What John Major really thinks of Tory Britain

A few weeks ago, as the Tory campaign was wavering, Sir John Major was wheeled out to prop it us by playing the elder statesman warning of a dire future under a Labour government.

However, it seems Major’s not that enamoured of the present under his own Party – or it’s vision for the future for ordinary workers.

The Mirror has an audio recording of Sir John talking to the Tory Reform Group. In it he laments the state of education, inequality and the Tories lack of reach into ethnic minority communities which he – idiosyncratically – described as “not remotely goodish”.

On education he is heard saying:

“we cannot be proud of where we are in the education tables of quality education around the world.” 

On Tory plans to raise the retirement age he poses the obvious questions of how fair this will be for those who do hard manual labour rather than white collar desk jobs saying:

“You can only do that job for those extended periods because the sheer physical effort would be impossible for them.” 

Finally on inequality, Sir John offered the devastating appraisal:

“How can it be that in a nation that is the fifth richest nation in the world, that in the United Kingdom we have four of the poorest areas in Europe? “By Europe I include Eastern Europe in that question.”

The former Prime Minister is one of few senior Tories to come from a working class background and has often been seen to attempt to ground the Tories in the reality of the lives of ordinary workers in the UK. This criticism (while -ironically – made at a £150-a-head dinner) will be damaging to the Tory Leadership, particularly Cameron and Osborne who were once famously described by a Tory backbencher as “Two arrogant posh boys who show no remorse, no contrition, and no passion to want to understand the lives of others.”