Tribute to john major

John Major was born in March 1943. After leaving school Major started on a banking career. Whilst working for the bank, Major's interest in politics continued to grow, and in 1979 he was elected as the Conservative MP for Huntingdonshire. In 1987 the then Prime Minister, Margaret Thatcher, appointed Major to the Cabinet as Chief Secretary to the Treasury. This was said to be at the request of Nigel Lawson, who was the Chancellor of the Exchequer at the time. Without this request, Major would have become the Chief Whip, and as Major has said, the course of history could have been somewhat different. Just two years after his appointment as Chief Secretary he became the Foreign Secretary, a promotion from the most junior members of the Cabinet to one of the most senior. The appointment was seen as a surprise, and was taken as a snub by Geoffrey Howe who was the previous holder of the position. Major argued with Thatcher that maybe he wasn't the best person to take on this job, as he feared that he would just be Thatcher's man in the Foreign Office. Just three months after his appointment to Foreign Secretary he became the Chancellor of the Exchequer after the resignation of Nigel Lawson. By this time Thatcher's popularity in the parliamentary party was in freefall after problems with damaging statements by former cabinet Ministers, the poll tax debacle and the European splits. After presenting just one budget, Major became Prime Minister after Thatcher resigned due to lack of support amongst her own MPs. Major won the 1992 General Election for the Conservatives to the surprise of many observers who had thought that Neil Kinnock's Labour Party would win. In June 1995, to counter damaging party splits, John Major resigned as Conservative Party Leader to fight a leadership contest. Beating John Redwood comprehensively in the first round there was no need for a second round, which had been expected. Major stayed as Party leader and Prime Minister, with the acceptance that there would be no further leadership contests until the General Election. Hampered by party splits and a small majority which later became a minority, Major was unable to win the 1997 General Election, and Tony Blair's Labour Party won a landslide on the May 1st General Election.

Task 7. Read the text about one of the Labour party PMs and explain the following words and expressions:

After being admitted to the bar, a by-election, constituency, a shadow secretary, fiscal policy.

Task 8. Find facts to illustrate how the Labour party changed after Tony Blair had headed it?

Facts on Tony Blair

Tony Blair was born May 6, 1953 in Edinburgh, Scotland. He was educated at the Durham Choristers School in Durham, England and at Fettes College in Edinburgh. He received a law degree in 1975 from St. John's College at Oxford University. He began practicing law the next year after being admitted to the bar. Blair first ran for Parliament as a Labour Party candidate in 1982, when he lost a by-election for the Beaconsfield constituency. He joined the House of Commons the following year, winning the seat from Sedgefield, in Northern England. Blair held that seat through the 1980s and 1990s, easily winning parliamentary elections during a political era mostly dominated by the Conservative Party. After serving as a Labour Party spokesman on treasury matters, and then on trade and industry affairs, Blair in 1988 was appointed shadow energy secretary. He was named shadow employment secretary in 1989 and shadow home secretary in 1992. The party elected him to its National Executive Committee in 1992. The Labour Party elected Blair as its leader in 1994. Blair, then 41 years old, was the youngest-ever head of the Labour Party. He replaced John Smith, who had died earlier in the year after leading the party for two years. As Labour Party leader, Blair continued efforts by his most recent predecessors – John Smith and Neil Kinnock - to scale back the party's traditional adherence to socialist ideology. He led a controversial campaign to remove from the party's constitution a clause that called for common ownership, by British workers, of the country's "means of production." The party in 1995 adopted a new charter that omitted the clause. Blair frequently referred to his party as "New Labour" in an effort to distance it from recent criticisms of Labour members of Parliament. (The party had widely been dismissed as a bastion of political extremism and incompetence.) In a rejection of traditional Labour fiscal policy, Blair advocated low taxes and tightly limited social spending. He called on the party to loosen its links to trade unions and to work with the business community to solve labor disputes. He also softened the party's hard-line stance against the privatization of state-owned industries. Blair's political centrism, along with his youthful, energetic speaking style, were credited with contributing to the Labour Party's steadily climbing popular support. Blair married Cherie Booth, a fellow trial lawyer, in 1980. They have three children together. In 2003 the Labour Party was in crisis because of the war in Iraq. Tony Blair is on friendly terms with Vladimir Putin. Due to Blair’s recommendation V. Putin received an invitation from Elisabeth II and went on an official visit to Britain in 2003.

Task 9. Use the Internet resources to find out the latest facts about political parties in Britain. A recommended site is: http//www.politics.guardian.co.uk