Who has been the UK's worst PM?

volver

1) I assume you mean Galtieri

2) Blair only became Catholic after he left office. Although I'm quite sure that Catholics have taken us into illegal wars before Blair arrived on the scene.

Not that I have brought his Catholicism into the equation but although he wasn't officially a Catholic, he was acting as a Catholic.

www.theguardian.com/politics/2007/jun/22/uk.religion1

I am not for one moment suggesting his actions in Iraq were anything to do with his religion but give this as a fuller picture to his Catholicism.

Maybe I can’t spell volver but Blair was brought up an Anglo Catholic in Scotland, he studied at Fettes, although he only formerly moved to Rome later.

I am not sure how many Catholic PMs Britain has had, and we have certainly fought many just wars, but never before I think an illegal one.

When did he move to Adelaide?

Or are we using "Rome" metaphorically? Blair's grandad was an Orangeman, incidentally.

Tony Blair

I believe history will decide that Boris Johnson is undoubtedly the worst PM the UK has had, but Margaret Thatcher paved the way by emphasising individuality above the common good.

It is the standard way of expressing such a move volver See John Henry Newman.

It is not at all unheard of for children and grand children to hold different views from their ancestors especially when married to other thinking, strong wives

Theresa May ….. unable or unwilling to delegate

Thatcher without a doubt. Huge interest rates on mortgages. Sold council houses but didn’t use the revenue to build more. Privatised all our important services such as gas and water etc. began the dismantling of the NHS. So many awful things were done or begun under her leadership.
We are all feeling the knock on effects now in one way or another.

Neilspurgeon0

It is the standard way of expressing such a move volver See John Henry Newman.

It is not at all unheard of for children and grand children to hold different views from their ancestors especially when married to other thinking, strong wives

More bullets.

1) I'm an atheist, I won't be seeing John Henry Newman or anybody else on this matter. Its of no consequence to me if Blair was an adherent of the Flying Spaghetti Monster.

2) The comment about wives is a wee bit off, really.

Not seen anyone mentioned Ted Heath. Three day working week, power cuts, high inflation, high taxes, high unemployment and unions out of control. The country was in a mess. In my life time he gets my vote

Whenever I voice my loathing of Thatcher it's assumed that i'm from a mining community. People have forgotten the decimation of the cotton and wool industry. Mills are now either housing estated or trendy apartment blocks.

Sorry volver I respect your religious views but “going to Rome” really is a standard expression.

I really do not understand why it is ‘off’ for a man to be influenced by his wife, even if he is the PM. Churchill certainly was and Johnson, Brown and Cameron and I most certainly are.

I really don't see why Blair's religious beliefs are particularly relevant. All the major varieties of Christianity in the UK support war... Apart from the Quakers.

Blair took us into a unnecessary war but he had got the NHS working after decades of lowering of standards. Now back to we’re the NHS was prior Blair. Schools got so much money, a head that I knew didn’t know what to spend it all on. I’m still think Ted Heath.

Tony Blair for the WMD as a starter, allowing Gordon Brown to abolish tax raid on pension schemes even although he had been warned by his own officials that it would inflict long term damage on savings and the start of privatisation of the NHS by extending the scope of outsourcing from non-clinical support services to include diagnostic services and elective hospital treatment.

Appalling behaviour from a Labour government.

Surely the most important judgement should be about a government's impact on a country as a whole. It can't just be about something they did that people didn't like.
It is about the impact of their policies on the economy, housing, transport infrastructure, education, health etc etc. Morality, seriousness, probity, attention to detail and hard work are important qualities in a leader, but it is the results that matter.

I would love to say Johnson …. but no . It’s Thatcher!

stewaris

Tony Blair for the WMD as a starter, allowing Gordon Brown to abolish tax raid on pension schemes even although he had been warned by his own officials that it would inflict long term damage on savings and the start of privatisation of the NHS by extending the scope of outsourcing from non-clinical support services to include diagnostic services and elective hospital treatment.

Appalling behaviour from a Labour government.

I was in the NHS, and I don’t remember it as you portrayed it at all. Outsourcing of elective treatment and diagnostics wasn’t as a result of an ideological shift, it was one of many methods used to bring waiting lists down. That was a sensible pragmatic thing to do to help people who needed treatment. The NHS was in the best state it’s ever been when Labour left government in 2010.

I have no time for Blair and "New Labour" - I'm very much Old Labour - and I can never forgive him for taking us into that war. However, as a bad PM, he pales into insignificance beside Thatcher.

She enabled the privatisation of the utilities and the railway, supposedly on the grounds that competition would lower prices. What happened, of course, was that the private companies pushed the prices higher and higher, giving massive bonuses to the people at the top and ever greater profits for the shareholders. We're still caught up in that spiral. It would cost £2.85 billion to bring the Big 5 - British Gas, EDF, Scottish Power, Ovo and E.ON - back into public ownership. It would make more sense to do that than to waste £1 billion trying to prop up Bulb, which recently collapsed. It won't happen, of course, as we're getting Margaret Thatcher impersonator, Liz Truss, as our next dismal PM.

Thatcher sold off the council houses at ridiculous prices, with no plans to replace them. She didn't create a nation of homeowners, she created a land of people with insecure tenancies, B&B emergency accommodation, and sleeping bags in shop doorways.

She was determined to break the strength and solidarity of the unions. She didn't wholly succeed but she certainly weakened them. Before anyone starts on about strikes and winters of discontent, they might take a minute to think about sick pay, holiday pay, the minimum wage, maternity/paternity pay, pensions, health and safety at work... All the things that the unions fought so hard to win.

She brought in compulsory competitive tendering for NHS contracts, beginning the process whereby more and more services are provided by private companies. This began with Domestic, Catering and Laundry services, with an immediate and visible decline in quality, as hospitals were compelled to accept the lowest bids. Privatisation has gradually crept further and further into the NHS, usually resulting in paying more and getting less.

"There is no such thing as society" said Thatcher, and I think she believed it. She didn't understand the concept of caring for people, including strangers, and feeling a duty to help them. She claimed to be a Christian but the idea that the strong should protect the weak and the rich should aid the poor was alien to her. She encouraged greed and selfishness, and sent the Tories lurching more and more to the right. So much that is wrong in this country can be traced back to her withered claws.

I am not a fan.

Thatcher decimated the mining industry, the manufacturing base, sold off Council houses but the money made went elsewhere, took us to a totally useless war in Argentina, interest rates at 17%, said there was no such thing as society, spoke with a plum in her mouth etc. Blair also took us to an unnecessary war however we have some wonderful schools @nd hospitals as his legacy and there was HOPE when he was PM! I have lost all of it now with this shower!

So ,are we going to ban catholics from all public office now? Just as Scotland is finally getting the religious divide uner some kind of control is England about to become a catholic free zone...again?
I have never read so much rubbish* Neilspurgeon *quite why Blairs religion .lack of religion or new religion was brought into this thread is beyond me .As if there isn't enough division in England with the Brexiteers ,now you want to blame Afghanistan on someone converting to catholicism ?????
Didn't the Blessed Margaret quote St Francis as she entered Downing St ? Do you have an opinion on that?

The Labour government extended the outsourcing to the other services, Casdon. I too worked for the NHS as have most of my family. He may or may not have intended to start privatisation but instead of investing heavily in the NHS after lack of funding from previous governments, he chose to extend the outsourcing to include non diagnostice services etc.
Still shameful and disappointing for a Labour government.

stewaris

The Labour government extended the outsourcing to the other services, Casdon. I too worked for the NHS as have most of my family. He may or may not have intended to start privatisation but instead of investing heavily in the NHS after lack of funding from previous governments, he chose to extend the outsourcing to include non diagnostice services etc.
Still shameful and disappointing for a Labour government.

Blair didn’t start privatisation stewaris. PFI schemes and private companies providing ancillary and estates services all started under Thatcher, many schemes were dismantled when Labour were in power, others took much longer because of contract lengths and clauses. Outsourcing of specific elective treatments and diagnostics was not privatisation, it was outsourcing to achieve a specific goal of reducing waiting lists, not to provide profit opportunities to private companies. There’s a world of difference. You can hang other blames at Blair’s door, but not messing up the NHS.

I'd love to know the ages of the contributors. I'm 61, narrowly missed out on voting against Thatcher in 79 so she's the first PM I remember as an adult. Vaguely remember Wilson & Heath - power cuts, the 3 day week et al.
But I'm wondering if those pitching against Blair remember much before him. The reasons I'm seeing are that thousands of lives were lost due to the Gulf war. But the same can be said for Johnson - and don't say the pandemic wasn't his fault: No, he didn't cause the virus but the way it was dealt with sent thousands to the same end.

I'm 63.