AMID the vacuousness that seems to surround the British Government, John Major had another stab this week at defining what he stood for.
He did it at the Carlton Club, that bastion of Tory correctness in St James's where all prime ministers know they should get a sympathetic hearing.
It was an expansion on his theme of a classless Britain we have heard before, a Britain of dignity, generosity and tolerance - quite different to anything Margaret Thatcher would have wanted to trumpet.
Linked with it he hinted at something akin to the American Workfare scheme, suggesting that perhaps the time was right in Britain now for the unemployed to be forced to do something useful towards their weekly dole cheques.
It found a ready audience among those at the Carlton Club and one suspects would find a willing acceptance elsewhere. He wanted a society without the deference of the past but also one where unemployment benefit would be linked to a service to society.
The Workfare move is interesting in a month when even the official figures for unemployment, often suspected of being well below the true picture, are likely to show it topping three million for the first time. John Major says he is after ''radical options'' to face up to the unemployment question.