John Major and the lost art of being a loser

Some things are memorable by virtue of rarity. John Major being accidentally interesting is among them. So, earlier this month I was surprised to find myself looking up his choice of Desert Island Disc.

The man who disappeared with toothache during the backstabbing of the Thatcher succession, oversaw our ejection from the ERM and Tony Blair to a landslide had been in what he regards as “senior statesman” mode, choosing the developing Ukrainian crisis as the ideal moment to discuss Boris undermining Britain’s standing in the world and our trust in democracy.

Whether you agree with him or not isn’t the point. Right message, wrong messenger may be the kindest interpretation but I couldn’t help but wonder whether he was a Bruce Springsteen fan. Surprisingly, New Jersey’s finest didn’t feature.

You see, a listen to the lyrics of that most American of artists will reveal an obsession with that most American of terms, “the loser”. “It’s a town full of losers and I’m pulling out of here to win”. “Just winners and losers and don’t get caught on the wrong side of that line.” His songs are highways full of people fleeing defeat. Steinbeck with a guitar, the Boss’s characters are always seeking the ghost of Tom Joad.

They’re right to be unhappy, of course. To be “a loser” in America is no small thing. With it comes the harshest of that country’s tendency to puritanism and the quasi-religious relationship between outcome and virtue.

It’s possible John Major agrees. Odd, for a fella who famously loves cricket, warm beer, Edwina cycling to communion through the morning mist, and all things British.

And Britain was always somewhat different. Not in the sense that there aren’t consequences for “getting caught on the wrong side of that line” – there most certainly are – but some notion that “there but for the grace of God…” has pertained.

There was also the much-misunderstood amateur spirit encompassing the idea that endeavour counted almost more than the outcome. That there wasn’t always an implicit judgment in losing and that spirit and the existence of sheer dumb luck demanded that when triumph or disaster loom we “treat those twin imposters just the same.”

This was useful in a number of regards. It deflated the braggart, consoled the beaten and allowed the balm of acceptance to do its healing work. Handy too for a country that has largely been on the winning side. Even catastrophes like the Light Brigade, Dunkirk or the ERM could be viewed through a softer lens.

In sport, England, specifically England, could accept losing at rugby to Wales, football to Scotland or cricket to Australia with a certain noblesse oblige. As England rugby captain John Pullen said after an 18-9 defeat in Ireland at the height of the Troubles: “We may not be very good but at least we turn up!” Nobody else had travelled to Dublin. England’s victory lay beyond the scoreboard as the Irish team stood in ovation.

But heroic defeat started to become a national habit, almost a motif, and its effects corrosive.

Sport being a metaphor for life, that bad British affectation of hiding the embarrassment of success behind a feigned Wodehousian uselessness started to take on an unfortunate reality in a country that was struggling with its post-war place in the world. We began to believe it. And it still suits some to do so.

From atop a Tuscan hill, Britain is always ugly, useless and perfidious. Everywhere else is great and right. Pass the Brunello, darling, I find I can see neither left nor right. In defeat, victory for our world view.

The insidious effects of this are observable. From Brexit to UK interventions in the looming Ukraine crisis, the sniggering commentariat remain sneerily obsessed with the notion that Britain and its representatives are a bit rubbish. They laugh at Liz Truss’ hat. Or her choice of aircraft. Or anything.

It’s a sort of political and social manifestation of the trope that we’re bad at sport, irrespective of vast, multi-discipline British Olympic hauls, a world heavyweight boxing champion and England being the only country to have won the football, rugby and cricket world cups.

Professional triumphs all, of course, as most things have been since the country went pro in the 80s. And the thing about professionalism is that triumph is the point. Professionalism is, in its broader sense, also about management, process, structure and system. And that encourages managerialism and the illusion of total control.

Throw in an education system that nowadays rarely confronts people with their shortcomings and occupies itself with self-esteem and the entirely false notion that “you can be whatever you want to be” and trouble looms for the simple reason that, one day, life is going to hand you a defeat. In other words, you’re going to be a loser.
For some, this is hard to face. The way we have started to respond to it is telling. Kid not picked? Rage at the coach and threaten the club. Team lost? Change the rules, blame the officials, make a video. Not promoted? Go to HR or your lawyer.

It also produces an unfortunate relationship with obstructive regulation. School not turning in the exams? Game the system. Accounts not looking great? Meet my masseur. Fancy a lockdown party? Well…

And then we get to the serious stuff. Lose an election? Not my PM! Lose a referendum? Rage, rage against the lies (their lies, obviously), the backers, (their backers, naturally), the cheating, (their cheating, clearly).

This inability to accept defeat is poison to the soul and death to self-awareness. It is the stuff of vendetta and the Count of Monte Cristo. In other words, it is a short path to self-destruction. Which brings us neatly back to John Major. “Bastards” he called the eurosceptics of his undistinguished premiership. And now they’ve won, he’s still at it.

Refusal to stay down is admirably Churchillian in a war of national survival, in the heat of battle on the pitch or in the field, in the solitary hell of the torture cellar or in Gandhiesque defiance. But it is personally and societally damaging in almost all other circumstances and we and Sir John are here because we have lost the art.

Defeat is colour to our lives because without it victory is meaningless. Defeat demands that we acknowledge that sometimes the great American philosopher Clint Eastwood was right; “Deserve’s got nothing to do with it” or that his Cartesian colleague Rocky Balboa was equally clear-sighted when he said: “It’s not how hard you can hit but how hard you can get hit and still keep moving forward.”

Defeat asks us to look within and find serenity acknowledging that we were “beaten by the better man” or the motivation that comes from knowing that we didn’t work hard enough, prepare well enough, think straight enough and that we will win only by changing.

There is a dignity in all these things and all of these things are to be found in being a loser. Dignity. There’s a thought, Sir John.