Major: in his own words

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This is an edited transcript of the 'Today' interview

On Thatcher's disloyalty

"Margaret wasn't very helpful ... I think she forgot some of the difficulties she left behind, with the recession, with rising unemployment, with very high interest rates, and was not very helpful as we took the difficult measures in order to get it down.

"And as far as the European issue was concerned she feels very strongly about that, and I understand that.

"But I do think it was pretty unprecedented to have a former Prime Minister to be actively encouraging new young Conservative members of Parliament to vote against an existing Conservative government in the way Margaret did. Of course it did immense damage. If you have young backbenchers in Parliament wondering whether they should rebel against the government they've been elected to support and they're encouraged to do so by the activities of the former Prime Minister whom they revere, then clearly it becomes much easier for them to rebel.

"Because of the dominance of the European issue all the other issues we were trying to deal with, particularly the economy, became much more difficult.

On Thatcher's economic legacy

"When I became Prime Minister interest rates were 14 per cent, inflation was going through the roof, unemployment was heading up to three million, we inherited a recession.

"When we left, we left the best economy for ages, interest rates were about 6 per cent, inflation was very low and unemployment falling very dramatically.

"Now, if you just look at that, that is the most remarkable economic turnaround that any government has achieved for literally generations.

On sleaze under Thatcher

"And it was lost to the electorate at large, and it was lost because of the splits, because of the sleaze, and I have to say a good deal of the sleaze came from the 1980s.

"We took the heat for it in the 1990s, that the arms-for-Iraq issue which caused so much trouble, and the original cash-for-questions issue which caused so much trouble – both arose in the 1980s, that only became public in the 1990s. And it would have been helpful to have more support in dealing with those but we didn't have it."

On Iain Duncan Smith's disloyalty

"You are perfectly correct in saying that during the last Parliament Iain was one of a number of colleagues who voted night after night with the Labour Party in the Labour lobby with the purpose of defeating the Conservative government.

"I think that puts him in a very difficult position in one respect in particular. Since he voted consistently against the government he was elected to support, I think if, as leader, he asked the people to support him in a policy that they were uneasy about, I think he would be in a very difficult position in doing that credibly."

On Iain Duncan Smith's policies

"One knows very little about Iain to be honest. He's very fresh on the scene. We know he's very right wing, we know he's very Eurosceptical.

"But beyond that we don't know a great deal about his policies.

"The danger is, if he were to set in train policies, we are going to renegotiate this, we are going to renegotiate that ... he may force himself into the position where he is so outgunned in the European Union, so isolated in the European Union, so defeated in the European Union that those people in the Conservative Party who would risk leaving the European Union begin to gain dominance and begin increasingly to pull him further into their clutches."

On Ken Clarke

"Yes, I am going to support Ken Clarke. I think he is infinitely the most experienced candidate. And I think above all Ken Clarke will attract those non-aligned voters at the centre of politics without whom the Conservative Party cannot regain power.

"And I do think the purpose of the Conservative Party is to get back into government, not to return to its wounds. So I think Ken Clarke is the best option for ensuring we win elections."