So who is the worst Prime Minister ever?

[VNF...]

I knew before i clicked on this thatcher would be up there.

 

Ladies and gentlemen, the miners have voted!!

 

I've never been a miner. My decision to vote for her was because of how she sent troops into Falkland Islands without proper equipment - a conflict which apparently may have been avoided, such as good boots etc. How she broke the Unions and how she destroyed communities and not forgetting how she screwed up the economy a couple of times during her reign. And there is plenty more.....

[MR BENN]

Bring back Maggie -best leader this country has ever seen .

Scargill bit off more than he could chew and was out of his depth taking on the iron lady

[horribleblob]

...My decision to vote for her was because of how she sent troops into Falkland Islands...

 

The Ghurkas played an important part in the Falkland campaign - Maggie wouldn't let them settle here either.

[marshlad]

I voted for Brown because he is the most useless PM I have seen in my life, Blair comes a close second. I am too young to have opinion on Thatcher because I was only 11 when she left office.

[Titanic99]

I voted for Brown because he is the most useless PM I have seen in my life, Blair comes a close second. I am too young to have opinion on Thatcher because I was only 11 when she left office.

 

Just trust me, unemployment was much higher, crime was signifcantly worse, the NHS had massive waiting times and the schools were a mess.

[Tricky]

Just trust me, unemployment was much higher, crime was signifcantly worse, the NHS had massive waiting times and the schools were a mess.

 

Don't trust him, he talks a lot of rubbish.

[Phanerothyme]

Anthony Eden got my vote.

[VNF...]

The thing with Gordon Brown is that realistically we should take our hats of to him, he infact inhereted a poison plant or chalice. Tony Blair knew what was about to happen and so got out while the going was good.

[Anarchon]

I think Lord North (1732 - 1792) was an awful Prime Minister. It was on his watch that we lost the North American Colonies and he was the first Prime Minister to be removed from office via a motion of no confidence in the House of Commons.

[LordChaverly]

I had difficulty in deciding whether to opt for Blair or Heath, as I have a visceral detestation of both. Heath undoubtedly did less harm to humanity than did the warmonger Blair (whom I hold responsible for death and suffering of many, many thousands of people). However, if we judge it on the criterion of overall prime ministerial incompetence, then Heath must in my view take the crown. I therefore ended up voting for Heath in this poll.

 

Indeed, the only thing we can learn about Heath's disastrous period in office (1970-74) is how not to run a country. Remember the three day week? Mercifully, the country had had enough of him after one term and his party soon got rid of him as well. He never possessed enough personal insight to acknowledge his faults and weaknesses, or the grace to admit he was wrong about anything, still less to have the grace to say anything positive about his successor. He was a boorish, utterly self-centred, mean, spiteful oaf of a man with an exaggerated opinion of his own (severely limited) abilities. I have no respect for him at all.

 

If we take his management of the economy and of industrial relations during his premiership, it was a catalogue of bad decisions and bungling, resulting in not a single positive outcome as far as I am aware (if judged on economic or industrial indicators, such as inflation or employment levels, growth or industrial relations). His attempt to tackle industrial relations for example led to the worst industrial relations we have ever had, culminating in the three day week, regular power cuts, enormous inconvenience for ordinary people due to loss of heating, light and public transport, massive loss of output and worsening balance of payments. He had no understanding of how modern economies work. Indeed, his grasp of Economics seem to consist of half-understood pseudo Keynesian nostrums that were already seriously out of date at the time and totally inappropriate to the conditions with which he was dealing. Indeed, prior to becoming PM, he did toy with other ideas (i.e. the Selsdon formulae), but in a very half-hearted way, either because he didn’t believe in them or (more probably) because he didn’t understand them. He also soon abandoned any pretence of implementing these formulae when in office. Mrs. Thatcher’s famous phrase ‘no U turns’ derives from her determination not to repeat the mistakes of Heath in this regard.

 

Moreover, it is rather ironic that his style of 'consensus politics' led to the worst industrial unrest the UK had experienced in the post-war era and to the nadir of the three day week and to regular power blackouts. For a 'consensus politician' he was remarkably lacking in any ability to achieve consensus. He no monetarist. But nor was he a Keynesian. Quite simply, I think he lacked the intellectual ability or curiosity to understand either school of thought, particularly the need to adapt ideas to suit prevailing circumstances. In addition to his dislike (fear?) of women and of being contradicted, he also appeared to have an aversion for people obviously much brighter than himself. Whereas Mrs. Thatcher had a coherent ideological vision (deriving from Joseph, Powell, Hayek and other gurus of the so-called new Right), Heath seemed to have lacked intellectual curiosity and receptivity to new ideas. An amusing irony is that at the time he was ousted, many people in the Tory party did not have high expectations of Thatcher. Moreover, many media pundits. had no idea of her mettle either. She was in fact described by someone at the time (can't remember who) as simply another 'Heath with tits on'. How wrong they all were!

 

If we take Heath’s supposed greatest achievement, i.e. taking the UK into the EEC in 1973, well, he badly bungled this as he did so much else. He was so keen to take us in that he did so on terms which were very largely unfavourable to us – meaning that even though the UK was one of the poorest members at the time, we were paying enormous sums into the EEC budget and getting relatively little in return. Many people think that the 1975 referendum was about whether to stay in or to leave the EEC. It was really about renegotiating the awful terms Heath had agreed to in 1972. (probably because he wanted to go down in history as the person who took us into the EEC). The result of Heath’s bungling was that the UK’s relations with our European partners were to be poisoned for many years and were dominated by the ‘BBQ’ (i.e. the British budget question). It must have been particularly galling to Heath that the person who did the most to rectify this intolerable situation was Margaret Thatcher, who negotiated the substantial annual rebate for the UK in 1984. Far from ‘reconciling us to Europe’, Heath actually did the very opposite..

 

As for Heath the man, well, there are many recorded instances of his boorish, self-obsessed, petulant, misogynistic and spiteful behaviour (and not only towards Thatcher) We can’t say ‘nothing became in his (political) life like the leaving on it’. Indeed, he never reconciled himself to the fact that he was ousted by a mere woman who turned out to be a much for effective and capable Conservative Prime Minister than he ever was, and moreover a political leader with a much firmer place in history than he ever achieved. Thatcher was magnanimous towards him on hearing of his death. I think it’s the measure of the man that had she died first, the response from him would probably have been very different – i.e. either stony silence or an outpouring of self-justification, laden with verbal nastiness of one kind or another. As a useful corrective to the misty eyed memorials to Heath which followed his death, I suggest people dig out the 1970s Grocer cartoon series about Heath in Private Eye. He was portrayed as a self-obsessed, utterly obnoxious, boorish, petulant, oafish and utterly incompetent buffoon. This series captured perfectly a not uncommon view of Heath at the time.

 

In short, Heath was a classic example of the Peter principle – i.e. someone promoted way beyond the level of his own competence. He had neither the judgment, the sagacity nor the political and personal skills required to make even a half decent Prime Minister. Mercifully, the British electorate had the wisdom to boot him out of office after one catastrophic term (and the Conservative party followed suit soon afterwards).