Former Prime Minister John Major

Major "Knew He had Lost Two Weeks Before the Election"

John Major admitted more than two weeks before polling day that he had lost the General Election, according to his director of communications during the campaign.

Charles Lewington said Mr Major acknowledged he would be defeated after being told how voters in marginal constituencies were switching to Labour.

After receiving the report from campaigns director Tony Garrett 16 days before election day, the Prime Minister turned to an aide and said: "You know we can't win", Mr Lewington said in his memoirs of the campaign.

According to the memoirs, published in the Sunday Telegraph, Mr Major added: "How do you think history will judge me?"

His admission came the evening before he made his dramatic appeal to Tory Euro-sceptics _ telling them "Don't bind my hands" in negotiations _ after two junior ministers had broken ranks with the government's "wait and see" policy on a single currency.

Mr Lewington, who quit his post after the election, said he and others had called for John Horam and James Paice to be sacked for their disobedience, but were overruled by Mr Major.

He also said that the pro-European chancellor Kenneth Clarke had prevented the campaign from focusing more closely on Europe, insisting that he did not want a "petty nationalist campaign".

According to Mr Lewington, it was understood that Mr Clarke would resign if Mr Major ruled out joining a single European currency _ making it impossible for the party to change policy. As a result, he said, the party went into the election with a position on Europe that was "neither fish nor fowl".