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Worst UK Prime Minister in last 100 years?

Andalublue said:
I think that the Thatcher-lovers' inability to suggest anyone worse tells us all we need to know. Thatcher destroyed British primary and manufacturing industry in favour of tertiary service and financial service sectors, which are now threatened with heading south post-Brexit. She failed to reverse the liberalisation of British society, merely drip-fed the reactionary forces with headline-grabbing nonsense like Clause 28, and engineered silly FP adventures like the Falklands. She deregulated the banking sector, setting it on course for the repeated booms and busts that are now the normal situation for the British economy, and she instituted no reforms that have brought anything like economic, social or cultural stability.

Case closed.

I'm surprised none of her fan-boys have suggested alternative candidates such as Neville Chamberlain, Anthony Eden or even Jim Callaghan, but I guess making a case for a worse PM from the past century is pretty much impossible.
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She was the worst.
 
Infinite Chaos said:
Let me be clear I disagree Margaret Thatcher was the worst Prime Minister we had in the last 100 years; in my view, she was one of the best and she turned the country from a basket case heading for more economic gloom into a powerhouse and one which stopped being the sick man of Europe. I partially agree with Paddy Ashdown who also disagrees the poll - Thatcher did destroy what really needed to be destroyed but yes, she didn't rebuild where she took things down.
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Thatcher had no desire to rebuild anything and helped usher in the neo-liberal era of deregulation and privatisation.

She should have rebuilt council stock she allowed to be sold vs allowing poor and council home owners to own their own homes.
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She specifically legislated to prevent councils building new housing stock as this drove up house prices.

She didn't push hard enough for regeneration of areas where steel and coal mining were to die off - however these areas were also heavily subsidised and performed badly
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Again, she had no desire,to rebuild anything and particularly in former mining areas, the population of which she'd named as "the enemy within" when referring to them. Previous Labour administrations had overseen the closing of expensive or unproductive pits without national strikes because they invested in those areas to help the locals retrain.

Thatcher, on the other hand, had vowed to destroy the miners and their industry because they brought down the 1974 Conservative government and the abandonment of those communities was partly revenge for that.

The divisions and destruction wrought by Thatcher are still being felt in communities all across the north of England, a generation after she left power.

On the other hand, she liberalised the stock markets and allowed weak industries to die. She was with Ronald Reagan and Pope John Paul, instrumental in the freeing of the Eastern European Soviet Bloc countries and in the eventual downfall of the USSR. These outweigh the social and economic problems.
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The liberalisation of stock markets and banking in Thatcher's era (and continued by her successors) is one of the reasons that the 2008 crash was felt so badly.

Thatcher also brought in the Poll Tax, Clause 28 and began the destruction of Britain's manufacturing base. Her policies did raise a lot of money for the country but, unfortunately, not much of it trickled down to the average member of the public.

Second position - both David Cameron and Tony Blair have a lot more to answer for - Blair lied and took us into Iraq, we lost many good servicemen and became embroiled in the troubles of the middle east. Worse still he enabled Bush to create the mess in Iraq which still haunts us today with ISIS. Cameron, despite the regeneration of the economy to where it is now, did not do enough to spread wealth and then gambled with the economy when he set about the EU referendum
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Many of the problems in the ME can be laid at the feet of Blair (and Bush) and are still being felt around the world. Domestically, he actually did quite well.

Cameron, rather than being considered for the worst PM should be a leading candidate for most useless. After six years in power his legacy is the doubling of the national debt and borrowing more than every previous Labour government ever - combined, Britain out of Europe because of his short term political motivations in the run up to the 2015 GE, an NHS which is buckling as a precursor to further privatisation, a failed state in Libya plus the spread of ISIS caused by the intervention which he pushed repeatedly for, the likelihood of a second Scottish referendum and the break up of the U.K. and Britain's greatly diminished stature on the worldwide stage.

However, most of his failures I blame on his basic incompetence rather than malevolence.

Neither of those two have anything in their positives folder anywhere near what Margaret Thatcher achieved.
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I'd say Blair leaves the best domestic legacy. He created things like Sure Start, since cancelled by the Tory/Lib coalition government, the Good Friday Peace agreement in Northern Ireland although John Major deserves a lot more credit for that than he's given and introduced the Human Rights Act, off the top of my head.

Of course, Iraq will always overshadow any domestic achievements and the level of media management employed by New Labour is a large part of the reason there is such mistrust of politicians in Britain today.

Cameron, as I've said, was incompetent and I genuinely believe he didn't understand the impact a lot of his policies would have.

Thatcher knew exactly what effect her policies would have and chose to deliberately let whole communities rot while demonising them in the press as work shy and lazy.

Of the three I'd say her legacy has been most toxic.
 
Unitedwestand13 said:
My oppinion is that Anthony eden is the worst in terms of how badly he misjudged the suez canal crisis.
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To be fair, there was two issues here. First off the British were still thinking that they were an empire and the biggest power in the world.. at the time. Secondly, the UK/France were stabbed in the back by the Americans. This combination lead to the "misjudgment".
 
PeteEU said:
To be fair, there was two issues here. First off the British were still thinking that they were an empire and the biggest power in the world.. at the time. Secondly, the UK/France were stabbed in the back by the Americans. This combination lead to the "misjudgment".
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That post is made in heaven for you. I mean, you get the chance to stick it to the British and Americans both at the same time!
 
gunner said:
That post is made in heaven for you. I mean, you get the chance to stick it to the British and Americans both at the same time!
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What do you have against facts? Are you disputing my analysis?
 
gunner said:
That post is made in heaven for you. I mean, you get the chance to stick it to the British and Americans both at the same time!
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This thread is made for you, Paul. You get the opportunity to provide one-line critiques of everyone else's choices without ever having to commit yourself or make your own argument. Fence-sitting sniper's heaven!
 
Andalublue said:
This thread is made for you, Paul. You get the opportunity to provide one-line critiques of everyone else's choices without ever having to commit yourself or make your own argument. Fence-sitting sniper's heaven!
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I don't think there's much to add, to be honest. Comparing PMs is a pointless exercise in that they all govern at different points in history. Meaning, they did what they did, for reasons pertinent to that time period. In addition, I see little point in bashing Thatcher because we've done that to ad nauseum, of course, I noted your sly dig at the service community (how wrong you are sometimes). But the problem rests with you, that you cannot understand it was the Argentine government who were the aggressors/invaders. And good there's still a portion of the UK with the stones to fight for fellow citizens. In this, Thatcher was an excellent leader.
 
PeteEU said:
To be fair, there was two issues here. First off the British were still thinking that they were an empire and the biggest power in the world.. at the time. Secondly, the UK/France were stabbed in the back by the Americans. This combination lead to the "misjudgment".
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But britian and France were trying to break international law.
 
Unitedwestand13 said:
But britian and France were trying to break international law.
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No they were not. It was far more complicated than that.. it was about the Suez canal and who controlled it. Add to that, the "de-colonization" of the European Empires by the US and you had a massive problem. Ironically, it could have killed off Arab nationalism and radical Islam at its birth, if the British/French had gotten their way.
 
PeteEU said:
No they were not. It was far more complicated than that.. it was about the Suez canal and who controlled it. Add to that, the "de-colonization" of the European Empires by the US and you had a massive problem. Ironically, it could have killed off Arab nationalism and radical Islam at its birth, if the British/French had gotten their way.
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I don't think Nasser was a radical Islamist, he was a Arab nationalist.
 
Clearly it was Bonar Law. He was Canadian, after all. I'm sure up in heaven he commiserates with American President William Henry Harrison.
 
Auvergnat said:
You should invent more plausible stories.
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Look buddy, I don't give a flying fig for what you believe or not, let alone what you find plausible or don't.

What YOU have demonstrated meanwhile is that economics and you clearly don't even talk to each other.

Or would you maybe like to rehash your pearl of wisdom over how a weak pound is going to make foodstuffs in the UK cheaper?

As I already said, when it comes to economics we all know what you have to show.:roll:
 
Chagos said:
Or would you maybe like to rehash your pearl of wisdom over how a weak pound is going to make foodstuffs in the UK cheaper?
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I never pretended such a thing, you are the one moving the goal posts. But about food prices, which was not my topic, remember that when a country has trade deficit, like UK has been for the past fifteen years, things are more expensive than they look like when looking at their nominal prices only. They may be sold cheap but the counterpart is a fraction of your future income.
 
Auvergnat said:
I never pretended such a thing, you are the one moving the goal posts.
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Another example of the dishonesty I have come to expect from you. To the citation provided in the other thread of
It says defaulting to trading by World Trade Organisation (WTO) rules would leave 90% of UK goods trade with the EU subject to new tariffs.
The letter says that would mean 20% in extra costs for the UK's food and drink industry and 10% for car producers.
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You made the nonsensical claim of
Auvergnat said:
This should be offset by the lowered pound. More generally, the currency market should spontaneously compensate for any competitiveness loss, although at the expense of British purchasing power.
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to then deflect in all your subsequent posts from what nonsense you had thus presented and how it was pointed out to you. To the point even of claiming the thread topic to have been about something completely other than it was. And here you have the nerve of accusing somebody else of moving the goalposts.
But about food prices, which was not my topic,
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Forget it. Apart from my having zero tolerance for dishonest posters, I also won't debate economic issues with somebody having provided such nonsense as you have, to then exacerbate it all by lacking the character to own his mistake (despite it having been addressed at length by various posters).

To get back onto the topic of this thread, your post #7 clearly shows that you understood neither the post of mine you quoted, nor (by that very same measure) economics and the studying of same altogether.

So I'm done with your efforts on that field, same way I would be with someone that I'm teaching a language totally foreign to him/her and, rather than required attentiveness being rendered, such efforts being met with arguments over what s/he is (as yet) completely ignorant of.
 
Chagos said:
Another example of the dishonesty I have come to expect from you.
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You very well know that all along this post has been for me about exports, and that fro me the part you mentioned implicitly cared about exports. We discussed this enough. By ignoring my perspective and giving my sentences another meaning, you are the only dishonest one here.
 
Auvergnat said:
You very well know that all along this post has been for me about exports, and that fro me the part you mentioned implicitly cared about exports. We discussed this enough. By ignoring my perspective and giving my sentences another meaning, you are the only dishonest one here.
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Continue your distortions on your own, I won't make time for this anymore.
 
Baltim said:
Thatcher had no desire to rebuild anything and helped usher in the neo-liberal era of deregulation and privatisation.
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Course she did, as someone in engineering design I remember her coming to Universities to talk about and promote British design. What she and British society had to contend with was how rubbish British managers in industry traditionally are.

Baltim said:
~ She specifically legislated to prevent councils building new housing stock as this drove up house prices.
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https://fullfact.org/economy/who-built-more-council-houses-margaret-thatcher-or-new-labour/

However, house building was in decline before her and her Govt supervised the building of (on average) 41,343 council houses a year. Any such legislation could have been overturned at any time in the years since. What I remember of Thatcher was she took the hard decisions that people wouldn't. This includes talking about funding the NHS, we all want cheap or free NHS but in elections anyone who promised less tax tended to win. People wanted a free and bigger NHS but didn't want to pay for it.

Baltim said:
~ Again, she had no desire,to rebuild anything and particularly in former mining areas, the population of which she'd named as "the enemy within" when referring to them. Previous Labour administrations had overseen the closing of expensive or unproductive pits without national strikes because they invested in those areas to help the locals retrain.
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You've already been proven wrong on council houses, you are also proven wrong on rebuilding. She believed in market led regeneration and tried to provide incentives to companies to relocate into former mining areas.

Urban regeneration and market-led planning during the Thatcher years | Antonio Acierno - Academia.edu

BBC NEWS | UK | UK Politics | Was this Thatcher's greatest legacy?

Baltim said:
~ Thatcher, on the other hand, had vowed to destroy the miners and their industry because they brought down the 1974 Conservative government and the abandonment of those communities was partly revenge for that.
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Hyperbole that you can't prove.

Baltim said:
~ The divisions and destruction wrought by Thatcher are still being felt in communities all across the north of England, a generation after she left power.
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I live up here, market led regeneration didn't work as well as it did but neither could we afford to subsidise forever a mining industry bent on bringing governments down for their own political desires.

Baltim said:
~ The liberalisation of stock markets and banking in Thatcher's era (and continued by her successors) is one of the reasons that the 2008 crash was felt so badly.
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This has anything to do with US sub-prime? Thought not...

Baltim said:
~ Thatcher also brought in the Poll Tax, Clause 28 and began the destruction of Britain's manufacturing base. Her policies did raise a lot of money for the country but, unfortunately, not much of it trickled down to the average member of the public.
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Ordinary people got shares in building societies, got to own their own council homes. Disprove that when you can.

Baltim said:
~ Many of the problems in the ME can be laid at the feet of Blair (and Bush) and are still being felt around the world. Domestically, he actually did quite well.
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True, but he didn't change house building policy, tighten up on the markets which people like you will always blame Thatcher for. There had been plenty of time to see what hadn't worked and deal with it.

Baltim said:
~ Thatcher knew exactly what effect her policies would have and chose to deliberately let whole communities rot while demonising them in the press as work shy and lazy.

Of the three I'd say her legacy has been most toxic.
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Can't say any facts agree with you.
 
Chagos said:
Yes indeed. I was going to add that, the phone rang and bang went focus.
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Apologies for late reply, been heavily involved with rebuilding and foolish decisions by electricians which had me digging out all the cupboards I built to put back in - still not done so I will be gone again for a while.

Chagos said:
~ One needs to know that I was dealing with the markets of the world (and linked economies) from a German base at the time ~ Outside looking in probably gave me advantages.
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True, but living in the UK when council workers refused to bury the dead or collect rubbish, or living through power cuts in the early 70's and the 3 day week where things that contradict experience from overseas. Very few would want to go back to the industrial situation of the 70's.

Chagos said:
~ You call that kind of GDP base healthy? And I don't mean the percentages.
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No, but it wasn't the only thing she tried to do. People say Thatcher didn't try to rebuild but she did. She went into those broken areas and tried to get companies to invest there. Nissan could have built anywhere in the UK but she persuaded them into the North East former mining areas. She tried - that legacy could have been continued by many others. When stadia or monuments or factories were proposed for the UK, they could have been built in the North but she is not to blame for the millennium dome or any of all the other national attractions that ended up in London. You have to remember there were a range of "actors" arranged against her policies to spread and encourage rebuilding elsewhere.

1) resentment in the former mining areas for political aim.
2) British industry not wishing to move.
3) victim status in former mining areas.
4) lack of desire to move to find work or retrain for other jobs.
5) Hostility to the UDCs created by Thatcher.

Nissan, regeneration of Liverpool Docklands, London Docklands etc - nobody ever says or recognises these successes because that would mean admitting these were Thatcher's successes.

Chagos said:
~ You mean "he may be a SoB, but he's our SoB"?
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No, I mean he helped in the British military effort and she kept loyalty with an SOB who helped us.

Chagos said:
~ Well, I had Chilean friends at the time that I did my bit towards supporting, once they'd managed to flee.
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I recognise that as she did too. She made a personal decision which did not make an impact on the Conservative Govt since - nobody sees the Conservatives as tied to a pro Chilean dictator policy - rather one tied to Thatcher. I recognise the horrors of what Pinochet was and did as she probably did but he had provided vital aid to our military which as an ex military person myself with personal friends who went to the Falklands, I can accept.

Chagos said:
~ No saluting of flags, no singing of national anthems for me ever since. Not for some bloody islands in the Antarctic, not for any further bloody desert land, thank you very much.
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True but then do we give up on any British citizens or land just because they are inconvenient and far away? Especially when they wish to remain British?

Chagos said:
~ Mugabe, anyone?
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The other side (the non British one) of my family are Ndebele, people who died in the thousands because of Mugabe so I feel I can comment against this. Mugabe was democratically voted in by the Shona majority. That democracy only came about because of Thatcher freeing Zimbabwe from white rule. Hard as it is to live with the consequences, democracy is better than dictatorial or minority enforced government rule.

Chagos said:
~ Revering Pinochet and at the same time reviling Mandela is a hard act to follow when the game of myopia is to be demonstrated. That sticks to her no matter what mitigation anyone tries to come up with.
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I respectfully disagree for reasons outlined.
 
Infinite Chaos said:
Apologies for late reply, been heavily involved with rebuilding and foolish decisions by electricians which had me digging out all the cupboards I built to put back in - still not done so I will be gone again for a while.
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been there, done that, got the T-shirt. So, my commiserations.

One of the reasons I do my electrics alone by now but being retired I can make the time.
True, but living in the UK when council workers refused to bury the dead or collect rubbish, or living through power cuts in the early 70's and the 3 day week where things that contradict experience from overseas. Very few would want to go back to the industrial situation of the 70's.
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No disagreement there. I was in London a lot at the time but visiting merely, even if for weeks on end. Felt that to be bad enough as it was, business forays "into the sticks" I often enough had to delay on account of the potential logistical hindrances (not so much the travel itself, more the possibility of nobody being there to hold a conference with upon arrival).
No, but it wasn't the only thing she tried to do. People say Thatcher didn't try to rebuild but she did. She went into those broken areas and tried to get companies to invest there. Nissan could have built anywhere in the UK but she persuaded them into the North East former mining areas. She tried - that legacy could have been continued by many others. When stadia or monuments or factories were proposed for the UK, they could have been built in the North but she is not to blame for the millennium dome or any of all the other national attractions that ended up in London. You have to remember there were a range of "actors" arranged against her policies to spread and encourage rebuilding elsewhere.

1) resentment in the former mining areas for political aim.
2) British industry not wishing to move.
3) victim status in former mining areas.
4) lack of desire to move to find work or retrain for other jobs.
5) Hostility to the UDCs created by Thatcher.

Nissan, regeneration of Liverpool Docklands, London Docklands etc - nobody ever says or recognises these successes because that would mean admitting these were Thatcher's successes.
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conceded.

Polarizing all failures onto her as the most convenient bête noire is myopic, even where myopia is not the same as blindness.
No, I mean he helped in the British military effort and she kept loyalty with an SOB who helped us.
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Don't think that takes much away from my assessment.
I recognise that as she did too. She made a personal decision which did not make an impact on the Conservative Govt since - nobody sees the Conservatives as tied to a pro Chilean dictator policy - rather one tied to Thatcher. I recognise the horrors of what Pinochet was and did as she probably did but he had provided vital aid to our military which as an ex military person myself with personal friends who went to the Falklands, I can accept.
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It's still the old "but he's our SoB" stance. I've been to war (long before that) and would probably have felt the same. I'd still have been wrong though even where 20/20 hindsight developed over decades led to that realization.
True but then do we give up on any British citizens or land just because they are inconvenient and far away? Especially when they wish to remain British?
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I was addressing more the concept of mindless jingoism blanking out any commons sense in assessing the needs of a nation (and all of its citizens). An assessment by insinuation arising from personal experiences of own betrayal that I won't go into on these forums. That said, the stance of the existence of any far away British flag providing no alternative to sending one's own off to die for it, is troubling to me.
The other side (the non British one) of my family are Ndebele, people who died in the thousands because of Mugabe so I feel I can comment against this. Mugabe was democratically voted in by the Shona majority. That democracy only came about because of Thatcher freeing Zimbabwe from white rule. Hard as it is to live with the consequences, democracy is better than dictatorial or minority enforced government rule.
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I'll agree here that Mugabe appeared to be quite reasonable initially. Nobody can really claim knowing at the time what he would turn into.

So I'll retract that reference of mine.
I respectfully disagree for reasons outlined.
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As is your privilege.
 
Chagos said:
~ One of the reasons I do my electrics alone by now but being retired I can make the time.
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Electrics and gas piping are things I won't touch - well, having had a large electric shock to my left hand a week ago which put all the circuitry in the house out I have to disagree myself.

Chagos said:
~ It's still the old "but he's our SoB" stance ~
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Agreed, I never contradicted that. I just tried to explain why she may have chosen to take the stance she did.

Chagos said:
~ An assessment by insinuation arising from personal experiences of own betrayal that I won't go into on these forums.
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That was not my intention.

Chagos said:
~That said, the stance of the existence of any far away British flag providing no alternative to sending one's own off to die for it, is troubling to me
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The but each nation takes and makes its own decision about the worth of putting its own in the way of harm for far away citizens. Israel has done so in going to Uganda to rescue citizens or bringing black jews in from Ethiopia. Some may disagree that decision but those were decisions for Israelis to make. As for me, the feeling that far off citizens would still be protected is important. That's not to say the UK foreign office does the same for UK citizens who are in (for fake or trie reason) trouble abroad but that's another story.

Chagos said:
~I'll agree here that Mugabe appeared to be quite reasonable initially. Nobody can really claim knowing at the time what he would turn into.
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Including Joshua Nkomo's people, none of us suspected that Mugabe would quickly turn to North Korean troops for his inspiration in killing off as many people in and around Bulawayo as he could.
 
Infinite Chaos said:
Let me be clear I disagree Margaret Thatcher was the worst Prime Minister we had in the last 100 years; in my view, she was one of the best and she turned the country from a basket case heading for more economic gloom into a powerhouse and one which stopped being the sick man of Europe. I partially agree with Paddy Ashdown who also disagrees the poll - Thatcher did destroy what really needed to be destroyed but yes, she didn't rebuild where she took things down.

She should have rebuilt council stock she allowed to be sold vs allowing poor and council home owners to own their own homes.

She didn't push hard enough for regeneration of areas where steel and coal mining were to die off - however these areas were also heavily subsidised and performed badly

On the other hand, she liberalised the stock markets and allowed weak industries to die. She was with Ronald Reagan and Pope John Paul, instrumental in the freeing of the Eastern European Soviet Bloc countries and in the eventual downfall of the USSR. These outweigh the social and economic problems.

Second position - both David Cameron and Tony Blair have a lot more to answer for - Blair lied and took us into Iraq, we lost many good servicemen and became embroiled in the troubles of the middle east. Worse still he enabled Bush to create the mess in Iraq which still haunts us today with ISIS. Cameron, despite the regeneration of the economy to where it is now, did not do enough to spread wealth and then gambled with the economy when he set about the EU referendum

Neither of those two have anything in their positives folder anywhere near what Margaret Thatcher achieved.
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It has to be Neville Chamberlain even with the benefit of hindsight
 
Infinite Chaos said:
She was with Ronald Reagan and Pope John Paul, instrumental in the freeing of the Eastern European Soviet Bloc countries and in the eventual downfall of the USSR..
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Preposterous.

She was an onlooker, just like everybody else, to the final self-destruction of a system that had been decaying for two decades.

Just like some people, but not often historians, you think the observers at the time of an event are also those who provoked the event. In politics, that happens rarely.

(Churchill, however, was indeed an observer of the futile negotiations for peace with Hitler that led ultimately to war. You can't negotiate with a madman. Churchill knew what was coming.)
 
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