Prime Ministers in your lifetime

[BFTD]

I was born into a Jim Callaghan world. I don't remember him, but I understand it didn't go well.

This was fucking depressing, by the way. Thatcher was the most effective, but she's not getting credit for being exceptionally good at destroying society.

I never thought I'd be nostalgic for John Major, but here we are.

1. Tony Blair
2. Gordon Brown
3. John Major
4. Theresa May
5. David Cameron

Liz Truss will automatically enter the list at #4, purely for providing even more amusement than May already. Sunak can duke it out with the similarly amorphous shiteweight Cameron.

[Jacksgranda]

Churchill, Eden, MacMillan, Douglas-Home, Wilson (x 2), Heath, Callaghan, Thatcher, Major, Blair, Brown, Cameron, May, Johnson

[ICTChris]

Thatcher - I can remember her losing office, the news announcing she was four votes down.

Major - Traffic cone hotline, old maids bicycling, don’t bind my hands, citizens charter, b*****ds in the cabinet. We didn’t start the fire.

Blair - I remember him getting 92% approval ratings, around the time Diana died. A strange different world though.

Brown - I quite liked him, if he’d just had an election as soon as he got in things would have been different.

Cameron - another one who seems to be from another world. Husky rides, tree logos. Did it all really happen?

May - She did a weird dance, don’t recall much else.

Johnson - Of all of them, the most personally useless and incompetent. It wouldn’t surprise me if the guy turns out to have a brain injury or something like that.

[ICTChris]

2 hours ago, BFTD said:

I was born into a Jim Callaghan world. I don't remember him, but I understand it didn't go well.

 

Tony Benn had a very funny story in his diary about Callaghan. In 1997 the Labour Party had young volunteers phoning up party members who hadn’t been to any meetings recently, to see if they wanted to get more involved with campaigning. One of them phoned up Callaghan, who by this point was in his 80s or 90s and asked if he’d like to get more involved in politics, to which he replies “I was Prime Minister, I don’t think there’s much else I can do!” 

BENN’s diaries make Callaghan sound like a good guy, funny. 

[tamthebam]

1. Harold Wilson. Bit of a cheat as I was only alive during his less successful second spell as PM

2. Jim Callaghan. The first PM I can vaguely remember. 

3. Ted Heath. PM when I was born. Head Teeth took us into Europe. Looking at modern Tory history he seems suspiciously left wing.

That leaves the others.

Thatcher: Perhaps her legacy has ruined the Tories in that a lot of them try to out-Thatch Thatch. I shall say one good thing about her: she had a science background, unusual for politicians, let alone PMs. 

Major: Probably* a decent chap in a sea of shits. Lasted about 4 years longer than I thought he would. At least the disintegration of his government was a laugh, all those sex scandals 

(* He did have that affair..)

Blair: Even before Iraq I didn't have a high opinion of him. New Labour weren't radical enough and most of their achievements have been reversed. John Smith would have been a better PM.

Major and Blair did work towards bringing about the IRA ceasefire so that's a big credit on either man's record 

Brown: Might have been a good PM but you got the feeling he was burnt out by the time he got into power.

Cameron: Pretended the Tories were no longer the nasty party and then let Osborne take us into austerity. Granting the 2014 referendum was a brave step I suppose. The Brexit referendum has caused more mess than it was supposed to solve.

May: I can't really remember much about the May Premiership to be honest. Called an election and nearly lost 

Boris: Lying shitebag turns out to be lying shitebag. Who knew! Boris said some interesting "one nation Tory" things in passing but tended to flip flop all over the place. Boris's problem was that Covid happened on his watch, proving Macmillan's attributed quote about the thing most likely to affect government is "events, dear boy, events"

As I mentioned elsewhere the best PM in a parallel universe would have been Jim Hacker. Or Alan B'stard.

 

[scottsdad]

Jesus wept. Not another PM thread. 

Fine. But in reverse order. 

Johnson

Cameron

May

Major

Thatcher

[Eednud]

Sir Robert Menzies (resigned to retire during his 2nd term as PM lasting 16 years 38 days)

Harold Holt

John McEwen (caretaker PM for only 22 days after Harold Holt possibly ended up as shark food)

John Gorton (defeated in party room)

William McMahon 

Gough Whitlam

Malcolm Fraser

Bob Hawke (defeated party room

Paul Keating

John Howard

Kevin Rudd (defeated in party room)

Julia Gillard (defeated in party room)

Kevin Rudd

Tony Abbott (defeated in party room)

Malcolm Turnbull (defeated in party room)

Scott Morrison

Anthony Albanese

Otherwise same as @Jacksgranda above.

 

 

 

Edited August 10, 2022 by Eednud

[Black Pennel]

5 hours ago, Jacksgranda said:

Churchill, Eden, MacMillan, Douglas-Home, Wilson (x 2), Heath, Callaghan, Thatcher, Major, Blair, Brown, Cameron, May, Johnson

Me too !

Don't know about you but I fucking hate getting old.

Don't suppose you know where my specs are ?

[Black Pennel]

Pssst....and old feckers almost always completely miss the point of "top fives"...

[Eednud]

2 hours ago, Black Pennel said:

Pssst....and old feckers almost always completely miss the point of "top fives"...

Wondered what you were on about then noticed what this is posted under. Looks like some not so old feckers also miss the point. 

[Fullerene]

3 hours ago, Black Pennel said:

Me too !

Don't know about you but I fucking hate getting old.

Don't suppose you know where my specs are ?

^^^ The Queen ??

[Jacksgranda]

5 hours ago, Eednud said:

Sir Robert Menzies (resigned to retire during his 2nd term as PM lasting 16 years 38 days)

Harold Holt

John McEwen (caretaker PM for only 22 after Harold Holt possibly ended up as shark food)

John Gorton (defeated in party room)

William McMahon 

Gough Whitlam

Malcolm Fraser

Bob Hawke (defeated party room

Paul Keating

John Howard

Kevin Rudd (defeated in party room)

Julia Gillard (defeated in party room)

Kevin Rudd

Tony Abbott (defeated in party room)

Malcolm Turnbull (defeated in party room)

Scott Morrison

Anthony Albanese

Otherwise same as @Jacksgranda above.

 

 

 

Quite an impressive list of Aussie PMs there, @Eednud

I missed out on Attlee by 13 months.

4 hours ago, Black Pennel said:

Me too !

Don't know about you but I fucking hate getting old.

Don't suppose you know where my specs are ?

Who said that?

4 hours ago, Black Pennel said:

Pssst....and old feckers almost always completely miss the point of "top fives"...

I'd hoped I'd got away with that...

Edited August 10, 2022 by Jacksgranda

[Eednud]

31 minutes ago, Jacksgranda said:

I missed out on Attlee by 13 months

A few days shy of 12 months for me.

[BFTD]

Christ, Top Five, people. It's not hard. Preferably with justifications.

It would be genuinely interesting to see the ranking/opinions of anyone old enough to have lived through regimes back to Churchill. Youngsters such as myself are very much limited to variations on shit sandwiches; Tony Blair's hated by many of my generation and younger, but how many of them would have to admit that his regime was pretty undeniably the best of their lifetime? Pretty depressing.

[AsimButtHitsASix]

Christ this is shite aint it?

Born during Thatcher so not much options here

1- Blair, by default, because I don't have much other option here.
2- Brown, who should be ahead of Blair for not being the PM who took us into Iraq, but he also lost the election to the Tories. Silly goose
3- Major. Tried to dial down some of the excesses of Thatcherism I guess. More to save his party than any ideological grounds. Still comes across as a "one-nation" Tory rather than an absolute shitehawk like the rest of the Tory PMs
4- May. Similar to Major ye had the impression she wasn't an evil b*****d like Boris, Cameron and Thatcher (as PM anyway. In cabinet she wasn't far off Patel now). Knew from the start she had a thankless task trying to make Brexit happen without fucking over the country and tried to do it anyway because all the leaders of the Brexit campaign shat it and knew they needed a patsy. 
5- Cameron. Always had a begrudging respect for him really pushing for equal marriage, and making it happen, when his party was against it. He is still the main architect of why it's all went to shit mind you.

[ICTChris]

19 minutes ago, AsimButtHitsASix said:

3- Major. Tried to dial down some of the excesses of Thatcherism I guess. More to save his party than any ideological grounds. Still comes across as a "one-nation" Tory rather than an absolute shitehawk like the rest of the Tory PMs
 

I don't think Major dialled down excesses of Thatcherism, he really continued in the same vein.  His government privitised the railways, something the Thatcher governments had shied away from.  His personal style was more consensual and less hard edged than Thatcher but in terms of policy he was on the same line.

One thing that's amazing to look back on is how pro-European the Conservative party used to be.  One of the big controversies in the run up to the 1997 election was candidates declaring they didn't support Britain joining the Euro.  Major did a plaintive speech in one of his meetings, asking Tories "don't bind my hands" in future negotitations, because joining the euro was something that might have to be considered.  People who wanted to leave the EU were considered nutcases - the 10 MPs who were suspended were all swivel-eyed loons, as the phrase goes.

The sleaze stuff was also a big factor - the Tories had been in power forever and a mixture of puririent sex scandals and serious corruption  holed them below the waterline.  The sex scandals might seem pretty tame now and some of the most memorable ones were actually fabricated (Norman Lamont buying champagne and Raffles ciggies for Miss Whiplash and David Mellor's Chelsea kit) but some of the forgotten corruption was very serious - who now speaks of the Pergau Dam or Matrix Churchill affairs?

[ICTChris]

10 hours ago, Eednud said:

 

Harold Holt

 

The only PM ever to be eaten by a shark.  Probably.

[Bully Wee Villa]

Thatcher - w**k

Major - probably not the worst bloke in the world for a Tory

Blair - pretended to be a good guy, but actually a w**k

Brown - would have been much better than Blair if he had started years earlier. Shouldn't have apologised to the bigoted woman

Cameron - smarmy w**k, but seems almost wholesome compared to now

May - actually less of a w**k since becoming PM than she was before. Still a w**k, though

Johnson - the wanks' w**k. How could anyone vote for this racist, homophobic, lying sack of effluent?

Truss - seems like she's going to be another w**k off the old block.

Edited August 10, 2022 by Bully Wee Villa

[scottsdad]

2 minutes ago, Bully Wee Villa said:

Thatcher - w**k

As wanks go, that is a challenging one. 

[Eednud]

3 hours ago, ICTChris said:

The only PM ever to be eaten by a shark.  Probably.

Game and outdoorsy, Holt was no stranger to the sea. But those who knew him knew he was "philosophical" about its dangers.

"Look, Tony," he would reportedly tell his press secretary, Tony Eggleton, who had confronted him about his hobbies, "What are the odds of a PM being drowned or taken by a shark?"

But Cheviot was no ordinary beach. Beneath its picturesque coastline lay volatile currents, believed to have claimed the lives of "two or three" swimmers who had disappeared without a trace in the years prior.