Talk:Back to Basics (campaign)

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This is not balanced - I've not got the time atm to do this page anew, but the entry is actually recording how it was perceived rather than what it was. The Civic Conservatism agenda which underpinned it, for example, is not mentioned. Mike Ainsley 22:48, 28 October 2006 (UTC)

I enjoyed it immensely. It's possibly the funniest page on Wikipedia...86.1.211.96 21:06, 16 March 2007 (UTC)

Yes it is indeed funny, but as the first poster said, there needs to be a lot more about what the actual campaign was about. Such as, what were the actual policies involved, was there support or rejection from the general public and why, etc. things like that. --Hibernian 04:01, 8 April 2007 (UTC)

It also needs its alleged references cited on each line item in the text, so that people don't have to guess which defamatory items are true from WP:Reliable sources and which have been added inappropriately as "common knowledge" afterwards. --Closeapple (talk) 02:51, 17 August 2009 (UTC)

Apart from omitting the Civic Conservatism stuff, this page also omits some of the juicier scandals of the time, such as David Mellor#Scandal and Steve Norris#Personal_life. Back to Basics was intended to be about lofty policy ideals, but as The Daily Telegraph put it, "In previous governments of all parties, MPs had regularly committed adultery without the roof falling in. This time, it was different. With the assistance of the tabloids, artful Labour spin doctors managed to persuade millions of voters that while the country was falling apart, the average Tory MP spent his entire time seducing other people's wives, except when he was soliciting backhanders."

The same article notes [For "Back to Basics" read "Back to my place".--BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 00:58, 4 March 2010 (UTC)

Having looked up this article for reference to John Major's 1980s affair with Edwina Currie (the Back to Basics campaign is given, with questionable relevance, a sentence referring to it in Currie's biographical article in its section Affair with John Major), I would add my disappointment that, after at least six years existence, there is no mention of campaign activity - eg posters, publicity in media, etc.Cloptonson (talk) 13:01, 26 January 2013 (UTC)

The Back To Basics campaign was about personal sexual morality from the outset

Although John Major did not make it specific in the actual speech, authorised Spin doctor Tim Collins later did privately at the Tory Conference with journalists. Hence the Daily Mail frontpage headline the next day ("Major's Moral Crusade") which was not challenged by Tories even when referenced many times in later months. Major only claimed that it wasn't about that several months later when hypocrisy over it had been repeatedly exposed enough to render any ongoing claim farcical - certainly once he tried to claim that, it killed the campaign entirely.

Generally it is a very poorly researched article overall - it was a full scale attempt by a British prime minister to turn back the Sexual Revolution in its entirety, and it failed spectacularly, such that no (Tory) PM has attempted anything like it since (and there have been several since 1993 of course). It essentially marked Total Victory for the Sexual Revolution in Britain. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 77.99.210.174 (talk) 20:28, 22 June 2021 (UTC)

Not ironic

Ironically, in 2002 Major himself was revealed to have had an affair with former Conservative minister Edwina Currie.

Shouldn't that first word be "hypocritically"? I can't see what's ironic about publicly calling for one thing while privately doing the opposite. 86.137.235.226 (talk) 10:00, 7 June 2013 (UTC)

Is the sentence really appropriate at all? --82.27.233.58 (talk) 11:04, 20 July 2013 (UTC)

I echo this question, pointing out that the relationship had ended as it had begun, in the 1980s, before he was even Prime Minister. If their relationship was going on WHEN he was Prime Minister, then he would have been in a 'hypocritical' position over his campaign.Cloptonson (talk) 09:40, 19 April 2014 (UTC)

I also question the relevance of putting the Major-Currie affair at the chronological head of the list of scandals, as I am sure readers would have gone into this article expecting the scandals listed to be those which took place during the lifetime of his premiership from the proclamation of the campaign, and therefore potentially discrediting it. The affair was not publicly announced during that period.Cloptonson (talk) 09:48, 19 April 2014 (UTC)

I would question putting the Currie-Major affair in with the list of scandals but I believe it should be mentioned on this page. It is both ironic and hypocritical that a man calling for a return to "family values" was himself a liar and a cheat. Gymnophoria (talk) 17:54, 2 February 2015 (UTC)

It should certainly be included as it might well have forced his resignation had it been revealed at the time.Paulturtle (talk) 05:16, 27 October 2020 (UTC)

Lamont

We probably ought to include all the press criticism of Lamont in the autumn of 1992, when they were trying to hound him out after Black Wednesday (they succeeded in May 1993, after the Newbury by-election). Most notably the completely invented nonsense about him calling at a Paddington newsagent to buy champagne and Raffles cigarettes, but also the stuff about his credit card arrears and his not having settled his hotel bill from the Tory Conference. If anyone wants a cite it's discussed in Major's memoirs, Lamont's memoirs and Seldon's biog of Major, but my copies of those literary masterpieces are all boxed up somewhere. I can't remember whether the stuff about "Miss Whiplash" operating out of a flat he owned ("an absolute hoot of a story" Major later called it in his memoirs) attracted much attention at the time (1991) or in the "Back To Basics" era a couple of years later, although I do remember that she later claimed to have serviced double-figured numbers of MPs of both parties.Paulturtle (talk) 05:13, 27 October 2020 (UTC)

Mellor

If someone wants to cast around for suitable cites, we could consider adding (1) his public berating of an Israeli colonel on the occupied West Bank in 1988, which looked a bit bad when he was revealed to have Palestinian links a few years later and (2) the jeering headline "From Toe Job To No Job" after he was sacked.Paulturtle (talk) 05:38, 27 October 2020 (UTC)