John Major

The 1993 Downing Street Declaration is a stronger guide to Major than his public caricature. Working with Irish taoiseach Albert Reynolds, he helped establish principles that opened a route towards Northern Ireland's later settlement. He did not deliver the 1998 agreement, and other political leaders had already done vital groundwork. His place here rests on patient, politically risky negotiation. That achievement should sit beside, rather than erase, the economic humiliation of Britain's 1992 exit from the exchange-rate mechanism.