The real mystery is how she kept her mouth shut so long
Edwina Currie's decision to kiss and tell casts new light on the goings-on and flounces-out of John Major's No 10. By Andy McSmith, the new Political Editor of 'The Independent on Sunday'
John Major's authority was never greater than it was 10 years ago, in April 1992, after he had secured for the Conservatives an unprecedented fourth consecutive general election victory.
Having returned from the campaign trail, he set about his ministerial team, and ran into an unexpected hitch.
It centred on Edwina Currie, the flamboyant former Health minister who had been forced to resign from Margaret Thatcher's government three years earlier after upsetting the nation's poultry producers by claiming that three in four eggs carried salmonella.
Mrs Currie was seen walking jauntily up Downing Street, offering a cheerful hello to the waiting cameras, which could only mean that Mr Major was going to risk bringing her back into government, despite her propensity for letting her mouth land her in trouble.
Then, mysteriously, Mrs Currie spent an hour and a half inside No 10, compelling the Prime Minister's office to delay the announcement of his new team. When Mrs Currie finally emerged, she let it be known that she had been offered a middle ranking job in the Home Office but had turned it down.
The general view at the time was that she had behaved like a prima donna, and should have treated the Prime Minister with more respect.
We now know that Mrs Currie went into that interview nursing 18 months of hurt and rejection that her former lover had neglected to offer her a job when he first became Prime Minister.
Although the risk of exposure had forced them to end their affair, she regarded her former lover with affection, thinking that they were allies within the political jungle. She deceived herself into believing that he would make amends for his initial neglect by raising her straight into the Cabinet. John Major, by contrast, looked upon their affair as "the one event in my life of which I am most ashamed".
Once, she had admired his Machiavellian ruthlessness. But when it was turned upon her, she was humiliated, angry, and provoked into an act of political self-destruction. This is one of many stories that look different now, in the light of Mrs Currie's revelations. There were, for instance, all those tales about Norma Major's reluctance to move to 10 Downing Street and be sucked into the world of Westminster politics, of which she seemed to have a horror.
And then there was the time John Major very nearly bankrupted the New Statesman. From the day when Mr Major became Prime Minister, rumours began circulating of a love affair which he was keen to keep secret. No one ever guessed the right name, but for a time concentrated on one woman whose name continually cropped up in newspapers in contexts which could only mystify those who were not in the know.
The New Statesman rashly decided to enlighten newspaper readers by declaring that the woman at the centre of the rumours was Downing Street caterer Clare Latimer. They tried to explain that they were denying the rumour, not endorsing it. Mr Major reacted by reaching for his lawyers. His argument was that whatever the tone of the piece, the New Statesman had drawn attention to the rumour and named Ms Latimer.
At the time, public sympathy tended to be on the side of a man who was assumed to be a loyal husband coping with distressing rumours. Now it must be assumed that Mr Major was driven by a fear that if the rumours continued, someone would uncover the real affair with Mrs Currie.
By the standard of early 20th-century scandals, his liaison with Mrs Currie was actually quite mild. David Lloyd George, for instance, effectively ran two households. His lawfully wedded wife lived in Wales, while the younger woman he called his Little Pussy lived in London. When his legal family visited 10 Downing Street, Little Pussy would slip out through the back door.
Herbert Asquith also had a mistress, to whom he cheerfully divulged state secrets, while Harold Macmillan knew of the 40-year affair between hiswife, Dorothy, and Lord Boothby. The fourth Macmillan child was actually Boothby's daughter.
The private lives of Prime Ministers would be talked about then, but not written about. John Major, by contrast, lives in an era that allows intense scrutiny of the occupant of No 10. And he presided over the painful and lasting fiasco of his government's attempt to go "back to basics".
Mr Major never intended that the slogan should mean that the Conservatives stood for harsh penalties for adulterers. The speech was delivered when the tabloid press was having fun at the expense of Stephen Norris, a junior minister who was revealed to have had five mistresses. Mr Norris kept his job.
Later, when Mr Major's friend David Mellor was shown to be cheating on his wife, the Prime Minister resolved to stand by him. However, there were elements in his party who believed that the Conservatives should stand for old-fashioned marital fidelity, and Mr Major gave way.
That resignation opened the floodgates. One Tory after another was exposed, usually by the News of the World, and forced out of office. There is no evidence that Mr Major wanted any of them to resign, except in the last and most farcical case of Piers Merchant, who was photographed with a teenage girl in a park during the general election.
Throughout this tortured period of Tory "sleaze", which dragged on for more than three years, John Major lived with the secret of the lover he had betrayed, a woman with a mercurial temper and a love of publicity, who lurked on the Conservative back benches.
"I have long feared it would be made public," he said in yesterday's statement - but he never knew when that might happen. If Mrs Currie had really been intent on extracting revenge and making money, she could have dropped her bombshell on the day of the "back to basics" speech, or after Mr Mellor had been forced out of the Cabinet.
While the first reaction of Mr Major's apologists, like Mary Archer, was to condemn Mrs Currie for being indiscreet, perhaps another way of looking at the story is to consider, given how much she loves the limelight, what it must have cost Mrs Currie to keep her secret for so long.
Bedroom casualties
Major MPs brought down by their own indiscretions
David Mellor
National Heritage Secretary exposed for affair with actress Antonia de Sancha. Resigned for not declaring free holiday.
Tim Yeo
Agriculture minister, resigned in January 1994 over disclosure he had daughter with Tory councillor.
David Ashby
Stood down after admitting sharing hotel bed with man during French holiday.
Hartley Booth
Foreign Office aide and Methodist lay preacher, quit in February 1994 over friendship with Commons researcher.
Robert Hughes
Minister for the Citizens' Charter, resigned in March 1995 after extramarital affair.
Richard Spring
Parliamentary aide to Northern Ireland Secretary, resigned in April 1995 over "three-in-a-bed romp".
Piers Merchant
Resigned in October 1997, after claims about affair with 18-year-old researcher.