John Major - in The Cabinet

In The Cabinet

He was appointed as a Parliamentary Private Secretary from 1981, and an assistant whip from 1983. He was made Under-Secretary of State for Social Security in 1985, before being promoted to become Minister of State in the same department in 1986, first attracting national media attention over cold weather payments to the elderly in January 1987, when Britain was in the depths of a severe winter.

Major was promoted to the Cabinet as Chief Secretary to the Treasury in 1987, following the general election, and in a surprise re-shuffle in July 1989, a relatively inexperienced Major was appointed Foreign Secretary, succeeding Sir Geoffrey Howe. He would only remain three months in that post before becoming Chancellor of the Exchequer after Nigel Lawson's surprise resignation in October 1989. Major presented only one Budget, the first one to be televised live, in early 1990. He publicised it as a budget for savings and announced the Tax-Exempt Special Savings Account (TESSA), arguing that measures were required to address the marked fall in the household savings ratio that had been apparent during the previous financial year. In June 1990, Major suggested that the proposed Single European Currency should be a "hard ecu", competing for use against existing national currencies; this idea was not in the end adopted. In October 1990, Major and Douglas Hurd, Major's successor as Foreign Secretary, finally persuaded Thatcher to allow Britain to join the Exchange Rate Mechanism, a move which she had resisted for some years, and which had been a cause of her quarrels with Howe and Lawson.

When Michael Heseltine challenged Margaret Thatcher's leadership of the Conservative Party in November 1990, Major and Douglas Hurd were her proposer and seconder on her nomination papers. Major entered the contest alongside Douglas Hurd on 22 November after Thatcher abandoned her plans to contest the second ballot, ending her 11 years as prime minister and 15 years as party leader. Major was at home in Huntingdon recovering from a wisdom tooth operation at this time. Thatcher's nomination papers for the second ballot were sent to him by car for him to sign – it later emerged that he had signed both Thatcher's papers and a set of papers for his own candidacy in case she withdrew.

Though he fell two votes short of the required winning margin of 187 in the second ballot, the result was sufficient to secure immediate concessions from his rivals. He was named Leader of the Conservative Party on 27 November 1990, and was summoned to Buckingham Palace and appointed Prime Minister the following day.