- Joined
- Jan 16, 2017
In the spirit of the other thread about US presidents, here's a poll for us Britcucks. These are my nominations, I'm not sure which is the worst, they all fucking suck because Britain is an ineptly-governed country and has been for the best part of a century. These are in chronological order:
Edward Heath - When you think of Conservative Prime Ministers, what comes to mind? Economic frugality? Opposition to European Integration? Competence? Well Ted Heath broke all these moulds, entering the UK into what would be the EU in 1973 after winning a referendum to do so. But it was Heath's disastrous handling of the economy that makes him one of the worst PMs we've ever had. The 1970s were a time of utter economic chaos and repeated changes of government. The UK suffered the embarrassment of being bailed out by the IMF as Heath's Keynsian economics, combined with a total failure to control the Trade Union movement, threatened to drag the UK into the third world. The strikes amongst coal miners were so crippling that Heath instituted a mandatory 3 day working week to save electricity, rather than, say, import coal and/or deal with the miners more forcefully (Thatcher would go on to do both when they tried that shit again). Inflation surged, and his response was to institute price and wage controls. Heath turned the UK into Venezuela, and was toppled by Margaret Thatcher in 1975 after losing the 1974 election (which he fought with the slogan "Who runs the country?" - "Not you, dickhead" was the electorate's response). He spent the next 20 years sitting bitterly on the back benches stewing in his hatred for Thatcher, possibly the record for the longest political sulk in history.
James Callaghan - "Crisis? What crisis?" This is all anyone remembers of Callaghan these days, providing satirists with a quote that would last decades. By the time Callaghan became PM in 1976, the Labour government had already lost its majority. With his right hand bound by parliament, his left was bound by the Trade Unions, who knew they had the government by the balls as they funded the Labour Party, and their ongoing efforts to extort the country led to the 1978 "Winter of Discontent", whereby co-ordinated strikes and secondary pickets brought the whole country to a halt. For some reason he thought this would be a good time to a) call a referendum on Scottish independence and b) go on holiday. He lost the former, and returned from the latter to face a vote from no confidence in parliament. When interviewed on the airport tarmac about the ongoing "crisis", he uttered the words that would define him. He lost the vote, and then lost the ensuing election to Margaret Thatcher. Labour would not return to power for another 18 years. Perhaps Callaghan's job was impossible, but his weakness, Trade Union sympathies and detatched "let them eat cake" obliviousness to the ongoing chaos condemns him as one of the worst PMs ever.
John Major - Together with co-clown Chancellor Norman Lamont, Major managed to utterly destroy the economy and hand £5 billion to George Soros in the course of just two days by devaluing the pound during the ERM fiasco after first insisting he wouldn't, and pushing interest rates up to 18% causing the housing market to implode in a wave of repossessions. The only good thing that came out of this was that it decreased support for the UK entering the Euro, which would have chained us to a sinking ship rather than merely tying us to one. John Major, for those unfamiliar, was a weak, easily-bullied and indecisive wet blanket of a man who completely failed to control his government as it descended into corruption, infighting, incompetence and farce. He campaigned for "family values", only to have his ministers embroiled in a string of sex scandals (and it later turned out he was having an affair himself with one of his own cabinet ministers while this was going on). Ballsed up the privatisation of the railways so badly that the resulting mess still has not been cleared up. He presided over open warfare within the Conservative party over the EU, and by the end of his tenure had lost his parliamentary majority to defections and by-elections. His utter incompentence lead to the implosion of the Conservatives in the 1997 election, which brought us...
Tony Blair - The most authoritarian leader the UK has had since WWII, Blair is hated by the Left for dragging us pointlessly into the Iraq war just so he could suck Dubya's dong, but there's SO much more to hate about Tony Blair than just that. Blair seemed on a one-man crusade to either ban everything or make it compulsory. The massive expansion of Police and Intelligence powers, Five Eyes, CCTV on every corner, these were all Blair's ideas. In many ways a man ahead of his time, Blair spoke of the importance of "community" and "multiculturalism" (i.e. not making immigrants integrate and creating violent ghettoes instead) and introduced a great deal of Social Justice thinking to the vast, unelected commissions and committees that he created with no oversight and no accountability, building an authoritarian leftist structure into the machinations of the State that is still there today. Blair talked about devolving power (by setting up hugely costly devolved parliaments in Wales, Scotland, Northern Ireland and London) but spent most of his time and legislation centralising it, and in particular moving it from Parliament to the Executive, making Britain's Prime Ministers more like American Presidents in their power.
Gordon Brown - Living proof that those who most want power should be trusted with it the least, Brown spent a decade as Blair's chancellor, constantly trying to undermine him and take his job. When Blair finally quit, he was crowned without a vote, and went on to inflict two years of the most inept administration the country had seen since the 1970s at least. His greatest hits included raising the lowest rate of income tax in such a way that only the poorest people paid more tax, reversing that, and then raising the higher rate in such a way that it brought in less revenue overall, and repeatedly losing fights with the Trade Unions. He also sold the government's precious metals reserves at 1/4 of their value, costing billions for no real reason. Brown was a dour, miserable humourless man who was obsessed with hoarding power but had no idea what to do with it once he had it. Managed to lose the 2010 election by running the most incompetent campaign yet seen, including being caught on tape calling one of his own supporters a "bigot" for daring to ask a question about immigration during a Q&A.
Theresa May - I cannot think of a Prime Minister whose record will contain as much pure, unadulterated failure as Theresa May's once she leaves office a few weeks from now. Elected by her party after David Cameron's resignation with just one mission - deliver Brexit - May completely and utterly failed in every way. She did not deliver strong Brexit, deliver weak Brexit, manage to prevent Brexit, or anything at all. She failed to get any of her proposals accepted by her party, by Parliament or by the EU. No Prime Minister has lost so many parliamentary votes by so much. None has had so many ministers resign or MPs defect to other parties. She called a snap election in 2014, hoping to seize on the Labour Party's moment of weakness under the vacillating and divisive Jeremy Corbyn, but mis-managed the campaign so badly that she lost her majority and had to go into a minority coalition with the DUP, making her already weak negotiating position even worse. There may be more unpleasant people on this list than Theresa May, but there are few who have such an extraordinary record of achieving literally none of the things they set out to do.
You will notice that my list consists of every prime minister since 1973 except Harold Wilson, Margaret Thatcher and David Cameron. And there are good reasons to add them to the list too. Like I said, Britain is not a well-goverened country. On reflection, in my own personal opinion Blair edges it and gets my vote because of his SJ authoritarianism. Britain's international reputation as a place where you can't take a shit without a loicence and get arrested for upsetting trannies on Twitter is 99% his doing.
EDIT - Added Neville Chamberlain to the poll. Appeasing Hitler and all that.
Edward Heath - When you think of Conservative Prime Ministers, what comes to mind? Economic frugality? Opposition to European Integration? Competence? Well Ted Heath broke all these moulds, entering the UK into what would be the EU in 1973 after winning a referendum to do so. But it was Heath's disastrous handling of the economy that makes him one of the worst PMs we've ever had. The 1970s were a time of utter economic chaos and repeated changes of government. The UK suffered the embarrassment of being bailed out by the IMF as Heath's Keynsian economics, combined with a total failure to control the Trade Union movement, threatened to drag the UK into the third world. The strikes amongst coal miners were so crippling that Heath instituted a mandatory 3 day working week to save electricity, rather than, say, import coal and/or deal with the miners more forcefully (Thatcher would go on to do both when they tried that shit again). Inflation surged, and his response was to institute price and wage controls. Heath turned the UK into Venezuela, and was toppled by Margaret Thatcher in 1975 after losing the 1974 election (which he fought with the slogan "Who runs the country?" - "Not you, dickhead" was the electorate's response). He spent the next 20 years sitting bitterly on the back benches stewing in his hatred for Thatcher, possibly the record for the longest political sulk in history.
James Callaghan - "Crisis? What crisis?" This is all anyone remembers of Callaghan these days, providing satirists with a quote that would last decades. By the time Callaghan became PM in 1976, the Labour government had already lost its majority. With his right hand bound by parliament, his left was bound by the Trade Unions, who knew they had the government by the balls as they funded the Labour Party, and their ongoing efforts to extort the country led to the 1978 "Winter of Discontent", whereby co-ordinated strikes and secondary pickets brought the whole country to a halt. For some reason he thought this would be a good time to a) call a referendum on Scottish independence and b) go on holiday. He lost the former, and returned from the latter to face a vote from no confidence in parliament. When interviewed on the airport tarmac about the ongoing "crisis", he uttered the words that would define him. He lost the vote, and then lost the ensuing election to Margaret Thatcher. Labour would not return to power for another 18 years. Perhaps Callaghan's job was impossible, but his weakness, Trade Union sympathies and detatched "let them eat cake" obliviousness to the ongoing chaos condemns him as one of the worst PMs ever.
John Major - Together with co-clown Chancellor Norman Lamont, Major managed to utterly destroy the economy and hand £5 billion to George Soros in the course of just two days by devaluing the pound during the ERM fiasco after first insisting he wouldn't, and pushing interest rates up to 18% causing the housing market to implode in a wave of repossessions. The only good thing that came out of this was that it decreased support for the UK entering the Euro, which would have chained us to a sinking ship rather than merely tying us to one. John Major, for those unfamiliar, was a weak, easily-bullied and indecisive wet blanket of a man who completely failed to control his government as it descended into corruption, infighting, incompetence and farce. He campaigned for "family values", only to have his ministers embroiled in a string of sex scandals (and it later turned out he was having an affair himself with one of his own cabinet ministers while this was going on). Ballsed up the privatisation of the railways so badly that the resulting mess still has not been cleared up. He presided over open warfare within the Conservative party over the EU, and by the end of his tenure had lost his parliamentary majority to defections and by-elections. His utter incompentence lead to the implosion of the Conservatives in the 1997 election, which brought us...
Tony Blair - The most authoritarian leader the UK has had since WWII, Blair is hated by the Left for dragging us pointlessly into the Iraq war just so he could suck Dubya's dong, but there's SO much more to hate about Tony Blair than just that. Blair seemed on a one-man crusade to either ban everything or make it compulsory. The massive expansion of Police and Intelligence powers, Five Eyes, CCTV on every corner, these were all Blair's ideas. In many ways a man ahead of his time, Blair spoke of the importance of "community" and "multiculturalism" (i.e. not making immigrants integrate and creating violent ghettoes instead) and introduced a great deal of Social Justice thinking to the vast, unelected commissions and committees that he created with no oversight and no accountability, building an authoritarian leftist structure into the machinations of the State that is still there today. Blair talked about devolving power (by setting up hugely costly devolved parliaments in Wales, Scotland, Northern Ireland and London) but spent most of his time and legislation centralising it, and in particular moving it from Parliament to the Executive, making Britain's Prime Ministers more like American Presidents in their power.
Gordon Brown - Living proof that those who most want power should be trusted with it the least, Brown spent a decade as Blair's chancellor, constantly trying to undermine him and take his job. When Blair finally quit, he was crowned without a vote, and went on to inflict two years of the most inept administration the country had seen since the 1970s at least. His greatest hits included raising the lowest rate of income tax in such a way that only the poorest people paid more tax, reversing that, and then raising the higher rate in such a way that it brought in less revenue overall, and repeatedly losing fights with the Trade Unions. He also sold the government's precious metals reserves at 1/4 of their value, costing billions for no real reason. Brown was a dour, miserable humourless man who was obsessed with hoarding power but had no idea what to do with it once he had it. Managed to lose the 2010 election by running the most incompetent campaign yet seen, including being caught on tape calling one of his own supporters a "bigot" for daring to ask a question about immigration during a Q&A.
Theresa May - I cannot think of a Prime Minister whose record will contain as much pure, unadulterated failure as Theresa May's once she leaves office a few weeks from now. Elected by her party after David Cameron's resignation with just one mission - deliver Brexit - May completely and utterly failed in every way. She did not deliver strong Brexit, deliver weak Brexit, manage to prevent Brexit, or anything at all. She failed to get any of her proposals accepted by her party, by Parliament or by the EU. No Prime Minister has lost so many parliamentary votes by so much. None has had so many ministers resign or MPs defect to other parties. She called a snap election in 2014, hoping to seize on the Labour Party's moment of weakness under the vacillating and divisive Jeremy Corbyn, but mis-managed the campaign so badly that she lost her majority and had to go into a minority coalition with the DUP, making her already weak negotiating position even worse. There may be more unpleasant people on this list than Theresa May, but there are few who have such an extraordinary record of achieving literally none of the things they set out to do.
You will notice that my list consists of every prime minister since 1973 except Harold Wilson, Margaret Thatcher and David Cameron. And there are good reasons to add them to the list too. Like I said, Britain is not a well-goverened country. On reflection, in my own personal opinion Blair edges it and gets my vote because of his SJ authoritarianism. Britain's international reputation as a place where you can't take a shit without a loicence and get arrested for upsetting trannies on Twitter is 99% his doing.
EDIT - Added Neville Chamberlain to the poll. Appeasing Hitler and all that.
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