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AIBU?

Share your dilemmas and get honest opinions from other Mumsnetters.

Original poster

Worst in Living Memory?

641 replies

ElephantWhaleRabbit · 21/12/2020 13:45

Maybe it’s because we’re all caught up in everything right now, but AIBU to think Boris Johnson the worst Prime Minister in living memory? I mean, which of the former PMs, wouldn’t you swap in for him? Or is he just a victim of a bad set of circumstances?

OP posts:
blueangel19 · 26/12/2020 11:49

Well if people only read left wing media of course we are a laughing stock. They have a destructive agenda. In the real world just wait to see how the UK will be in a few years time.

VinylDetective · 26/12/2020 12:30

@blueangel19

Well if people only read left wing media of course we are a laughing stock. They have a destructive agenda. In the real world just wait to see how the UK will be in a few years time.
I regularly read The Telegraph, that well known left wing paper, it’s been as critical of Johnson as any left wing media.
MaryLeeOnHigh · 26/12/2020 12:32

Well if people only read left wing media of course we are a laughing stock. They have a destructive agenda

This is such a myth. How could it be destructive to want a fair society where vulnerable people are properly looked after, where people are not discriminated against on any grounds, and with a competent and non-corrupt government?

Peregrina · 26/12/2020 12:57

PMs reputations tend to be remembered for their last achievements.
So:
Chamberlain - a perfectly well regarded Minister until the appeasement of Hitler.
Eden - ditto until Suez when his reputation was completely destroyed.
Blair - Iraq, destroying a potentially good reputation as one of the architects of the GFA.
Brown - good Chancellor, rubbish PM - remembered for the last.
Cameron - one who split the country with his Referendum.

Major's reputation has actually been going up, the prominence of his role in the GFA is being remembered.

Johnson - if Brexit is a success that might be what he's remembered for, otherwise, he is much more likely to be remembered as making a mess of handling Covid.

SchadenfreudePersonified · 26/12/2020 13:43

This is such a myth. How could it be destructive to want a fair society where vulnerable people are properly looked after, where people are not discriminated against on any grounds, and with a competent and non-corrupt government?

Well said, MaryLee

akerman · 26/12/2020 22:23

People should take a look at the foreign press rather than on U.K. newspapers. You would be hard pressed to find any newspapers expressing anything other than incredulity that any nation would do this to itself. Leavers should think very hard about why the only papers lauding Bre it are U.K. ones, whose owners have set things up so that they don’t pay tax.

MrsMiaWallis · 27/12/2020 08:34

@akerman

People should take a look at the foreign press rather than on U.K. newspapers. You would be hard pressed to find any newspapers expressing anything other than incredulity that any nation would do this to itself. Leavers should think very hard about why the only papers lauding Bre it are U.K. ones, whose owners have set things up so that they don’t pay tax.
What a ridiculous comment.
Calmandmeasured1 · 27/12/2020 08:41

I don't envy any Prime Minister having to deal with the circumstances Boris Johnson has had to deal with so far during his term of office.

Jocasta2018 · 27/12/2020 10:35

He is the reason for Brexit & that is unforgivable.
As for the pandemic - well I'm not sure anyone else could've done better - although you get the feeling he's just putting his fingers in his ears & singing 'la la la' instead of listening to the science at times....

Peregrina · 27/12/2020 10:45

So Boris Johnson was forced into Downing Street, was he? No, he wanted the job, he was quite happy to destroy May's PM ship. He has to take what comes. He's had a pandemic to deal with, which he's made a mess of. He could have delayed the Brexit he so desperately wanted, but chose not to.

VinylDetective · 27/12/2020 11:37

@akerman

People should take a look at the foreign press rather than on U.K. newspapers. You would be hard pressed to find any newspapers expressing anything other than incredulity that any nation would do this to itself. Leavers should think very hard about why the only papers lauding Bre it are U.K. ones, whose owners have set things up so that they don’t pay tax.
So true.
akerman · 27/12/2020 12:16

Why is it a ridiculous comment, mia?

MrsMiaWallis · 27/12/2020 13:29

@akerman

Why is it a ridiculous comment, mia?
To suggest you can only get decent news coverage about the UK outside the UK is ridiculous.
akerman · 27/12/2020 13:49

I didn’t suggest that. I said that a more impartial foreign press reporting on Brexit specifically gave a very different picture of Brexit. In fact it’s so starkly different that leavers might want to wonder why.

jasjas1973 · 27/12/2020 13:54

MrsMia I took from Akermans comment that foreign news outlets (and indeed the World service) can often broaden our perspective on contentious subjects like Brexit or the 2nd iraq war, UK news was all very supportive of Blair and Bush, not so much european newspapers.

Pity we just listened to UK ones.

Its always interesting to see how others see us, not just what friends or family think.

CaptainSandy · 27/12/2020 14:10

Boris, just think about it , he`s sorted brexit for us

Aye hasn't he just. He engineered the whole sorry mess then, with a great flourish of last-minute dramatics, pulled a thin, terrible, destructive deal out of his hat.
Yet apparently that's got people clapping like fucking seals.

MrsMiaWallis · 27/12/2020 14:17

@jasjas1973

MrsMia I took from Akermans comment that foreign news outlets (and indeed the World service) can often broaden our perspective on contentious subjects like Brexit or the 2nd iraq war, UK news was all very supportive of Blair and Bush, not so much european newspapers.

Pity we just listened to UK ones.

Its always interesting to see how others see us, not just what friends or family think.

Read The Times Lots of critical comment on Brexit if that's what you require.

Why on earth would you think European news isn't just as biased towards making it look as though Brexit was a terrible decision?!

And I don't take moral lessons from the USA!

jasjas1973 · 27/12/2020 14:31

Broad range of views and opinions, shame you dismiss anything from the USA, they are not all Trump supporting gun loving loonies! just as not all european news outlets support the EU and think the UK is crazy.
But when even the FN or AFD want to remain, you do have wonder!

I have waited for 4.5 years every hopeful that someone somewhere can just give a tiny slither of a positive from Brexit, then i found one... we 'd be in control of our own waters but even that hasn't happened, fishing will continue unabated for at least the next 5.5 years.

akerman · 27/12/2020 15:17

I’m not stopping anyone reading The Times. I read it myself sometimes. I’m suggesting that people might wonder why there is no foreign news outlet (certainly that ‘ve seen, though I don’t speak Russian) that think that Brexit is anything but folly.

Where did I say anything about the European Press? I’ve seen articles from Canada, India, NZ, Australia that are, frankly, bewildered.

SchadenfreudePersonified · 28/12/2020 20:27

@CaptainSandy

Boris, just think about it , he`s sorted brexit for us

Aye hasn't he just. He engineered the whole sorry mess then, with a great flourish of last-minute dramatics, pulled a thin, terrible, destructive deal out of his hat.
Yet apparently that's got people clapping like fucking seals.

God - I wish there was a "like" button on here!
MaryLeeOnHigh · 29/12/2020 03:06

As for the pandemic - well I'm not sure anyone else could've done better

Given that, of the major world leaders, only nutters like Trump and Bolsinara have done worse, I don't really see how you can say that.

akerman · 29/12/2020 03:45

He missed five Cobra meetings, went on holiday in February, chose not to shut down Cheltenham races, shook hands with Covid patients, failed to lockdown in good time more than once . . . And people think. O body else could have done better.

Wow.

akerman · 29/12/2020 03:46

Not to mention paying billions to his friends, like Dido Harding, for PPE that never arrived, all the while bragging about his world-beating system.

There are, to this day, no controls in airports.

My dog could have done better.

nosswith · 29/12/2020 06:48

To repeat an earlier comment.

Not worst in living memory, worst ever.

LakieLady · 29/12/2020 06:55

Borrowing money to just give it away - like that solves everything!

Borrowing money to create jobs, by investing in public projects, was practiced by both Labour and Tories during the 40s-70s. It only stopped when Thatcher and her cronies bought into the relatively untested monetarist economic theories of Friedman and von Hayek, and gave us the highest unemployment figures since the Great Depression.

We're still seeing the effects of that policy today in our housing shortage. If councils had been allowed to use the money from selling council housing to build more, instead of being forced to pay back debt early, we wouldn't have a housing crisis in the UK, or all the social issues arising from it.