‘John Major was an unlucky Prime Minister’ Assess the validity of this view.

Politically, John Major was unlucky for the majority of his premiership, whereas economically it could even be argued that John Major was lucky. The best way this divergence can be seen is in the Black Wednesday crisis of 1992, in which the UK was ejected from the European Exchange Rate Mechanism (ERM) following too strong a divergence from the value of the British pound from the German Deutschmark that it was pegged to. Black Wednesday was apolitically unlucky particularly in terms of inflaming splits in the party, but it was was economically lucky as it caused inflation to drop to 3.5%, despite the fact that Major had shown misjudgement in setting the exchange rate at the high 2.95 Deutschmark to the British pound.Major was particularly unlucky in his context which saw increasing Euro-scepticism within the Conservative Party alongside moves towards greater European integration, such as in the Maastricht Treaty. Additionally, the emergence of Tony Blair and the unified New Labour with far more politically palatable policies in terms of the views of 'swing voters' created a very dangerous situation for a party that had been in power for 18 years and had experienced the misfortune of having scandal after scandal published in the press. Though Major did experience the political advantage of competing with a seemingly unviable Labour Party in the 1992 election due to a significant number of policy u-turns, this political fortune does not hold true for the majority of John Major's premiership.