Best Prime Minister

[spanners]

There have been many threads posted about Boris, so which PM was better or worse?

Going back to Maggie's time, who do you think has done a decent job, bad job and what are their highlights & lowlights,

I thought Boris did a good job during Covid (parties aside), furlough, vaccine, lockdowns, all handled as best as possible in the circumstances.

He thought he was invincible and and above telling the truth and that was his main downfall. He never had the BBC onside, and for whatever reason, they went for him, and the rest is history.

Worse, spilt between Tony Blair, Gordon Brown and David Cameron, all for obvious reasons, but the absolute worse was Theresa May, completely useless, she'll go down in history as the most forgettable PM.

This isn't about who should have been PM, just who did the best job.

 

[Tin basher]

None of the above. TB's ratings

John Major 90/97 – Most famous as the grey man spitting image puppet, harmless old duffer

Tony Blair 97/07 – Slimy, lying, conniving git, wouldn’t trust him with the keys to my car never mind the keys to government.

Gordon Brown 07/10 – Introduced the Climate Change Act 2008, made the Bank of England independent and UK combat operations in Iraq came to an end. Described by Jeremy Clarkson as a “One eyed Scottish Idiot” when asked to retract Clarkson replied which one of the three descriptions was incorrect

David Cameron 10/16 – Wetter than a rainy day in Cleethorpes, king of dither and delay, threw his teddies when his EU remain plan was rejected by the people.

Theresa May 16/19 – Nice, kind, heart in the right place, sort of woman but promoted to at least one level above her competency. Saw a record funding increase to the NHS worth over £20 billion. During her time the UK’s national debt fell, employment reached a record high, and income taxes were cut for 32 million people.

Boris 19/22 – Smooth talking charmer, lifetime inveterate rule breaker, humorous entertaining and an unconventional attitude to the high office. Going soon.

All average to poor, mostly ineffective and harmless if you ignore Tony's WMD fibs.

 

[busby1971]

With hindsight applied I’d not vote for any, and all of these are within my period of majority.

 

[4mastacker]

At least we didn't have Trump.

 

[spanners]

New category added to the poll


All as bad as each other

I think that'll be the winner

 

[busby1971]

Still not voting, i think there’s a range of shitness there. My order would be:

Blair: Illegal war
Boris: Liar
Gordon: Stealth taxes and PFI
May: Just all round poor
Cameron: Hug a Hoodie (I dont think you can blame him for the Brexit vote as it was forced on him by the party)

They all did good stuff too, but you dont want that do you?

 

[Tin basher]

They all did good stuff too,

They mostly (Except Blair) did some good but they also all did some unhelpful things . Its a matter of balancing the ying and yang of their ineptitude against their perceived acheivements when creating your list of numpties.

 

[Downsizer]

I'm not convinced Tony Blair is as bad as everyone likes to make out these days. It has become fashionable to hate on him.

I'm not blown away by any of them however and I generally think they were all flawed and as bad as one another.

 

[Oldstacker]

Hmm, in some respects Blair was the best - he had a vision of what he wanted that was in tune with what Joe Public thought they wanted. He built on Kinnock's work of ridding the party of the extremist left to make the party electable and started out reasonably well. It all went wrong when he started to believe he could do no wrong and the downsides of some of his policies started to emerge; the FOI act, the 'ethical' foreign policy, expanding PFI schemes to deliver new builds, the raid on pension funds and the telling of lies to get us into Iraq as Dubya's best buddy.

Cameron & May were pretty crap - too euro subservient, Brown was tainted by his association with Blair's failings & Major just didn't gel with the public (& the image of him and Edwina Curry bathing together (and more) is just mind blowing...).

Blair may have been the best of that bunch but, let's be clear, the competition wasn't strong.

BoJo has largely delivered on his policies given the difficulties caused by Covid, it's just a shame he couldn't tell the truth and control the staff at No 10.

 

[muttywhitedog]

I'm not convinced Tony Blair is as bad as everyone likes to make out these days. It has become fashionable to hate on him.

I'm not blown away by any of them however and I generally think they were all flawed and as bad as one another.

Here Here. Many took part in the Iraq war, and the Tories also supported it. Many of their front bench also had access to the same info that Blair had, yet none of them questioned it. Over the years Ive had this debate with RAF IntO's who should have known it was all fake, yet even they were not privvy to this supposed cover-up. Not a single member of the military at any level saw anything wrong with the evidence, or they all chose to look the other way. It has become convenient to blame Blair for it because otherwise there'd be nothing to criticise him for.

I was a school governor around 2003-2006 and the staff certainly felt he had more than delivered in terms of improving education, with no primary class size above 30, and funding in place to make sure that didnt happen. In fact, it continued to improve right up to the point that the coalition got in and schools could become academies or free schools. My kids high school became an academy, and within a couple of years, there was less parent engagement, less staff giving of their time, more administrators on the payroll, bigger class sizes, and a once outstanding school rapidly became 2nd rate and had to ditch its 6th form because not enough kids wanted to stay on there.

 

[muttywhitedog]

BoJo has largely delivered on his policies given the difficulties caused by Covid, it's just a shame he couldn't tell the truth and control the staff at No 10.

He's got us out of the EU. All that means is that we dont go to the EU meetings any more. In terms of sorting a trade deal and the NI protocol, he has utterly failed. Oven ready deal - my arse!

 

[busby1971]

This is the problem with politics, politicians do bad things that transcend their political leanings so we can all agree on some of the bad things they did.

But, the good things they do are always biased to their fan base so it becomes more divisive on what a good thing is, ie do I see it as a good, a bad or do I not care.

By the way, anyone with any experience of the Intelligence world, would know that information is extremely compartmentalised, very few people know what different information is being collected or even that it exists in the first place. Just because an individual might have a very high clearance does not mean that you can see anything at that level, basic Need to Know principles.

I’d also suggest that anyone who is planning on sitting down to an oven ready meal, without finishing off the preparation get the Imodium ready. (Yes we probably realise that he didn’t mean that, he meant what you are saying, but he didn’t say that, he said the other)