In Britain, Margaret Thatcher was succeeded by John Major as leader of the Conservative Party at the end of 1990. The Thatcher administration had already sold off nearly all the former state-owned industries, apart from the national rail network. Although the previous Transport Secretary Cecil Parkinson had advocated some form of privately or semi-privately operated rail network, this was deemed "a privatisation too far" by Thatcher herself. In its manifesto for the 1992 general election the Conservatives included a commitment to privatise the railways, but were not specific about how this objective was to be achieved. The manifesto claimed that "The best way to produce profound and lasting improvements on the railways is to end BR's state monopoly," although according to "The Independent", "many – including within the Tory party – believed that privatisation was merely a mechanism to manage the industry's gradual decline without too heavy a burden on the taxpayer."