Is Boris Johnson the worst PM of all time?

[Tony Ferrino]

Cameron started this shit storm.

 

[tamthebam]

Having looked at the Wikipedia entry for rankings of Prime Minister's Wilmington, Grenville, Goderich, Rosebery, Eden and that saviour of western capitalism Gordon Brown all have fairly duff ratings.

A common thread is that they had fairly short terms whether through circumstance or design. Boris may yet score a bad rating although he did win an election. 

Lord Liverpool has a fairly good rating but headed a reactionary government that kept food prices high through the Corn Laws. He may have been an effective PM, at least for his own class, but I wouldn't have wanted to live in Britain at the time 

[Richey Edwards]

1 hour ago, tamthebam said:

Having looked at the Wikipedia entry for rankings of Prime Minister's Wilmington, Grenville, Goderich, Rosebery, Eden and that saviour of western capitalism Gordon Brown all have fairly duff ratings.

A common thread is that they had fairly short terms whether through circumstance or design. Boris may yet score a bad rating although he did win an election. 

Lord Liverpool has a fairly good rating but headed a reactionary government that kept food prices high through the Corn Laws. He may have been an effective PM, at least for his own class, but I wouldn't have wanted to live in Britain at the time 

Brown was a bumbling idiot, but all three PMs that have followed him have made me wish he won the 2010 election.

[Forever_blueco]

The only benefit I can give Boris is he has turned out exactly how most expected Boris to turn out when he was announced as prime minister. 
 

Blair was the worst in my lifetime . Someone who promised and to be fair delivered quite a lot in his early years before becoming nothing more than a war mongering lap dog of George Bush in the end. 

Edited January 20, 2022 by Forever_blueco

[Forever_blueco]

On 19/01/2022 at 10:01, Salt n Vinegar said:

I hear that said by a lot of folk.  Then I find it strange that folk in Germany, Italy and Japan aren't all now speaking in English. 

Britain and the allies objective in world war 2 wasn’t trying to invade Germany and all that surrounded it under the belief of creating “the master race “ though 

 

Edited January 20, 2022 by Forever_blueco

[D'Jaffo]

As a conservative unionist who thinks that Boris”s time is up, I think he won’t be viewed as badly as some people think.
He got Brexit done, he won a huge majority and his instincts regarding binning the pandemic regulations are spot on.
Unfortunately, he got Covid quite badly which put him out of action for a while and he had a poor bunch of people advising him. For a ‘big picture ‘ person to succeed you need some great detail people in the background. 
May was great on detail but had no vision and Cameron was just useless.
Anyway, the story isn’t quite over yet so time will tell.
 

Pish.

Wouldn’t say there was anything unfortunate about him getting COVID tbh. Just that it didn’t finish the lying, racist, incompetent, corrupt, bumbling, fat c**t off.

[Fullerene]

20 hours ago, Salt n Vinegar said:

I hear that said by a lot of folk.  Then I find it strange that folk in Germany, Italy and Japan aren't all now speaking in English. 

Yet they generally use English to speak to the rest of the world.  In aviation, shipping, computing, tourism, pop music they get a lot of exposure to English.

If somebody from Germany wants to speak to someone from Japan, it is likely they will use English.

Japanese contains a lot of English loan words.  

This might not have been the case if WW2 had turned out differently.

[LongTimeLurker]

8 hours ago, Detournement said:

I think it was more German soldiers being full of meth and choking for war while the British and French soldiers had little interest in fighting. 

Assuming the Ardennes was impenetrable is up there as a factor as well. There are people who try to peddle a line that the UK government used the Munich Agreement to buy time for rearmament because that's more emotionally palatable as a narrative than admitting that the Czechs got completely shafted at a time when Hitler probably could still have been defeated relatively easily. Removing the Czech army from the equation and handing over their heavy industry to Hitler meant there was no possibility of easy victory the following year when it was the Polish corridor that became Hitler's new cause celebre. Prime ministers are supposed to make difficult decisions in the national interest. Neville Chamberlain didn't.

[Antlion]

I see May has a new gig.

[GAD]

I feel that the worst of Bojo's regime is still to come, and that's the reason he might survive "partygate". The cost of living crisis is going to be brutal. 10-15% increase in national insurance (mostly to pay for the care of rich, elderly Tories in the South East), interest rates going up and fuel bills increasing by, on average £500 a year in April, and possibly more again before next winter. And that's on top of all the damage brexit and Covid have done to the economy. 

Edited January 20, 2022 by GAD

[Detournement]

19 minutes ago, GAD said:

I feel that the worst of Bojo's regime is still to come, and that's the reason he might survive "partygate". The cost of living crisis is going to be brutal. 10-15% increase in national insurance (mostly to pay for the care of rich, elderly Tories in the South East), interest rates going up and fuel bills increasing by, on average £500 a month in April, and possibly more again before next winter. And that's on top of all the damage brexit and Covid have done to the economy. 

Yip.

Now is not a good time for anyone to become PM. 

[AndyM]

15 hours ago, sparky88 said:

A PM isn't needed for this, a technological solution to the Irish border problem is. Which is decades away and its absence undermines everything the Brexiters have been promising. 

There's more to the loose ends of Brexit than the Irish Border which is complex enough on its own. Fishing and agriculture is in a state of chaos and likely to sink. Trade with our biggest market is about to get deluged in red tape and good luck being someone in the arts sector looking to tour in Europe. And that's just for starters. But hey ho... Boris.. it's all a bit of a laugh eh? Oh wait....

[WhiteRoseKillie]

Yet they generally use English to speak to the rest of the world.  In aviation, shipping, computing, tourism, pop music they get a lot of exposure to English.
If somebody from Germany wants to speak to someone from Japan, it is likely they will use English.
Japanese contains a lot of English loan words.  
This might not have been the case if WW2 had turned out differently.

Adopting English as the world's lingua franca had bugger all to do with the UK or history of empire. Rather, it was the continuing (and expanding) presence and influence of the Yanks across the globe post-WWII.
Fun fact - those uppity colonials came within a whisker of adopting German as their national language when the USA was in its formative years.

[welshbairn]

6 hours ago, LongTimeLurker said:

Assuming the Ardennes was impenetrable is up there as a factor as well. There are people who try to peddle a line that the UK government used the Munich Agreement to buy time for rearmament because that's more emotionally palatable as a narrative than admitting that the Czechs got completely shafted at a time when Hitler probably could still have been defeated relatively easily. Removing the Czech army from the equation and handing over their heavy industry to Hitler meant there was no possibility of easy victory the following year when it was the Polish corridor that became Hitler's new cause celebre. Prime ministers are supposed to make difficult decisions in the national interest. Neville Chamberlain didn't.

You have to take into account that most of the politicians at the time had direct experience of the horrors of WW1 and would do just about anything to avoid a repeat. I didn't realise the strength of the Czech army and manufacturing at the time, but they also had the problem of controlling their German speaking and Slovak minorities who were increasingly pro German, or at least against the Prague Government. We don't know what the French would have done if Britain had stayed firm either, it would have been impossible to take on Germany in 38 without them. There are a whole load of maybes.

Edited January 20, 2022 by welshbairn

[Anonapersona]

3 hours ago, Detournement said:

Yip.

Now is not a good time for anyone to become PM. 

I think it's fairer to say that now is not a good time to be living under the current PM.

[topcat(The most tip top)]

You have to take into account that most of the politicians at the time had direct experience of the horrors of WW1 and would do just about anything to avoid a repeat. I didn't realise the strength of the Czech army and manufacturing at the time, but they also had the problem of controlling their German and Slovak minorities who were increasingly pro German, or at least against the Prague Government. We don't know what the French would have done if Britain had stayed firm either, it would have been impossible to take on Germany in 38 without them. There are a whole load of maybes.

Or to summarise

It’s an easy game from the stands

[Theyellowbox]

BoJo may not be the worst, but all before him at least had semi competent people around them. The whole sh!tshow at the moment is rotten throughout. 

[LongTimeLurker]

5 hours ago, welshbairn said:

You have to take into account that most of the politicians at the time had direct experience of the horrors of WW1 and would do just about anything to avoid a repeat. I didn't realise the strength of the Czech army and manufacturing at the time, but they also had the problem of controlling their German speaking and Slovak minorities who were increasingly pro German, or at least against the Prague Government. We don't know what the French would have done if Britain had stayed firm either, it would have been impossible to take on Germany in 38 without them. There are a whole load of maybes.

Maybe try reading up about it. There appear to be some major gaps in your knowledge about what happened at that point in history. The lunatic ravings in Mein Kampf, the overthrow of democracy through the Enabling Act, the Night of the Long Knives, the Nuremberg Laws and the escapades of the Luftwaffe at Guernica should have been a hint that Adolf Hitler wasn't going to be reasonable.

[welshbairn]

5 minutes ago, LongTimeLurker said:

Maybe try reading up about it. There appear to be some major gaps in your knowledge about what happened at that point in history. The lunatic ravings in Mein Kampf, the overthrow of democracy through the Enabling Act, the Night of the Long Knives, the Nuremberg Laws and the escapades of the Luftwaffe at Guernica should have been a hint that Adolf Hitler wasn't going to be reasonable.

Gosh, who would have thought it, that's all new to me. You think we should have invaded in 33 maybe? You're a hard man to have a friendly discussion with.

[Genuine Hibs Fan]

22 minutes ago, LongTimeLurker said:

Maybe try reading up about it. There appear to be some major gaps in your knowledge about what happened at that point in history. The lunatic ravings in Mein Kampf, the overthrow of democracy through the Enabling Act, the Night of the Long Knives, the Nuremberg Laws and the escapades of the Luftwaffe at Guernica should have been a hint that Adolf Hitler wasn't going to be reasonable.

You're the one talking about having the keys to the Skoda factory being the "tipping point" in a comprehensive demolishing by the Wehrmacht, a Wikipedia reader's level of analysis and framing, to try and look clever so maybe be less of a total dickhead to folk?