A Reassessment of the Leadership of John Major Using the Greenstein Model

1 A Reassessment of the Leadership of John Major using the Greenstein Model Thomas Ian McMeeking Submitted in accordance with the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy University of Leeds School of Politics and International Studies June 2018 2 Declaration The candidate confirms that the work submitted is his own, except where work which has formed part of jointly authored publications has been included. The contribution of the candidate and the other authors to this work has been explicitly indicated below. The candidate confirms that appropriate credit has been given within the thesis where reference has been made to the work of others. Chapters of thesis which will include work which has been published in jointly-authored publications with details of the publications (e.g. title, authors, publication etc.): Public communicator chapter (Chapter three), which will include work from: Heppell, T. and McMeeking, T. (2015) The oratory of John Major, in Hayton, R. and Crines, A. (editors) Conservative orators from Baldwin to Cameron. Manchester University Press: Manchester. Details of the work which is directly attributable to you and details of the contribution of the other authors to the work: My role was in the research preparation stage for the book chapter I did with my supervisor, Dr Tim Heppell, published in 2015, on The oratory of John Major. This chiefly involved a detailed breakdown for Dr Heppell of Anthony Seldon's book: Major: A Political Life (Seldon 1997), specifically targeting sections and paragraphs from Seldon which referenced John Major's speeches at different forums and on different platforms during his premiership. Dr Heppell then utilised this material to produce a series of written up drafts which I was able to comment upon before the John Major chapter was sent to the publishers. This copy has been supplied on the understanding that it is copyright material and that no quotation from the thesis may be published without proper acknowledgement. The right of Thomas Ian McMeeking to be identified as Author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. © 2018 The University of Leeds and Thomas Ian McMeeking. 3 Contents List of Abbreviations and Acronyms List of Tables and Figures Acknowledgements Abstract Chapter 1: Introduction P9 1.1 Introduction and Thesis Outline 1.2 Thesis Rationale 1.2.1 The Reputation of John Major 1.2.2 John Major’s Place in Academic Literature 1.3 Research Methodology 1.4 Organisation of the Thesis 1.5 Conclusion Chapter 2: The Greenstein Model in Context P35 2.1 Introduction 2.2 Conceptualising leadership 2.3 British and American Studies of Political Leadership 2.3.1 The Prime Minister: A Definition 2.3.2 Prime Ministerial government versus Cabinet government 2.3.3 The Core Executive 2.3.4 The British Presidency 2.3.5 The American President: A Definition 2.3.6 Historical Context 2.3.7 The Moral Dimension 2.3.8 Skill in Context 2.3.9 Personality Studies 2.4 The Influence of Neustadt and Barber 2.5. The Greenstein Model in Context 2.6 Conclusion: The ‘Added Value’ of the Greenstein Model Chapter 3: Public Communicator P67 3.1 Introduction 3.2 Number 10 Communications Strategy, 1990-1997 3.3 John Major’s Rhetorical skills 3.3.1 House of Commons 3.3.2 Party Conference 3.3.3 Media and Public Meetings 3.4 Conclusion Chapter 4: Organisational Capacity P98 4.1 Introduction 4.2 Number 10 Downing Street 4.2.1 The Press Office 4.2.2 The Private Office 4.2.3 The Political Office 4.2.4 The Policy Unit 4 4.3 The Cabinet Office 4. Whitehall reform 4.5 Conclusion Chapter 5: Political Skill P140 5.1 Introduction 5.2 Greenstein’s The Presidential Difference: Major’s Ability to Negotiate 5.3 Neustadt’s Presidential Power: Major’s Ability to Persuade 5.4 Heresthetics: Major’s Ability to Manipulate 5.5 Norton’s Prime Ministerial Power: Major’s Ability to ‘Hide’ 5.6 Hargrove’s skill in context: Major’s Ability to Discern 5.7 Conclusion Chapter 6: Vision P181 6.1 Introduction 6.2 Direction 6.3 Policy 6.4 Consistency 6.5 Inspiration 6.6 Conclusion Chapter 7: Cognitive Style and Emotional Intelligence P222 7.1 Introduction 7.2 Cognitive Style 7.3 Emotional Intelligence 7.4 Conclusion Chapter 8: Conclusion P257 8.1 Introduction 8.2 Justifiable Critiques of John Major 8.3 The Question of Context and John Major’s Leadership 8.4 The Value of the Greenstein model as a Tool to Measure Political Leadership 8.5 Conclusion Appendix: Political elites who contributed to 2017 fieldwork P277 Bibliography P279 5 List of Abbreviations and Acronyms CBI Confederation of British Industry DM Deutsche Mark EDCP Cabinet Co-ordination and Presentation Committee EDH Cabinet Home and Social Affairs Committee EDM Early Day Motion EDX Cabinet Public Expenditure Committee EMU Economic and Monetary Union ERM Exchange Rate Mechanism EU European Union FDR Franklin Delano Roosevelt GEN Ad Hoc Cabinet Committee IGC Intergovernmental Conference IRA Irish Republican Army NEDC National Enterprise Development Council MP Member of Parliament ODP Cabinet Overseas and Defence Committee OPSS Office of Public Service and Science PCP Parliamentary Conservative Party PM Prime Minister PMQs Prime Minister’s Questions PPB Party Political Broadcast PSBR Public Sector Borrowing Requirement SDP Social Democratic Party UK United Kingdom VAT Value Added Tax 6 List of Tables Table 1: Political Skill Dimensions Table 2: Major government parliamentary rebellions by session during 1992 Parliament Table 3: Major government parliamentary rebellions in context, 1945-2012 7 Acknowledgements I would like to thank here a number of people who have helped and supported me throughout my PhD. First, I would like to thank my friends and family who have offered me a great deal of emotional support over the past few years. In particular, I would like to thank my parents and sister and her family who have supported me along my academic journey and for which I will remain eternally grateful. I also wish to thank the Adult Cystic Fibrosis Unit at St James’s Hospital, for their support and help. They have been equally important to me in my being able to complete my PhD. Second, I would like to thank all of the political elites who contributed to my fieldwork in 2017. Their insights and accounts have helped deepen and expand my knowledge of modern British politics and the politics of the 1990s greatly. I express the most gratitude for their willingness to take time out of their busy schedules and for sharing with me their experiences of John Major’s premiership from an array of different perspectives. Finally, but by no means last, I would like to thank my supervisors, Dr Tim Heppell and Professor Kevin Theakston, for their expert guidance, support and mentoring throughout my PhD. Their comments, insights and willingness to look over drafts of my work have played no small role in making it the document you see before you. Tim and Kevin have been approachable and rigorous as well as generous with their time, which is all I could ever wish for in a supervisory team. 8 Abstract Some twenty years since the dramatic fall from office of his government in May 1997, the premiership of John Major (Conservative, 1990 – 1997) has been overlooked within academic literature, seemingly dwarfed as it has been by the literature on the transformative premierships of Margaret Thatcher (Conservative, 1979 – 1990), and Tony Blair (Labour, 1997 – 2007). The literature that does exist on Major is concomitantly on the whole critical, a by-product of the turbulence of his time in office. This is despite Major’s seeming reputational improvement, and the increasingly revisionist attitudes towards his government, since he left office. Such an improvement has resulted in Major playing an increased role in the national debate in recent years, including in the 2016 referendum on Britain’s future relationship with the European Union. Therefore it is arguably an appropriate moment to re-assess the political leadership of Major. It is the proposition of this thesis that the best mechanism to assess Major’s prime ministerial performance and possibly gain a new insight into his premiership is from Presidential studies and the seminal 2000 work of Fred Greenstein and his six criteria for leadership, thereby building upon the work of other political scientists who have utilised the Greenstein model as a means to assess leadership performance within Prime Ministerial studies. This will be shown with the use of elite interview and questionnaire responses from nineteen participants currently within the House of Commons and House of Lords who were active during the Major era. This thesis will seek to show through the feedback from elite fieldwork that whilst much of the criticism of Major was justified, it equally is possible to argue using Greenstein that the undervaluing and overlooking of Major in the academic literature is unjustified, with much that Major did achieve deserving of further academic research and study. 9 Chapter One: Introduction This chapter is divided into four sections. The first section gives a brief outline of the main proposition for this thesis. The second section provides the rationale for this thesis, which includes an assessment of John Major’s current reputation and a review of the current academic literature. The third section will discuss the methodological approach of this thesis. The final section will give a brief outline of the content of the remaining chapters of this thesis before concluding overall. 1.1 Introduction and Thesis Outline This thesis assesses the political leadership of John Major, Conservative Prime Minister between November 27 1990 and May 2 1997, using the six criteria for political leadership devised by Princeton University Professor Fred Greenstein in his seminal work on Presidential leadership: The Presidential Difference (Greenstein 2000, Greenstein 2004, Greenstein 2009a).

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