Rank your PM’s over the last 50 years. No Right or wrong answers, this comes down to personal preference. It’s very difficult for the lefties because once you strip out the hated Blair, there’s not much to hang a Labour hat on.


1) Callaghan
2) Johnson
3) Thatcher
4) Cameron
5) Blair
6) Brown
7) Major
8) Wilson
9) May
10) Heath

On a personal level, I would probably put Callaghan top of the Labour list, he was an able guy given a very poisoned chalice.

My bottom three would both be all be Tories by the way. Major, Heath and May.

1. Thatcher
2. Johnson
3. Callaghan
4. Blair
5. Cameron
6. Wilson
7. Brown
8. May
9 Major
10. Heath

Wilson
Heath
Blair
Major
Cameron
Brown
Thatcher
Johnson
May
Callaghan

With hindsight because that's not how I saw them at the time, so Johnno and Treeza are provisional.

Heath top two..... seriously???

This is almost impossible to call.

I want to put Thatcher bottom but that would truly be political bias.

Major was a decent man I believe doing an impossible job at the time.

Same with brown

Johnson shouldn't be on the list. He hasn't been around long enough to judge.

Cameron I have nothing but contempt for.

May was comfortably the worst. Probably ever.


Blair started off fine but seemed to think he was a celebrity and a world leader. He lost the plot.

Callaghan slightly before I cared.

Heath awful.

Yep. Joe Gormley took him down or he'd have been PM a lot longer. I hated Ted at the time.
My personal opinion is not up for debate BTW.

BTW he sent the nation to bed at 10.30 to save coal. Pretty sure he wouldn't have fannied around when it came to saving people from Covid.

Very true.

This is interesting...

1) Callaghan (too young to remember or understand)
2) Johnson ( much too soon to tell)
3) Thatcher ( it could be argued that at first her hard ways were necessary but after that she went potty)
4) Cameron ( Awful. He blatantly lied when he said he'd stay on after the Euro vote "whatever you decide" he said and then split -
also the years of austerity and under investment aided and abetted by Clegg and co, caused so much damage)
5) Blair ( Personally had some good years while he was in charge, I would put him top. Shame about the war)
6) Brown ( In hindsight wasn't too bad)
7) Major ( boring, cheating hypocrite)
8) Wilson ( too young again for Wilson but in the TV series The Crown he came out relatively unscathed, which is all that matters)
9) May ( Not up to the job in hand)
10) Heath ( too Europe loving for me)

In the last election I spoilt my paper but would have voted Labour if a proper leader had been in charge.

Anyone becoming Prime Minister when Theresa May did would have been viewed as awful the task she was handed was impossible and made even more impossible by factions and self interest in her own party. 96% word for word the worst deal in history that she negotiated with the EU was what we eventually left with.

I reckon she is a fundamentally decent person which can’t be said of a few on that list, but I suppose that doesn’t make you a good leader.

Here here.

Maybot has to be the worst. Can’t comment on Brown as he didn’t have long enough to do anything. Far too early to comment on BJ, but he’s probably been dealt the hardest hand. He has a public health emergency, the economic fall out from that, and Brexit (yes, that hasn’t gone away) to deal with in his first year. I really do hope he’s up to the job. Time will tell.

Similar for me.

1) Wilson
2) Heath
3) Callaghan
4) Thatcher
5) Bliar
6) Major
7) Cameron
8) Brown
9) Johnson
10) May

Was that a purposeful misspelling Ron?, Billy Liar perhaps?

Interesting that our resident Trotskyite has the wonderful Baroness above Blair. Now I can't imagine he has much time for either but the placing of Blair below Maggie by Mr Horden given his leanings, I find odd. Is this a case of viewing Blair as a turncoat?

Ok so you are letting her off with the cringeworthy "brexit means brexit" answer to almost every question at PMs question time?

Which she did for months.

Lot of nobody’s there.
No particular order, just opinions of them.
Cameron struck me as a Park Lane Rolls Royce car salesman who no doubt left a oily trail.
May was a vicars daughter married to a rich man. Otherworldly.
Thatcher was irritating but you had to admire her determination.
Major was his spitting image puppet come to life, a droning shitehawk.
Heath was from that generation who’d been on active service in WW2, different class.
Wilson heralded a new age, that floundered on what they envisaged and the unions rejected. Saw him in Macaulay Road electioneering. Told me dad and he clipped me.
Jim Callaghan, another common sense politician driven to distraction by internal fighting. My favourite. Again another ex officer in WW2 that tends to give them an insight into life.
Brown wanted the job but lost interest, that said managing the banking crisis would have finished most people off.
Johnson....too early.
Blair...... as slippery as a Vaseline coated banana on an oily surface. There but for the grace of God goes God.

Blair because he made the Labour party electable again
Callaghan
Wilson
Brown
Major
Johnson Although it's a bit early
Heath, May, Cameron All three hopeless
Thatcher.

1. Thatcher
2. Callahgan
3. Wilson
4. Johnson
5. May
6. Major
7. Brown
8. Heath
9. Cameron
10.Blair

Mr Splod, you are a man of rare wisdom.

That was what you offered me the pint for wasn't it

She was the only one that really changed the world and largely for the better (for those who don't remember 3 day weeks and winters of discontent).

Strange what you remember about an individual isn't it. You remember the good of Thatcher millions remember the worst of her.

Hated by more people than many have.

Blair must be number one as he could seamlessly fit into any political party.

The fella sat at chequers now won an election by answering every single question with a three word slogan involving Brexit.

It was only a few months ago I'm quite shocked he managed to get through the covid-19 press conferences without slipping in at least one "we're going to get Brexit done".

Trotskyite ? yeah whatever.

Just an open and honest answer to your question. I despise them both equally , probably Bliar more , but rank Thatcher above him on the basis of what she did for those she represented , even if it did totally fook up the country in the process. If only we had someone on our side prepared to the same to the rich. Bliar could've been that person , but he threw away a glorious opportunity , by failing to unravel the mess Thatcher had created and broadly carrying on , even taking it to a new level , the rampant style of Capitalism that she aspired to , where only the most selfish , greedy and nasty survive.

I hope this doesn't turn into a political slanging match , as the question is an interesting one , and could provoke some good debate , one where I would be willing to tell you why I placed each PM in the order I did , , maybe other could do the same , just be respectful to each other.

Didn’t mean to insult you Ron, I was genuinely interested in why you put a Labour PM, and the most successful one in history, below the detested lady.

Very selfish I know but I just based mine on which version of Britain gave me, subjectively, the best years of my life. As I said earlier, I hated Ted Heath but he didn't do me any harm apart from closing the telly down at 10.30.
But it's very approximate, especially as I've only lived half my life there; although funnily enough the only PMs I totally missed out on were Blair, Treez, and Bozz.

No problem. I don't see Trotskyite as an insult , I just don't see myself as one , but using that name seems to be the flavour of the month as a way of denigrating Socialists , even the Labour Party are currently using it in their attempts to take the party back to Bliarism.

That's the trouble with politics , those on the tory side would generally see Thatcher as been the most successful , likewise on our side Bliar , but those who dig deeper and are more interested in things other than the bottom line on their bank balance , would I'm sure conclude they were anything but the most successful , in terms of the long term damage they both caused

What's your reason for having Callaghan at No 1?

Imagine trying to take a party back to a time when they were electable!? 1997 in fact was the biggest general election victory of all time.

If the banks and their institutions think you are a brilliant PM then it's not unreasonable to think that the vast majority of the working class population will hate you.

Boris johnsons biggest test is still to come.

If we are all still in this together in a years time them he will have been a success.

If the banks are fore closing on businesses and mortgages then we are certainly no longer all in this together.

And if that happens then JOhnson is a failure.

Something we have been discussing is the controversial topic of pensions.

Many many working class people are losing their jobs now and we will enter a very deep recession if not depression.

And let's be brutally honest here. It's all been to protect the elderly and the vulnerable and the NHS.

I wonder how those retired elderly people on very fat pensions will be viewed by the younger generation probably on the dole with a hard decade ahead of them.

Maybe those old folk need to pay their dues after this all over and relinquish a large percentage of their pensions to help all those that protected them in 2020.

We had very different views on that controversial topic.

I think the most significant victory was in 1945 when the voters said thanks Winnie but we remember what you were like in peacetime; now lets give Labour another try.
And they did so hugely.

thatcher is a stand out for me. hated the bitch with a passion, but might be the only one of the ten that was supported by the greatest number of her party. the other nine can be argued about as there might have been better party leaders around at the time.

Alternatively the fella at chequers got in because no other party leader came close to getting chequers as their second home. The only way to get rid of boris and the tories is to present the electorate with an electable alternative.( I think I've mentioned that once or twice before now.) Until people actually get on that bus, including the parties themselves, Mr Johnson will have chequers as his second home for as long as he wishes.(excluding mishaps).
Blair and co made the labour party electable and they held power for thirteen years and yet the hard left hate him, whereas they loved a three time loser who has set the party back years. It makes you wonder if they actually enjoy being in opposition. Starmer has inherited the task of "doing a Blair". Now that is a job.

The general theory is that the young get helped when it's their turn to be old, but there are forces at work turning that millennia-old concept around. But yes fat pensions if you manage to define what that means clearly don't need free help.
And I reiterate what I said a while ago about the economic system in general. If it can't withstand a two-month slowdown because banks, then it's not robust and needs a radical overhaul. It was as disrupted as you can possible get for five whole years in 1939-45 but that didn't lead to recession.

I'll bet there were different views and it is an interesting debating topic indeed.
In order to form an educated opinion it would be helpful to know what your understanding of a fat pension is. Perhaps you'll tell us.

If you are comfortably off with a large house and are getting 3x or 4x the state pension then you are well off.

If you remain well off when we are plunged into a recession then you need to pay for the protection you got.

Otherwise we werent all in it together in the first place were we?

I am thinking more for the under 30s here.

It seems all very simple to me. Taxes will have to rise across the world to pay for this. There are stepped allowances to protect the low earners but I don’t see an alternative to sizeable tax increases.

Agreed

thats total common sense to me. the problem in this country is that so many really hate paying income tax. any political party is doomed from the outset if in their manifesto they tell people that they promise loads of things but income tax will go up. never minded paying it myself but VAT is another matter.

Three or four times the state pension....I wish.
The basic state pension is £175 per week as from this month.
4x is £36400.per annum or £700 per week.
Anybody receiving that from his pension fund is indeed well off.
He would already be giving something back.... £4780 in tax no less.
Obviously 3x would be 75% of those figures.
If his pension was an annuity he would need a pot of around £600,000. That is well off, no doubt about it.
As my large house is a two bedroom bungalow then I don't think I'll be in the required category somehow. I wish I was. I would then be paying more contribution through my taxes and my rates.
I have always considered that people with private pension income of over a certain figure should forfeit their state pension. I don't think Paul McCartney needs the basic state pension or the winter fuel allowance either. We are discussing a minefield. Don't forget that some people who should be receiving their state pension this year now have to wait another seven years or so. Without allowing for pension increases that is a minimum of £63,700. So there's a sizeable donation already.
Something could be done I have no doubt but I don't fancy the task. No thank you.

Inevitable.

Agree, and there are many who should be prepared to shoulder a greater tax burden than the rest.

This though was the solution before the virus, IMO a recession was already heading our way , shame it has to take thousands of deaths for common sense to finally prevail , assuming it does, I imagine the filthy rich will be none too pleased.

The wont be pleased and they wont be burdened with it either.

We all know the top 5%of earners will be left alone. The tories never go for them. They wouldnt dare. A few of them are close to being in it. Including boris johnson.

Why should taxes rise? The economy is only going to contract for a few months so we can pay it off over the next 60 years.....bit like WW2.
Just a thought?

Some might say the economy has been contracting for nigh on 40 years , despite what some will tell you , we have been surviving since on ever increasing debt ever since, I don't know how long an economy can just go on spending invisible money , tax has to rise , interest rates too, to restore some order. The way our economy is run is a legalised version of pyramid selling , its madness.

Aye I understand that. It's almost neo-liberal.