The ghosts of Prime Ministers past aren’t making life easy for Theresa May. John Major has now followed in the haunted footsteps of Tony Blair by criticising his successor’s approach to Brexit. Major used a speech yesterday to say people are being offered an ‘unreal’ vision of Brexit by the Government. Unsurprisingly, Major’s intervention has won him few friends in the newspaper editorials this morning. The Sun says it’s good news that Theresa May – and not John Major is in charge. After all, if the former PM was involved in Brexit talks, his ‘defeatist gloom’ would inevitably mean that things ‘would end as badly as he predicts’. Of course, Major does partly have a point – it’s not all going to be ‘plain sailing’ and voters are entitled to know it. But the Sun says that ‘most don’t believe it will’ be. What’s most important, the paper argues, is for a ‘can do attitude’ to prevail – an approach which the Sun says is obviously lacking in Major’s outlook. We should also be wary of the likes of Major, the paper warns: he has ‘privately muttered’ before about a second referendum, and yesterday, he still refused to rule such an option out. It’s clear that many Remainers know they are fighting a lost cause. But one thing is obvious from Major’s broadside: ‘Project Fear is not dead’.
The Daily Mail is similarly damning in its assessment of ‘moaning’ Major’s speech. It says that if the former PM had ‘an iota of self-awareness’ he would have quit the political stage long ago. After all, the Mail points out, it was the Major government’s ‘abject and incompetent’ approach which laid the ground for 13 years of Labour in its wake. But Major’s ‘sanctimonious diatribe about the supposed evils of Brexit’ shows he isn’t willing to live out his days gracefully. ‘On and on he droned,’ the Mail says – describing his speech as an unwelcome return to the ‘febrile days of Project Fear’. It’s clear, the Mail argues, that Major and his ‘remainer chums’ can’t accept the outcome of the referendum. It’s also ironic that Major – a man who ‘complained bitterly that his predecessor Mrs Thatcher’ was interfering in things – should do the same now. Major should remember that Theresa May ‘has caught the mood of the nation and is hugely popular’. It’s time for ‘moaning old has-beens like Sir John’ to pipe down, the Mail concludes.
‘For the second time in less than a fortnight, a former prime minister has entered the Brexit fray,’ the Daily Telegraph says, pointing out that Major at least doesn’t echo Blair by ‘proposing a campaign to reverse the democratic decision’. But Major’s intervention is still equally unwelcome. The Telegraph says that the points Major made have all been made before ‘and the vote went against them’. And the Telegraph suggests that Major’s argument that remain voters are being ‘howled down’ is evidence that he is ‘protesting too much’. After all, the Telegraph points out, much of the reason for the backlash against interventions like Major’s is the belief that ‘efforts are under way to reverse’ the referendum result. So instead of wading in, Major should ‘accepts the democratic decision’ and do his best to help Theresa May ‘achieve the best deal possible’.
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