Who was a better Prime Minister than Margaret Thatcher in your lifetime - if anyone?

[Goldstone Rapper]

Under 80s can legitimately include Attlee if the question is read as: 'Who was a better Prime Minister than Thatcher in your lifetime?'

 

[blue2]

Blair.

I to am a Blair right

 

[Wozza]

3 pages and no mention of Churchill.

Interesting what a little bit of knowledge can do !!!

Up until Thatchers death, most never knew that Churchill was quite so unpopular at the time, so unless your a Thatcher fan you are just cutting and pasting from the last 48 hours news programmes.

Maybe because we read the thread title properly and aren't in our 70/80s?

 

[HovaGirl]

3 pages and no mention of Churchill.

Interesting what a little bit of knowledge can do !!!

Up until Thatchers death, most never knew that Churchill was quite so unpopular at the time, so unless your a Thatcher fan you are just cutting and pasting from the last 48 hours news programmes.

Churchill was a great war-time PM, but prone to error on other matters.

 

[kevtherev]

I can understand why Maggie may have been unpopular in some quarters. But she never took us into an illegal war...I can't believe people are suggesting Blair,pmsl....Who do people really think was the catalyst for the shite we have been in for the last 4/5 years and still ongoing....A decade of Labour and we are still going to be paying for it in years to come.....and just when things start to level out, what the betting they get voted in again.

 

[kevtherev]

Churchill was a great war-time PM, but prone to error on other matters.

And Attlee was so popular, that Winnie got voted back into to replace him in 1951.

 

[BigGully]

Maybe because we read the thread title properly and aren't in our 70/80s?

Fairpoint ....

 

[melias shoes]

Blair.

 

[Superphil]

Just out of interest, how many is acceptable in order to win an election you wouldn't ordinarily have stood a chance in?

Ask Tony Blair

 

[Goldstone Rapper]

And Attlee was so popular, that Winnie got voted back into to replace him in 1951.

It was one of those elections where the winning party got less votes than the party finishing second.

The Tories had accepted the Attlee postwar settlement of the welfare state, NHS and Keynesian economics by 1951. Such was the Labour victory of 1945 that it changed the Conservative Party considerably.

 

[Biscuit]

Better than Thatcher, Major, Brown and Cameron.

They cover my lifetime.

 

[withdeanwombat]

All of them

Post # 5 aaaaaannnnnnnnnnnnnnndddddddddddddddd


JACKPOT !

 

[HOFNSKIN]

Harold Wilson solely because he stood up to the Americans and refused to send British troops to Vietnam., thus saving thousands if not hundreds of thousands of British lives. History will note that Blair was a lightweight in comparison for conspiring with the warmonger Bush, and becoming his poodle.

 

[Poyetry In Motion]

3 pages and no mention of Churchill.

Interesting what a little bit of knowledge can do !!!

Up until Thatchers death, most never knew that Churchill was quite so unpopular at the time, so unless your a Thatcher fan you are just cutting and pasting from the last 48 hours news programmes.

Churchill died in 1965. I was born in 1970 - otherwise he'd be top by some margin

 

[Diego Napier]

Prime Ministers during my lifetime:
Sir Winston Churchill (1951-1955)
Sir Anthony Eden (1955-1957)
Harold McMillan (1957-1963)
Sir Alec Douglas-Home (1963-1964)
Harold Wilson(1964-1970 and 1974-1976)
Edward Heath (1970-1974)
James Callaghan (1976-1979)
Margaret Thatcher (1979-1990)
John Major (1990-1997)
Tony Blair (1997-2007)
Gordon Brown (2007-2010)
David Cameron (2010-)

I remember the State funeral of Churchill but the first PM I was aware of was Harold Wilson, who was seen as a witty, modern, working-class PM, as opposed to the old- school aristos, Home and Eden. Wilson liked The Beatles and the "white heat" of technology and presided over the Swinging Sixties. He was the right PM at the right time. At school, we held our own General Election in 1964, and Wilson won. We didn't know it then, but he was a crafty manipulator of the soundbite and networking.

Heath was a toothy twonk who liked sailing and the organ, both hobbies as boring as his tenure of No 10. He was responsible for the 3-day week and a complete lightweight who subsequently sulked his way through Thatcher's tenure.

Callaghan was seen as another lightweight, or at least, that's how I saw him. I was too involved with my new boyfriend, and my wedding and baby to be bothered with anything he did. But I remember the strikes, the strikes, and some more strikes. Crisis? What crisis? he asked.

Thatcher made a real impact. She made necessary changes, because the country did have to be hauled into the 20th century. Wilson had paved the way, but he overspent, leaving debts Callaghan couldn't cope with, which Thatcher managed to reduce. On the other hand, she sold off too many national assets, from State-owned utilities to Council Houses. She failed to compromise with the unions, though the unions also failed to compromise with her. But this left a manufacturing void, which she made no effort to fill, except by encouraging banks and insurance companies to make money out of our money, with little in return. Her monetarism opened the doors to too many foreign countries who rushed to buy too many of our assets, which should have remained British-owned, if not State-owned. On Europe, she was right, and it destroyed her. In fact, at the time, her stance on Europe was the only thing where I was actually in agreement with her.

John Major quietly got on with things, but I always had a sneaking admiration for him. A working-class Brixton boy without a formal higher education, he was the embodiment of the American ideal, that anybody can become Prime Minister, which Thatcher had encouraged and developed. He left a vibrant economy for the next Labour Government to inherit, and destroy.

Tony Blair was attractive, but a disaster. He acted his way through his No 10 years, saying the right things at the right time, but often doing the wrong things at the wrong time. While the Heath Government dug in to the destruction of the British Education system, Blair continued it, by letting everybody pass their exams and go to university, but to achieve this, the whole system had to be dumbed down. Now, there is so much ignorance around, it is terrifyingly sad, yet an entire generation thinks they've had the best education, ever. When they mature, they will realise just how little they really know. The ten years of education under Blair has produced a mixed generation of unemployable feral youth and youngsters who expect high wages and are unprepared to start at the bottom of the career ladder.

Cameron was an effective Opposition Leader, but has proved impotent as a Prime Minister, and I lay that at the door of the highly unintelligent Clegg and Cameron's lack of conviction. The Millibands are career Marxists, trained from birth to be politicians and receive high office, which means they will say whatever the Left-Wing wants to hear in order to secure power. The reality of this was demonstrated when one brother betrayed the other, more politically-talented, brother and we are left with a little baby as our next prospective PM. If I am worried about what has gone on before, then it is nothing to what will happen if Ed Milliband becomes the next PM.

The best Prime Minister in my lifetime? Probably John Major.

Astoundingly selectiveand quirkyrésumés, obviously based on your personal recollections and political persuasions. Here's some selective supplements:You're correct about Thatcher's woeful financial track record. Debt reduction was funded by the sale-of-the-century nationalised industries/utilities flog-off. She simultaneously squandered the North Sea oil windfall by selling off drilling rights at knock down prices to foreign companies and using the UK oil revenues/royalties to fund her political dogma & spitefulness in creating 3.5 million dole queues. John Major quietly got on with nothing, apart from getting on Ewina Curry. Any political thing his tenure achieved (primarily Black Wednesday's ignominous exit from the ERM and Back to Basics/sleaze) was solely down to the tory big beasts over whom he exercised no control whatsoever.

To summarise the track record of Blair solely by his education "failures" is very one-eyed (and that monocularity suffering from severe myopia) - the Good Friday agreement, minimum wage, devolution, Bank of England independance over interest rate setting, fox hunting ban, Afghanistan & Iraq wars at least deserve recognition if not praise, all under the suffocating yoke of Brown's overweening ego and ambition. Best Prime minister John Major? Aren't you well versed with the old song "Always leave them laughing when you say goodbye".

 

[Westdene Wonder]

Churchill has to be No.1 for leading us to victory in WW2, otherwise the PM`s since would never had the opportunity.
I have never voted Tory but Margaret Thatcher saved us from the unions who were destroying the country with their demands, Labour who were being bankrolled by the Unions were not willing to control them,given time we would be in a worse position than Greece,so she must take second place.

 

[Boys 9d]

If taking the logic that I was three when World War 2 finished (ie. under 18 and not able able to understand politics), then I woul not be able to say which leaders of the waring nations were good and which were evil.

 

[Questions]

Such a shame Michael Foot never became PM, he would've got my vote !!!!!!

Would have been considered quite trendy now with his duffel coat. I admired him immensely and one of the great orators of our day. Was always going to get a kicking over the uni- lateral dis-armourment issue though considering the times we were living in.

I remember when Labour lost in 92 and I felt like I did when Palace beat us 3-1 last year.....devastated.
I wish I could have held Blair up there with the best but alas Iraq and the hundreds of thousands of deaths that preceded his decision making stopped me ever voting for him after that. Shame that because his early days on social change were the best days I have ever felt under any government.

 

[Goldstone Rapper]

Who was a better Prime Minister than Margaret Thatcher in your lifetime - if an

Hovagirl,

Callaghan did not actually say 'Crisis? What Crisis?'

These were the words written by a headline writer of a Tory-supporting paper.

 

[Dandyman]

but nobody really remembers Attlee,he left office in 1951

you'd have to be 80 years old to actually remember

apoligies to those who are

Attlee gave us the NHS, social housing, the Welfare State, democratic control of key utilities, a clumsy but overdue withdrawl from Empire, educational and socialreform. He won in 1945 and 1950 and had he been more ruthless would have PM into the mid 1950s.