in another source like the BBC, or is this claim, possibly, Rifkind's impression of what Thatcher might have thought? Here's another way of thinking: If so and so hates Barack Obama, does their opinion belong in the second sentence of Obama's article? If not, then Thatcher's alleged disappointment doesn't belong there, either.Closedthursday (talk) 15:31, 8 November 2014 (UTC)

Hi CT & thanks for your response. We really do need to say why Major was selected -he was a far from obvious choice. Rifkind wasn't the only source ..Thatcher's back seat driver statement was made as soon as he was appointed, I remember it very well -& notorious it certainly was. From the source
Hence, her notorious remark that she expected to continue in control as a backseat driver. That was not only an ominous statement for the new Prime Minister to hear. It also made inevitable from the very beginning his need to demonstrate his independence and be his own man.
And again She made him Foreign Secretary and then Chancellor of the Exchequer on the flimsiest evidence that he was a natural Thatcherite. ..His ability and political skill were never in doubt but he never seemed to me to be a right-wing Conservative in the mould of Norman Tebbit, Nicholas Ridley or John Redwood.
Major disappointed Thatcher because he wasn't a right wing Thatcherite. She chose him for the very well known reason -at least to my generation -that she thought she could control him. FWIW he significantly improved his party ratings so he didn't initially disappoint the public. If I add a few words to make the reason for her disappointment absolutely clear will that suffice? Regards JRPG (talk) 19:23, 9 November 2014 (UTC)
This April 8 2013 Times Peter Riddell article Margaret Thatcher: ‘She believed in confrontation. She didn’t believe in consensus’ also references the well known back seat driver story. Throughout the 1990s she was an active back-seat driver, to the fury of Major, and an increasingly vocal Eurosceptic. and also describes her as one of the most divisive politicians of her age — loved and loathed in equal measure. In short many people welcomed the change. JRPG (talk) 21:07, 9 November 2014 (UTC)
Sure, but she didn't "choose" him as party leader - he attained that job by getting the votes of 185 Tory MPs. He was relatively popular with the public, was seen as relatively young and dynamic, had held two great offices of state, and was state-school educated (that was used against Hurd). It would be more useful to dig out some of the studies of the 1990 leadership election and find out just how active she was in swinging support Major's way. Her support certainly didn't hurt, and I do recall reading that there was some effort by her supporters to prevent Hezza getting the leadership by swinging support behind Major, but we'd need a good source for just how active Thatcher was in it, not least as she was still licking her wounds after being ousted so unexpectedly. She was certainly active in drumming up support for Hague and Duncan Smith when they ran for party leader.
Major's promotion to Foreign Secretary was certainly a massive and even bizarre promotion (I remember literally thinking I was dreaming, hearing it on the radio as I woke up, that hot July morning), leading to all kinds of talk that she was grooming a potential successor. His move to Chancellor was more or less inevitable when Lawson quit, as he was a former Chief Secretary, her political position was already weakening and her preferred candidates (Tebbit was out of the Cabinet, Ridley was widely seen as a liability, even before the Spectator interview the following summer) were not available.
After he became PM, of course, she soon became frustrated - like many ex leaders, in all walks of life, before her - at how quickly she was sidelined, hence her ever more vocal interventions in politics. She was certainly active in encouraging the Maastricht rebels, of whom IDS was of course one.MissingMia (talk) 00:39, 10

November 2014 (UTC)

We're missing the point of this discussion. It is not whether Thatcher's opinion is relevant; it is whether it belongs in the opening paragraph. CT makes the obvious argument: would this be acceptable on any other article about a living person? Is there another article on Wikipedia in which the second sentence is a disparaging opinion? If so, it becomes open season on anyone who is subject to an article. We can all add whatever bad opinion we want to any article, using the premise that the opinion is more important than the biography itself.Chagallophile (talk) 23:50, 13 November 2014 (UTC)

Greetings Chagallophile, thanks for your comments & I’m keen to get a consensus. Unfortunately responses seem to be appearing in random positions. The choice of Major was a real surprise & not just to me, the lede MUST explain this & I think must therefore reference Thatcher.
From memory John Cole interviewed her in a car & she made her notorious remark. Whilst we know the ballot results we don’t know what persuasion methods were used but the outgoing prime minister always has a major influence & her views are known. Your description of “the second sentence ..as a disparaging opinion” is based on a false premise. Whatever Torys think about her now, at the time Thatcher was extremely unpopular. A number of recently elected Tory MPs -the 301 club – who want to be re-elected do NOT wish to be called Thatcherite –see this though there are plenty of other references. Do you really think a wp:npov group of people –which is what editors here should be ..would regard disappointing Thatcher by not being a Thatcherite as disparaging? See also my comments in Talk:John_Major#If_somebody_has_the_sources_to_hand & the Times article.
JRPG (talk) 16:46, 14 November 2014 (UTC)

I am concerned about this idea that "the lead MUST explain this." The people commenting above seem to all be above the age of thirty five,and thus have some memory of Thatcher and Major as PM. However, a great many people (college students, for example) will not know who Major is at all. They come to Wikipedia to find out. If this were a blog about British politics, in which the readers all knew the basic story, then the Thatcher bit might be appropriate. But since many people are coming here simply to learn the biography of someone who has been out of office 17 years, then throwing in the disappointment claim at the beginning makes no sense. It is still, in the end, an opinion based on someone else's recollection of a private conversation that might have happened. Hardly worth such a prominent place in the article.Chagallophile (talk) 14:22, 15 November 2014 (UTC)

1. I really don't see how it belongs in the introduction.
2. The section on Major's rapid promotion in 1987-90 could do with some properly-sourced comment as to why Thatcher promoted him to Foreign Secretary (I don't mean why she demoted Howe, but why she picked Major). He was tipped for promotion, just not so far and so fast (I remember a Sunday newspaper running a feature early in 1989 of "the Cabinet in 1999" - it tipped Major as PM and Leon Brittan as Lord Chancellor!). Major's move to Chancellor, as discussed below, was pretty much inevitable and from then on economic policy was largely out of Thatcher's hands for her final year in office - Major and Hurd were dealing bilaterally with one another over breakfast meetings.
3. Plenty of research was done at the time on the 1990 leadership election, as you would expect of a major political upheaval in which less than 400 people had any say. It shouldn't be too difficult to consult the books and find out how active MT (or her cronies) was in ringing round to drum up support for Major on the second ballot. I also seem to recall her saying that he was "solid gold" at the time, although she was also disappointed by his obvious reluctance to sign her nomination papers in her initial abortive attempt to stand for the second ballot (he was allegedly recovering from his wisdom tooth operation). Major's victory on the second ballot was most certainly not a surprise to anyone who followed politics closely at the time, once it was clear that backbenchers were swinging behind him rather than Hurd.
4. There could also be some sourced comment about Thatcher's antics in offering encouragement to the Maastricht rebels in the first half of 1993- in the relevant section.
5. What Tory MPs (and Matthew Paris) think of Thatcher and Major in 2014 belongs late in the article, under analysis or whatever it's called. Politicians say all sorts of things about the "lessons" which can supposedly be derived from events, but even if uttered in good faith, their opinions should not be treated as objective historical analysis. History and economics do not lend themselves to double blind experiments under laboratory conditions, whose results can be subjected to rigorous statistical analysis. Thatcher was, for what it's worth, a far more pragmatic politician before 1987 than afterwards (before Whitelaw retired and hubris set in), and far more so than she and her supporters cared to remember in the 1990s - but that didn't stop her supporters claiming that her huge majorities in 1983 and 1987 "proved" that "Thatcherite" policies were more successful than Major's (whereas in fact they were won against a split opposition and an "extreme" Labour Party). There is seldom any right or wrong answer to what policies are going to be "successful", as people (all of whom, like most members of the human race, regard their own political views as self-evident common sense!) vote for all kinds of different reasons, many of which don't seem so important years later (by way of illustration: when I was younger, I and my friends had a good laugh at Willie Whitelaw's "Do You Remember the Winter of Discontent?" Party Political Broadcast in 1987 - we thought he was a silly old buffer, talking about irrelevant events from a decade earlier ... yet lots of people commented, quite rightly, at the time of Thatcher's death that it is hard now to remember just how much many middle-aged and older people in the 1980s supported Thatcher as somebody who would keep the unions in check). Nor does the electoral success of policies always have much to do with "popularity" - some policies may appear popular but are shown by more detailed polling to be net vote losers (nuclear disarmament for Labour in the 1980s, euroscepticism for the Tories in the 1990s - the latter less so nowadays as opinion seems to be shifting over Europe) as they appeal only to people who were going to vote for you anyway or make you look "extreme" - that is why politicians spend a lot of time strategizing and tweaking their stances on various issues. Anyway, I've probably ranted enough, but my point is that historical analysis needs to concentrate on providing as full a picture as possible of what people at the time thought, not the simplistic "lessons" which politicians seek to draw twenty years later.MissingMia (talk) 16:05, 15 November 2014 (UTC)

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John Major unreliable source

This discussion originally took place at the 92.4.96.96 talkpage

The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

Information icon Hello, I'm Sjö. I noticed that you made a change to an article, John Major, but you didn't provide a reliable source. It's been removed and archived in the page history for now, but if you'd like to include a citation and re-add it, please do so! If you need guidance on referencing, please see the referencing for beginners tutorial, or if you think I made a mistake, you can leave me a message on my talk page. Thank you. Sjö (talk) 19:18, 29 May 2016 (UTC)

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Just to clarify Sjö, I think this might be a good faith edit. I removed it myself 27th Apr as at the time it was uncited and unbelievable. This apparent UK wp:rs Independent article does reference Major ..but it remains utterly preposterous so I assume it's a clever spoof! Regards JRPG (talk) 22:56, 29 May 2016 (UTC)
Not only is the article not to be taken seriously, the text doesn't even support the statement that Major is a Morris dancer, only that he at one time appeared in connection with them. I think it's a joke edit. Sjö (talk) 05:39, 30 May 2016 (UTC)
@Sjö:My edit was not a joke, but in good faith. However the original edit may have been a joke edit. 92.4.96.96 (talk) 10:08, 30 May 2016 (UTC)
I'm sure your edit was in good faith and I'm sorry if I was unclear about that. I'm positive that the original edit was a joke, especially considering the IP's other edits.Sjö (talk) 11:44, 30 May 2016 (UTC)
The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

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The mugshot

Since there is a controversy over this, I'll mention that the PM-era pic seems a little more appropriate. Think of all the dead people in WP: they are usually depicted at their most famous. Or is he about to challenge May for a return to the leadership? Rothorpe (talk) 20:30, 14 March 2017 (UTC)

  • Most people who are dead on wikipedia either have official photos of them, have older and less good quality images because of copyright or have high definition pictures if they have died recently. Now I have no problem with an image from when he was PM being used, but surely it should be his official photo, rather than a blurry image that some random person has taken of him. Theresa May, David Cameron, Gordon Brown & Margaret Thatcher all have official photographs on their articles, whilst Tony Blair has a high def image from 2009 as his photo. Surely since everyone has either professional or up to date images, then so should Major, rather than a random image that someone snapped? If not then the more up to date image should be used! BlobBlob98 (talk) 21:45, 14 March 2017 (UTC)
    • I would also like to point out that nearly all Cabinet Ministers from the 90's and earlier have, as their main photos, images that have been take far more recently than when they were 'at their most famous' BlobBlob98 (talk) 21:55, 14 March 2017 (UTC)

The general consensus for politician articles (and actually most biographical articles) is that we should use photos from when a politician was in office (if possible while holding their most widely recognised office) or if this is not possible a photo taken as close to this date as possible. Of course while there is some leeway on this (if we do possess a photo of an individual that is of such low quality that you can barely see them or if it has to be cropped so severely it looks ridiculous then we're not going to use it) it is still well established. The reason some members of Major's Cabinets have photos taken more recently in their infoboxes (by the way the assertion that 'nearly all' have photos taken 'far more recently' being used is not correct) is because we possess literally no other photos of these individuals on Wikipedia or because they have held subsequent office such as the case of Ken Clarke. The consensus picture which this article currently uses while not great quality is more than acceptable. I better quality photo from his time in office would be nice but this one is fine. Ebonelm (talk) 22:53, 14 March 2017 (UTC)

I agree that we should use a photo from when Major was in office. If we can find a better one than the current photo (ideally the official photo), that would be nice. Absolutelypuremilk (talk) 23:30, 14 March 2017 (UTC)

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BLP Tag

There is a BLP tag at the top of this page despite having 117 citations. I'm just wondering exactly how many citations would be required for this tag to be removed? -- Ollie231213 (talk) 11:45, 29 January 2018 (UTC)

A Commons file used on this page has been nominated for speedy deletion

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Image

Created to avoid edit war. Major is retired. As per common convention, the image of the articles subject should be from when they were in their most renowned office. Major, as the subject of the article, is retired, and holds no major offices in his prior industry (politics). The LONG-STANDING image of him during the time when he became notable should be restored. It’s also a good quality picture for its age. SpaceFox99 (talk) 00:39, 22 February 2020 (UTC)

Clement Attlee error left in article for 12 years (!)

Granted, the Major article may not be subject to same level of scrutiny as Thatcher or Churchill, but still this is pretty shocking that an error has been left in this page for 12 years. The error stated that Major's political ambition started with "a chance meeting with Clement Attlee on the King's Road" - 07:16, 9 November 2008‎ Dangerousdesmond talk contribs‎ m 44,546 bytes +64‎. This supposed incident, unlikely enough as it is, is nowhere mentioned in Major's autobiography or the very detailed Seldon biography, nor is it mentioned anywhere else on the internet. It was erroneously cited together with Major's (genuine) Parliamentary visit to see the 1956 budget. I can see no other contributions by this user - I suspect he did it for a joke and/or to test wikipedia's screening mechanisms (none too robust in this instance).WisDom-UK (talk) 13:41, 15 April 2020 (UTC)

Good spot @WisDom-UK:, I could not find anything within the cited sources that suggested this. This could probably be added to the Wikipedia:List of hoaxes on Wikipedia#Hoax statements in articles page. Regards  Spy-cicle💥  Talk? 16:06, 17 April 2020 (UTC)

Police surveillance

What is the point of the statement that Major's holiday home has round-the-clock police surveillance? Isn't it routine for former Prime Ministers (like former Presidents in the USA) to have life-long protection from the police or security services (unless they decline it)? Edward Heath certainly had police protection in his retirement. Is it implied that there is some special reason for Major's protection, or that it is unusually strong? If so, what is the reason? Threats from Irish Republicans, or what? And is there any evidence on the matter more recent than 2002 (the stated source for the claim)? Incidentally, when I tried the link it just led to the Telegraph's main page.109.149.91.230 (talk) 13:26, 15 April 2019 (UTC)

Yes I agree, it was worded in a way that made it sound unusual or extravagant. I’ve re-worded and added a couple of working refs. WisDom-UK (talk) 02:04, 28 April 2020 (UTC)

Tagging of article as too long - reasons against

I have spent the past month or so significantly improving this article, expanding it and adding references and images. Frankly before this the article was average at best - for example, the Northern Ireland section was just 2-3 paragraphs, a large chunk of which focused on Major refusing to answer Clinton's phone-calls for a short period. There were only one line summaries of such important topics as coal privatisation and BSE, whilst others were not even mentioned (e.g. Rwanda, gay rights, Dunblane etc.)

Now having worked hard to improve it, someone had slapped a 'too long' tag on it. Thankfully I've been around Wikipedia for quite some time, so am not too discouraged, though if I was a new user I doubt I'd bother continuing with editing after that. Putting that aside, I will outline my reasons against this tag below:

  • The tag reads "This article may be too long to read and navigate comfortably." I was aware of the length issue, hence why I have split the article into 11 sections. The dispute seems to be that the Prime Minister-ship section in particular is too long. Again, this section is split into 2 overarching sub-sections (Domestic/International), which are then split into 20 sub-sub-sections, with some of those themselves having sub-sub-sub sections where appropriate. Everything is extremely easy to find as it is arranged roughly by date, and then within the PM section by topic. Anyone coming across the article and wanting to know what Major's policy on A or B can find it straight away via the Contents. It cannot therefore be said to be 'uncomfortable' to read or navigate; if it was a massive block of text I would agree, but it is not. The PM section covers 6 1/2 very eventful years in a thorough manner, and has been condensed as much as possible without sacrificing important content, with links to full articles where they exist.
  • There seems to be a strange obsession with the fact that the article is 124 kb. This is a pretty crude yardstick by which to measure the quality of an article. Looking at some of the other PM pages, I suspect that the issue is rather that they are too short, rather than this John Major is too long. Theresa May's pre-Parliamentary life, for example, is covered in a whopping six paragraphs. Such parsimony may be justified in a print encyclopedia, but not an online one. And again the overall size is rather irrelevant if the content therein is well organised and structured.
  • Let us be frank - the reason no one has bothered to expand the John Major page for quite some time, or why an obvious error can sit in it unmolested for 10 years, is because Major is a neglected figure, overlooked in the scholarship and even the popular consciousness. He simply isn't as dominant a figure as Thatcher, Blair or Churchill, hence there is less interest in him and therefore less people editing his page. He is of the Wilson, Heath, Eden set, and as with them can quite happily just one page covering them and their PM-ship. By splitting off the PM section, you will just have two relatively neglected articles instead of one. Moreover, over time these split articles tend to diverge in quality, as people tend to edit one or the other but not both. The history articles for your average medium-sized country bear this out.
  • Furthermore, the article is currently under review for Good Article status. If, as a result of that review, it is deemed necessary to split the article then fine. At the moment this is just one editor's opinion vs another's, and tagging it now is prematurely pre-judging the outcome of a decision that should be taken collectively by several editors as part of the review process.

WisDom-UK (talk) 19:07, 23 July 2020 (UTC)

Comments on GA status

  • I'm glad to see so much improvement on this article.
  • The article, unfortunately, clearly is to long at 124 kB readable prose (see WP:Article size). Other articles being too long is not a good justification for this. Personally, I think it would be much more readable if splits and summary style were used to get the content down to 60–80kb. That way, it would be easier to get a view on what is most important about Major. Lead section should also be trimmed; as it stands, it's longer than the lead of United States.
  • The citation style is not uniform, with some refs in sfn style and others not. I suggest that all print sources be converted to sfn style in order to harmonize. Note that WP:GA criteria states, "In-line citations should preferably be of a consistent style." (t · c) buidhe 08:08, 14 August 2020 (UTC)
thanks for comments and edits.
  • I think the sleaze list is a decent cut - I've moved the info over to Back to Basics page, but added some important examples to make it clear to readers why sleaze was such a big deal in Major's PM-ship. Every government has its scandals, it was more the constant stream of such scandals in Major's time that stands out, and their often brazen nature. A few specific examples makes this clear to the reader.
  • In terms of the cutting the sub-sections, I am not so convinced. It is harder now for the reader to find something, especially if it is something specific (e.g. 'what was Major's policy on Scotland?') Now the readers has to scroll down the page.
  • Also, I'm still not convinced on the length thing. Except for the intro - that could be slimmed down. As for the main content, it is well structured and split up so I don't really see the issue. My worry is people will start cutting less obvious aspects of Major's PM-ship, such as Wales or Rwanda, which are important but would not typically get covered in say Encyclopedia Britannica. Might have to agree to disagree on this point.WisDom-UK (talk) 17:12, 14 August 2020 (UTC)

1990 leadership election

Somebody has deleted the stuff about Thatcher's nomination papers from the 1990 leadership contest, presumably for being "unsourced".

To the best of my recollection, the facts are as follows:

Thatcher later testified (and it's been repeated in quite a few TV reconstructions over the years) that, when she rang Major to ask him to sign her nomination papers for the second ballot, he paused audibly before eventually saying "well, if that's what you want, Prime Minister" or words to that effect. She was, I think, happy to imply that there was nothing much wrong with his teeth, or that it was a convenient excuse to stay away from London.

Jeffrey Archer drove up to Huntingdon and back to collect the nomination papers. He later testified that he knew Thatcher was finished because when he handed in Thatcher's papers the other person took them with obvious lack of interest instead of exclaiming "thank God".

It emerged at a very early stage that Archer had collected both Thatcher's papers and another set for Major himself, officially "in case" Thatcher withdrew.

In the recent Volume 3 of his Thatcher biog, Charles Moore revealed that Major had signed Thatcher's papers for appearance's sake but only having agreed with somebody (?the returning officer - this was at a time when the proverbial Men In Grey Suits wanted her out - the whips' office had declared neutrality and were not officially backing her) that they would not under any circumstances be used. This raised a few eyebrows when the book came out, as it made Major appear even more slippery, but didn't really surprise anybody.Paulturtle (talk) 06:46, 5 November 2020 (UTC)

1995 leadership contest

"eight 'active' abstentions and two MPs abstaining".

What does this mean? Presumably it means one lot voted but submitted a blank ballot paper and the other lot didn't turn up to vote at all. Which is which?Paulturtle (talk) 07:07, 7 November 2020 (UTC)

Split proposal: Premiership of John Major

The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section. A summary of the conclusions reached follows.
The result of this discussion was to split. Seagull123 Φ 22:57, 14 November 2020 (UTC)

I propose that the section John Major#Prime Minister (1990–1997) be split into a separate page titled Premiership of John Major (currently a redirect to this section). This section is the biggest part of the page, covering about 70kb of the 124kb readable prose in the article. It is a very long section with many subheadings for a litany of topics, so I think splitting it into a separate page and then reducing the section to a summary of that would help bring the page size down and the quality up. There is precedent set by other UK PMs (former and current) also having "Premiership of..." articles (see Category:British premierships). A notable example is Premiership of Gordon Brown, which is a GA. MSG17 (talk) 22:38, 27 October 2020 (UTC)

The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

Major's Three Premierships

At the moment we now have a new article on his premiership (a useful change to keep the article manageable) - but also two existing articles on his 1990-2 and 1992-7 premierships. Surely the "new" article ought to be cannibalised into the two existing ones - the Gulf War and the replacement of the Poll Tax belong in 1990-2, for example.

I was going to have a bash at reordering the sections a bit but hadn't got round to it - the 1997 election needs to go at the end and the 1991 Gulf War in with his first ministry (at the moment we jump from the former back to the latter, which reads very oddly). Some foreign policy things like Bosnia and Rwanda had negligible impact on domestic politics and it is reasonable to pull them out into standalone sections. Same with the Downing Street Declaration and the beginning of the Northern Ireland Peace Process.

Europe, on the other hand, really belongs under domestic politics because it was one of two main stories of Major's premiership - and it probably ought to be split up into bite-sized chunks and interspersed with the other main story, namely the various scandals. For example, Back to Basics, along with Howard's law'n'order crackdown, was launched at the October 1993 party conference and was supposed to be the start of the fightback after the disastrous autumn of 1992 (Mellor's hilariously embarrassing resignation, Black Wednesday, Pit Closures) and the long passage of Maastricht through the Commons until about July 1993. It was actually quite successful for about five minutes, until the flurry of petty scandals at the start of 1994. The Scott Inquiry began sitting in about spring 1994 and Heseltine's testimony to that body marked his political resurrection (he had seemed politically finished after the pit closures and his heart attack in Jun 93) and reinvention as a potential elder-statesman replacement for Major. The 1995 leadership election can only really be understood as coming after the shenanigans of the autumn 1994 finance vote and the removal of the whip from rebels. Etc Etc. More on this anon.Paulturtle (talk) 05:04, 16 November 2020 (UTC)

GAN

Sadly the user who rewrote and nominated this article for GAN, User:WisDom-UK has retired. Once the article is picked up for review is anyone willing to takeover to respond to the reviewer or is it just worth removing the nomination? Regards  Spy-cicle💥  Talk? 16:16, 25 January 2021 (UTC)

GA Review

GA toolbox
Reviewing
This review is transcluded from Talk:John Major/GA2. The edit link for this section can be used to add comments to the review.

Reviewer: David Eppstein (talk · contribs) 05:50, 26 January 2021 (UTC)

This was nominated in July 2020, but the nominator left Wikipedia in October 2020. Meanwhile, in November about half of the article (by byte count) was removed to a separate article Premiership of John Major according to consensus of a split discussion on the article's talk page, leaving a very stubby short paragraph on a crucial period in Major's career with a big and unquestionably valid "expand section" banner that has remained in place for the two months since. There has also been a fair amount of back-and-forth editing in December and January. I conclude that this article has not stayed stable (especially not in its nominated form), can likely not be expected to be brought into shape by its nominator, meets WP:GAFAIL #3 "It has, or needs, cleanup banners that are unquestionably still valid", and plausibly also meets #1 and #4 due to its instability. So, sadly, I think this is a quick (or not-so-quick) fail. No prejudice against renominating if some editor wants to take it into hand, fill out the premiership section into a proper and more complete summary-style summary of the other article, and take responsibility for a new nomination. —David Eppstein (talk) 05:50, 26 January 2021 (UTC)

The difference of "Sir" and "The Right Honourable"

Is it really difficult to understand that the two titles are different? and yet some idiot editors are changing it. I already made it separated. It's typography, don't be too much practical; be idealistic sometimes with facts, of course. Look at Margaret Thatcher's page, it's only "The Right Honourable" upward, not "The Right Honourable Baroness" because the two are different. I used "
" to make two titles as "sir" and "The Right Honourable" separare. That's very easy and simple. Rl adducul (talk) 07:25, 9 April 2021 (UTC)

Template:Infobox officeholder shows {{{honorific_prefix}}} on a single line? Martinevans123 (talk) 09:14, 9 April 2021 (UTC)

Then use only one title, I already explained that one title can be putted at the name exactly, like the Baroness and barons. As simple as that. Single lines looks like a kind of laziness Rl adducul (talk) 04:05, 10 April 2021 (UTC)

Rl adducul, please read WP:AGF. Coming to the point now: your argument is unheard-of, really. It is common practice to avoid a line break between honorifics. --Omnipaedista (talk) 09:51, 11 April 2021 (UTC)
Apologies, but I find your argument incomprehensible. Martinevans123 (talk) 09:59, 11 April 2021 (UTC)
Rl adducul keeps inserting a line break between 'The Right Honourable' and 'Sir.' Their argument is that 'the two titles are different.' This is something I never saw in any Wikipedia article. As I said, it is common Wikipedia practice to avoid a line break between honorifics. --Omnipaedista (talk) 10:05, 11 April 2021 (UTC)
We could just add a hair space ({{hsp}}) between honorifics so as to avoid WP:BLUESEA. --Omnipaedista (talk) 10:07, 11 April 2021 (UTC)
Yes, adding a space might help. Martinevans123 (talk) 10:11, 11 April 2021 (UTC)

(outdent) A suspected sockpuppet started inserting line breaks between honorifics in various articles. --Omnipaedista (talk) 10:16, 13 April 2021 (UTC)
Recently, editors inserted line breaks between the honorifics of Ruhollah Khomeini. --Omnipaedista (talk) 22:51, 15 April 2021 (UTC)

Martinevans123, if you find my argument as "incomprehensible" then just stick to one title only. Only the title of "Sir" could be much more appropriate and to remove "The Right Honourable" if you people like Omnipaedista cannot agree with me typographically. After all, he's not a PM nor MP anymore. ——Rl adducul (talk) 03:42, 16 April 2021 (UTC)

He is no longer MP or PM, so we don't use those. But, like many other British former politicians, Major has two titles. It's not for us to choose between them. Martinevans123 (talk) 07:39, 16 April 2021 (UTC)
(1) "The Right Honourable" is a title commonly used in Wikipedia articles' infoboxes regardless of whether the subjects are active MPs or not. (2) The truth is there is no official manual of style regarding the topic of this thread (line break vs. no line break) so edit-warring over it is pointless at this point. --Omnipaedista (talk) 09:27, 16 April 2021 (UTC)

Betty Boothroyd and Margaret Thatcher's title as Baroness was putted in their name and not "honorific-prefix", when I putted the Sir at the name, still they're changing it and whenever I'm breaking the two titles, still you can't agree. What the hell! Rl adducul (talk) 09:41, 16 April 2021 (UTC)

What you say is not correct. Please check again. Swearing and making false claims is counterproductive. --Omnipaedista (talk) 10:02, 16 April 2021 (UTC)
Omnipaedista, I'm not making false claims; it's true what I'm saying, I'm just idealistic, and you're too much realistic. And who wouldn't be able not to swear if your suggestion cannot be simply understood. Well, so what, I'm not giving up; for typo. 😎🙂 Rl adducul (talk) 14:03, 16 April 2021 (UTC)
For Wikipedia, "The Right Honourable" is a honorific, Sir is a honorific (as per MOS:SIR), and "Baroness X" is a name. Instead of swearing ("some idiot editors", "What the hell"), please familiarize yourself with this website's Manual of Style. --Omnipaedista (talk) 14:29, 16 April 2021 (UTC)

First of all, advance happy 13th year for your Wiki page; second of all, nevermind. Since the two titles are still separated [as of now] it's alright with me. But if someone changes it, I can't stop like that. I don't know who edited it to be separated titles, but I'll look at the edit history Rl adducul (talk) 19:53, 16 April 2021 (UTC)

Michael Heseltine linked twice

Just noting here the fact that my recent edit means that Michael Heseltine is now wiki-linked twice in the article text. The two places are well separated, so it seems to me helpful to have both, but unlink the later one if you disagree. Dani di Neudo (talk) 18:20, 7 July 2022 (UTC)

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