Comment: Sleaze: why Boris Johnson is being reminded of 90s scandals Published on: 19 November 2021 Writing for The Conversation, Dr Martin Farr discusses Conservative sleaze scandals. Alamy/PA , The 鈥淭eflon premier鈥� has finally encountered something that may stick: the revival of a word first heard the last time a British Conservative government entered its second decade 鈥� but with a twist that鈥檚 very much of the age of Boris Johnson. 鈥淪leaze鈥� is squarely associated with the 鈥渟hort 1990s鈥� 鈥� the decade before the Labour election landslide of 1997. That John Major was prime minister for seven years is widely overlooked, perhaps because he so often appeared overwhelmed, from the moment of his 鈥� the 1992 election win that many even within his own party did not believe would happen. The architect of that fourth successive victory, party chairman Chris Patten, admitted to Major that they had 鈥渟tretched the elastic鈥� as far as it would go. It soon snapped. As with Johnson, by the time Major took over, in 1990, the Conservatives had been in power for three parliaments. Both premiers needed a fresh, animating policy brand, thus , and as respective election platforms. But risks are great when mischaracterisation is easy: the very phrase 鈥渂ack to basics鈥� 鈥� a programme never intended to be about personal morality 鈥� was immediately mired in scornful accusations of hypocrisy. The landmark scandal of the period was 鈥渃ash for questions鈥�. Plutocrats paid lobbyists to keep MPs on retainer, and newspapers caught MPs in stings, filming them accepting money in return for asking questions of ministers in parliament. Numerous Conservative MPs were implicated, most famously . The brown envelope stuffed with cash became a political signifier. But 1990s sleaze was much wider, and remarkable for how many other, unrelated, cases took place, or were revealed. The 鈥渁rms to Iraq鈥� scandal saw British engineering firm Matrix Churchill exposed for selling military equipment to Saddam Hussein鈥檚 regime, only for its activities to be revealed as government-sanctioned. This occasioned a 鈥� and the spectacular downfall and imprisonment of cabinet minister Jonathan Aitken. Extramarital antics Of the greatest interest to a prurient public were MP scandals involving sex. 1994鈥檚 front pages alone splashed two former ministers: , and Alan Clark bedding (separately) a mother and both of her daughters. That neither man was abashed by the revelations added to the sense of a decadent party partying decadently. David Mellor: one of the many politicians of the 1990s to be exposed for marital infidelity. Alamy Their colleagues Tim Yeo and Gary Waller fathered children out of wedlock; Rod Richards and Robert Hughes resigned over extra-marital affairs, and Piers Merchant was caught with a teenage nightclub hostess. Resigning over a relationship with a young woman more than half his age, was Hartley Booth, lay preacher and father of three. Even before the agency of social media there was enough titillation to sustain tabloid feeding frenzies for at least a couple of news cycles, abetted by the best endeavours of the publicist Max Clifford, . To compound the end-of-days feel, was the nascent Conservative civil war over Europe, which prompted Major into a . His landslide re-election did nothing to affect the popular impression of a prime minister . Regular by-election disasters 鈥� Newbury in 1993, Christchurch in 1993, Eastleigh in 1994, Littleborough and Saddleworth in 1995, Devon West and Torridge in 1995, South East Staffordshire in 1996, Wirral South in 1997 鈥� punctuated the parliament like the beat of a funeral drum. There was never a political disintegration like it. Bliss it was to be a satirist, and Have I Got News for You became appointment TV (there being no streaming). It was a country beset by calamity; in Labour leader John Smith鈥檚 words, one 鈥溾��. So it was that the outcome of the 1997 general election was the most predictable in history. The campaign reflected, often farcically, the five years that had just passed, most iconically the former BBC journalist Martin Bell, in his white suit, . Across the country Sir James Goldsmith鈥檚 new, insurgent, Referendum Party challenged deceitful to take back control. It won no seats but attracted nearly a million votes. A key difference Such are the behaviours of a one-party state, or a 鈥� or a tribe that has grown used to power. It had happened before, to , and it would happen again, to Labour (and the entire political class) in the late 2000s with the . But in none of these cases was the prime minister implicated in wrongdoing. Johnson has been referred to the Standards Commissioner . The 1990s was still a time when standards, when authority, was respected. Major did not conjure up the ambiguous formulation of the rules rather than accepting guilt. Major did not have to be . One of Major鈥檚 cabinet ministers did not . Sleaze also provides scope. That of the 1990s allowed Tony Blair to appear ; the expenses scandal provided for David Cameron to be above reproach (). 2021 proffers a potentially lucrative brief for Keir Starmer, a former prosecutor of errant MPs. The 1990s bottled the essence of generalised political scandals 鈥� the exploiting of power and patronage, the seductions of bedpost and bank balance 鈥� but there could also be tasted the tang of the new politics. The election of 1997 was the first in the UK with populism prominent. The extraordinary scene at his count, as the defeated Mellor was , may be seen to have offered a foretaste of politics to come. , Senior Lecturer in Contemporary British History, This article is republished from under a Creative Commons license. Read the . 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