AFTER a series of Cabinet sex scandals helped topple his government, former British Prime Minister John Major admitted Saturday to a four-year affair with a colleague while both were married.

　　Edwina Currie, a flamboyant backbench lawmaker and later health minister in Margaret Thatcher’s Cabinet, was quoted by The Times newspaper as saying she and Major began a relationship in 1984, while he was a Parliamentary whip, and ended it shortly after his promotion in 1988 to Thatcher’s Cabinet.

　　Major, a Conservative, was prime minister from 1990 until 1997. He was long considered one of Britain’s most personally upright politicians.

　　The paper quoted Major as saying that his wife, Norma, had known of the matter for many years and forgiven him long ago.

　　“It is the one event in my life of which I am most ashamed and I have long feared it would be made public,” he was quoted as saying. “Neither Norma nor I have any further comment.”

　　Major, 59, made no other public comment Saturday. News of the affair made the front pages of most tabloid newspapers.

　　Major’s reserved demeanor prompted the press to dub him “the gray man of Westminster,” and he was never implicated personally in the series of embarrassing sex and corruption scandals that dogged the Tories and helped drive his government from office in 1997.

　　Allies say he never meant that as a comment on politicians’ personal lives, but it was widely seen as such, and several of his ministers were forced to resign after their extramarital affairs became public.

　　Michael Brown, a Conservative forced to give up his Parliamentary seat after a tabloid reported in 1994 that he had a homosexual affair with a man under the age of consent, said “the course of events might have been very, very different” if Currie had made her revelation before Major became prime minister.

　　“There might never have been a John Major premiership,” he told Independent Television News.

　　Jonathan Aitken, who quit Major’s Cabinet in a perjury scandal, agreed that news of the affair might have damaged Major’s political career if it had become known earlier.

　　“It would have been a very explosive issue,” he told ITN. “I don’t say it would have brought the government down, but it would have certainly damaged a government said to be tarnished by sleaze very much indeed.”

　　Currie, 55, a showy Conservative politician who was never publicity shy during her years in Parliament, described the relationship in personal diaries excerpted in The Times and soon to be published as a book, Edwina Currie Diaries, 1987-1992.

　　(SD-Agencies)

　　AFTER a series of Cabinet sex scandals helped topple his government, former British Prime Minister John Major admitted Saturday to a four-year affair with a colleague while both were married.

　　Edwina Currie, a flamboyant backbench lawmaker and later health minister in Margaret Thatcher’s Cabinet, was quoted by The Times newspaper as saying she and Major began a relationship in 1984, while he was a Parliamentary whip, and ended it shortly after his promotion in 1988 to Thatcher’s Cabinet.

　　Major, a Conservative, was prime minister from 1990 until 1997. He was long considered one of Britain’s most personally upright politicians.

　　The paper quoted Major as saying that his wife, Norma, had known of the matter for many years and forgiven him long ago.

　　“It is the one event in my life of which I am most ashamed and I have long feared it would be made public,” he was quoted as saying. “Neither Norma nor I have any further comment.”

　　Major, 59, made no other public comment Saturday. News of the affair made the front pages of most tabloid newspapers.

　　Major’s reserved demeanor prompted the press to dub him “the gray man of Westminster,” and he was never implicated personally in the series of embarrassing sex and corruption scandals that dogged the Tories and helped drive his government from office in 1997.

　　Allies say he never meant that as a comment on politicians’ personal lives, but it was widely seen as such, and several of his ministers were forced to resign after their extramarital affairs became public.

　　Michael Brown, a Conservative forced to give up his Parliamentary seat after a tabloid reported in 1994 that he had a homosexual affair with a man under the age of consent, said “the course of events might have been very, very different” if Currie had made her revelation before Major became prime minister.

　　“There might never have been a John Major premiership,” he told Independent Television News.

　　Jonathan Aitken, who quit Major’s Cabinet in a perjury scandal, agreed that news of the affair might have damaged Major’s political career if it had become known earlier.

　　“It would have been a very explosive issue,” he told ITN. “I don’t say it would have brought the government down, but it would have certainly damaged a government said to be tarnished by sleaze very much indeed.”

　　Currie, 55, a showy Conservative politician who was never publicity shy during her years in Parliament, described the relationship in personal diaries excerpted in The Times and soon to be published as a book, Edwina Currie Diaries, 1987-1992.

　　(SD-Agencies)