Back to Basics (campaign)

Back to Basics was a political campaign announced by British Prime Minister John Major at the Conservative Party conference of 1993 in Blackpool.

The previous year of Major's premiership had been beset by infighting within the Conservative party on the issue of Europe, including rebellions in several Parliamentary votes on the Maastricht Treaty.

We want our children to be taught the best, our public services to give the best, our British industry to be the best and the Conservative Party will lead the country back to those basics right across the board.

[3] Government ministers regularly made speeches on the issue, such as John Redwood's condemnation of "young women [who] have babies with no apparent intention of even trying marriage or a stable relationship with the father of the child" from July 1993, and Peter Lilley's characterisation of single mothers as "benefit-driven" and "undeserving" from the same year.

For editors and journalists, the high-profile espousal of morality offered additional justification for the papers' risky stories, and a further defence against threats to introduce privacy legislation against press intrusion.

[7] Writing in his diary shortly after and in reference to the Michael Brown story (Brown being a government whip who resigned in 1994 in the wake of newspaper revelations that he had taken a trip to Barbados with a 20-year-old man), Piers Morgan, who exposed many of the sexual scandals as editor of the News of the World, opined: Major brought all these exposés on himself, with that ludicrous 'Back to Basics' speech at the last Tory conference ...

[53]John Major lost the 1997 general election, subsequently resigning as prime minister and Conservative Party leader.

[90] In 2017, Major said the slogan was an example of how sound bites can mislead the public, saying "[I]t was taken up to pervert a thoroughly worthwhile social policy and persuaded people it was about something quite different.