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Who Are Your Top 5 British Prime Ministers?
83 Answers
here's mine....
1. Winston Churchill (TGM)
2. Margaret Thatcher (TGL)
3. Clement Atlee
4. Harold Macmillan
5. Boris Johnson
1. Winston Churchill (TGM)
2. Margaret Thatcher (TGL)
3. Clement Atlee
4. Harold Macmillan
5. Boris Johnson
Answers
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Prior to WW2, Churchill had been a political failure, drifting from party to party, then, cometh the hour, cometh the man. But he was a ruthless, and callous leader who had no resevations about sending people to their deaths because we were at war. And in wartime, people get killed. Churchill would sacrifice people if he thought he could gain from it, as with Operation Pedestal. But he didn't win the war. It was the Russians and the Americans. If the Yanks hadn't been in the war, the Russians would probably have carried on accross Europe as far as the Channel and Atlantic coast, maybe even invading the UK. That would definitely have been the EUSSR!
As for Thatcher, The Ghastly Lunatic, she was a despotic tyrant who should have been publicly hanged for treason in Parliament Square. I would have gladly placed the noose around her neck and released the trap door whilst waving her goodbye, along with the people from the industries that she decimated, the shipyard workers, steel workers, miners, car industry workers etc. She did more damage to the industrial base of this country than Adolf Hitlers' bombs. Her statue should be smashed off its' pedestal and broken up to be used for hardcore in a building project in an unemployment black spot. A proper solution, and I commend it to the house!
I now await the goggle eyed, steaming, ranting response from Frank Doberman, aka, Tora Tora Tora. Otherwise, everything's fine thanks! :o)
As for Thatcher, The Ghastly Lunatic, she was a despotic tyrant who should have been publicly hanged for treason in Parliament Square. I would have gladly placed the noose around her neck and released the trap door whilst waving her goodbye, along with the people from the industries that she decimated, the shipyard workers, steel workers, miners, car industry workers etc. She did more damage to the industrial base of this country than Adolf Hitlers' bombs. Her statue should be smashed off its' pedestal and broken up to be used for hardcore in a building project in an unemployment black spot. A proper solution, and I commend it to the house!
I now await the goggle eyed, steaming, ranting response from Frank Doberman, aka, Tora Tora Tora. Otherwise, everything's fine thanks! :o)
Churchill
Attlee
Blair
Brown
Thatcher
As a very rough guide. And I have not even attempted to go back further than 1940.
Churchill WAS key to the Allies victory in WWII. A "cometh the hour cometh the man" moment if ever there was one. The rest is IMO irrelevant.
Attlee great reformer
Blair was also a reformer
Brown more for his international role during the financial crisis
Thatcher was a great leader no doubt but also v divisive
Attlee
Blair
Brown
Thatcher
As a very rough guide. And I have not even attempted to go back further than 1940.
Churchill WAS key to the Allies victory in WWII. A "cometh the hour cometh the man" moment if ever there was one. The rest is IMO irrelevant.
Attlee great reformer
Blair was also a reformer
Brown more for his international role during the financial crisis
Thatcher was a great leader no doubt but also v divisive
I don’t like to think of politicians as “great”… the profession selects for self-serving and corrupt individuals… anybody with any power ought to be treated with hostility and suspicion in my opinion…
so i’ll answer with “least bad” rather than “greatest”!
- churchill is a given… not nearly as heroic as he’s remembered arguably but he took the right decision at the right time and was willing to get his hands dirty…
- clem attlee… he had good intentions and was diligent and hard-working… lots of nasty stuff happened on his watch but he did what he could… did a lot of good work during the war too
- gordon brown… i think his time in office is underrated and he was responsible for many of new labour’s good bits… he was unlucky and horribly treated by the media… probably unsuited to the top job but i think he acted in what he thought were the country’s best interests
- harold wilson… politics is a dirty business and he did get dirty… but i think he wanted to make the country a better place and did that to some extent
I cannot say I am keen on any of the others sorry…
so i’ll answer with “least bad” rather than “greatest”!
- churchill is a given… not nearly as heroic as he’s remembered arguably but he took the right decision at the right time and was willing to get his hands dirty…
- clem attlee… he had good intentions and was diligent and hard-working… lots of nasty stuff happened on his watch but he did what he could… did a lot of good work during the war too
- gordon brown… i think his time in office is underrated and he was responsible for many of new labour’s good bits… he was unlucky and horribly treated by the media… probably unsuited to the top job but i think he acted in what he thought were the country’s best interests
- harold wilson… politics is a dirty business and he did get dirty… but i think he wanted to make the country a better place and did that to some extent
I cannot say I am keen on any of the others sorry…
thatcher wrought devastation across much of the country and much of her economic thinking has proven to be very short termist and damaging… she was extremely lucky to get into office when this country’s north sea oil boom was starting and she peed that windfall away on tax cuts and an artificial property boom that is a serious social problem now… without north sea oil her “reforms” would have been dead in the water
she also had a huge role in politicising the police and using police state tactics against citizens of this country which are still there now… all of the present day authoritarianism in uk policing goes back to her (remember that next time you’re complaining about the police being politically influenced…)
she took the right decision over the falklands but the domestic stuff is more important to me
she also had a huge role in politicising the police and using police state tactics against citizens of this country which are still there now… all of the present day authoritarianism in uk policing goes back to her (remember that next time you’re complaining about the police being politically influenced…)
she took the right decision over the falklands but the domestic stuff is more important to me
untitled: "thatcher wrought devastation across much of the country" - I don't know why some think that, It's usually youngsters who were taught to hate her by left teachers. How old are you untitled? To anyone who lived in the 60s and 70s she saved the country, arrested our decline into a Soviet outpost, here is what Fred Forsyth wrote in 2007.....
Fred Forsyth – Daily Express – 23/02/2007
In all the publicity surrounding the thoroughly merited unveiling of the statue of Margaret Thatcher in the Members’ Lobby of the commons, it is easy to overlook the 17 years of her systematic demonisation by the sniggering classes.
The point is that you have to be of a certain maturity to recall the sheer awfulness of the last years of the seventies. Not just the winter of discontent, 1978/79 but the whole tottering edifice of our country reduced to a near-bankrupt “sick man of Europe”. We were heading, literally, for national ruin.
Every politician, civil servant, banker, industrialist and merchant was convinced that the rot could not even be stopped let alone turned around. But Mrs Thatcher did it and with not much help from the defeatists around her. Most of them believed Britain was finished.
But she took them all on and beat almost all of them. Galtieri in the south, Scargill in the North, the union tyrants at the strike polls, the wimps wherever she met them. They, reduced to their natural pygmy status hated her for it – and still do.
But, whatever they say, she did what had to be done. In her own words “There was no alternative”.
What has always riled me is that the self-serving coterie that destroyed her were not even up to her kneecaps. Such a pity that David Cameron has restored half a dozen of them to his innermost circle of advisers.
Twenty years from now she will still be staring in bronze across the members’ lobby. But you will have to scour the archives to find out who those who brought her down ever were.
Fred Forsyth – Daily Express – 23/02/2007
In all the publicity surrounding the thoroughly merited unveiling of the statue of Margaret Thatcher in the Members’ Lobby of the commons, it is easy to overlook the 17 years of her systematic demonisation by the sniggering classes.
The point is that you have to be of a certain maturity to recall the sheer awfulness of the last years of the seventies. Not just the winter of discontent, 1978/79 but the whole tottering edifice of our country reduced to a near-bankrupt “sick man of Europe”. We were heading, literally, for national ruin.
Every politician, civil servant, banker, industrialist and merchant was convinced that the rot could not even be stopped let alone turned around. But Mrs Thatcher did it and with not much help from the defeatists around her. Most of them believed Britain was finished.
But she took them all on and beat almost all of them. Galtieri in the south, Scargill in the North, the union tyrants at the strike polls, the wimps wherever she met them. They, reduced to their natural pygmy status hated her for it – and still do.
But, whatever they say, she did what had to be done. In her own words “There was no alternative”.
What has always riled me is that the self-serving coterie that destroyed her were not even up to her kneecaps. Such a pity that David Cameron has restored half a dozen of them to his innermost circle of advisers.
Twenty years from now she will still be staring in bronze across the members’ lobby. But you will have to scour the archives to find out who those who brought her down ever were.
In the 20s Churchil was seen as an extremist who wanted to stop Germany rearming. When the TROBers ballsed it up they sent for the "extremist" to save them from their own short sightedness. In Chuchhill's "The second world war" - Book 1, The Theme of the volume is: (his upper case) "HOW THE ENGLISH-SPEAKING PEOPLES THROUGH THEIR UNWISDOM CARELESSNESS AND GOOD NATURE ALLOWED THE WICKED TO DISARM" - enough said.
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