Elder statesman

In the early 1980s, a group of ambitious young Conservative MPs formed a dining club known as the Guy Fawkes Society. At one of their earliest meetings, they amused themselves by guessing which government jobs each of them would hold in ten years' time.

The quiet and unassuming John Major was earmarked for the relatively lowly position of financial secretary to the Treasury. The man destined to be prime minister, everyone agreed, was ...