Worst in Living Memory?

[ElephantWhaleRabbit]

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?

@Pukkatea

The last time I remember a PM having to deal with multiple crises was Gordon Brown, who within a year had the return of foot and mouth, mass flooding and the global financial collapse. Labour were subsequently voted out and are still today blamed for the finances in this country when they've been out of power for over a decade and they've gotten worse and worse.

Whereas now everyone is falling over themselves to excuse the tories for things that are absolutely their own fault. The double standards are astounding.

This.

YA absolutely NBU.
He has lied, obfuscated, procrastinated, handed contracts worth billions to his mates for PPE, thus ensuring that we, as a nation, do not get proper supplies or a proper Track and Trace system. If the virus is worse here than elsewhere, we should be looking at that (and at his constant delaying. He should have shut down the Cheltenham races. he should have had a two-week circuit breaker at half term, as Starmer suggested.)
He refused to extend the transition period this year to allow for a more orderly Brexit.
He never did have an oven-ready deal and was prepared to break international law because he wanted to renege on the deal he told us he had.
But he'll get away with it, because there are enough people who want to absolve him of everything because he's such a jolly good laugh and full of japes.

@TooManyDogsandChildren

Tony Blair and the WMD?

Gordon Brown and the changes to trust law affecting vulnerable people?

Teresa May and her determination to sign the Brexit paperwork when she had not one iota of a plan?

Nope we have a long track road of shit politicians.

I can't stand Blair but he was a strong leader

Brown handled the financial crash well on the whole

I agree with the last sentence, but you can't underestimate just how out of his depth this fool is.

There wouldn’t have been these constant u turns. Thatcher would be out leading from the front. She would not have left the UK going down the toilet. It wouldn’t make everyone happy but honestly you would like Thatcher on your side when you were fighting something. I would....

Has it occurred to anyone that all these messages that it will be fine are totally deluded? We have had one delay in Dover which has prompted Sainsbury’s to say there may be limitations on fresh food. You can assume that for no deal Brexit too.

Logistically, this country is on a knife edge because of this PM and his supporters. The UK is very very dependent on its neighbours for food and food markets so it’s deluded to imagine no deal will not make a difference.

Any suggestions as to who would have handled this better. Forget about your political views. Who would it be?

Whereas now everyone is falling over themselves to excuse the tories for things that are absolutely their own fault. The double standards are astounding.

It's been said recently that if this was a Labour government there'd have been some kind of coup by now.

Imagine if it was Corbyn and not Boris.

Corbyn and McDonnell with Diane Abbott. It’s making me go very cold.

@Bathroom12345

Any suggestions as to who would have handled this better. Forget about your political views. Who would it be?

It's an impossible job and any PM would have made mistakes over the last 9 months and whatever you do you won't please people who want harsher lockdowns or the civil liberties brigader.

However, you have to have a strategy and manage it the best you can. Sturgeon has at least managed that in Scotland. Or Merkel in Germany.

@Cocomarine

I expect his personal opinion about people dying from Covid19 might be marginally more humanitarian than Thatcher’s would have been.

This. I shudder to think how Thatcher's lot would have approached all this.

I'm not a fan of really any recent PM but I'm amazed there are people who think Boris would handle this better than people like Tony Blair. He was a good communicator and took the job seriously. Boris isn't good at communicating. He's charismatic and that's different.

We know how other PMs would have handled Covid because this is not the only pandemic in living memory.

We know how previous PMs handled AIDS, SARS, Ebola and Bird Flu. We know how they handled Variant CJD.
What none of them did was to use it as an excuse to enrich their party donors and fail to keep the WHO informed.

We know how they would have handled financial crashes like Black Monday 1987, the ERM (Black Wednesday 1992), the 2009 crash.
What none of them did was to deliberately trash their country for disaster capitalist vultures and hedge fund managers to pick over.

He’s really started losing his hair (completely misses point of thread)

Gordon Brown? John Major?

Or sleazy Tony Blair.

It's a catalogue of A holes and personality vacuums to choose from

@MimiDaisy11

I'm not a fan of really any recent PM but I'm amazed there are people who think Boris would handle this better than people like Tony Blair. He was a good communicator and took the job seriously. Boris isn't good at communicating. He's charismatic and that's different.

He's a populist. That's useless in a health pandemic. Look at Trump and America.

My memory goes back to McMillan (just).
As for feeling sorry for Johnson because he has a pandemic to deal with, Brexit and a small baby. Boo hoo.

I doubt whether he is getting up in the night to see to the small baby.
Brexit - a mess of his own making.
Pandemic - unforeseen, but handled badly, with dithering and failed contracts wasting taxpayers money awarded to cronies.

Could one person have handled it better? That's what they have a Cabinet for you know - to spread the load, not just to be nodding dogs to massage a PMs ego.

People mentioned how others had to deal with wars. As with the last War, Chamberlain got the boot, to have Churchill installed, with Attlee, as effectively PM for domestic issues. I.e. a joint effort in the war time coalition, in circumstances just as difficult in their own way.

Harold Wilson handled his Referendum much better - he was dealing with the same sorts of divisions within his party, but then, he always had a reputation for being crafty.

We might yet see the break up of the UK within the next ten years.

So I would put Johnson as the worst, followed by Cameron.

I'm a Conservative through and through (and remainer) but I'd like to have seen how David Milliband would have got on, had his mother not told him to step aside and let Ed have a go at the labour leadership. I reckon I might have voted for David Milliband. He seemed to care about everyone.

BoJo is a nobjockey bless him but can you imagine Corbyn in charge? I shudder to think.

I don’t like him, but I don’t necessarily think any other contemporary PM would have done any better in these circumstances. That being said he’s going to be remembered as the PM who cancelled Christmas and for the, expected, rubbish brexit deal.

I actually don’t think I’d have made a single decision differently. He’s tried to give people Christmas, he’s tried to balance the economy vs lock down vs people’s mental health. We lived in a very densely packed very connected, liberal free thinking democracy and whoever was in charge during this pandemic had a hill to climb.
I think sometimes he needs to explain things more clearly and he tries to be popular and I think rishi shank would have been better at just getting to the point decisively! But that’s all I’d really call him up on

[quote Callipygion]There was a good piece on him in the guardian the other day

www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2020/dec/20/sudden-u-turn-over-christmas-boris-johnson-caps-year-of-debacles[/quote]
The Guardian, the left's equivalent of the DM when it comes to impartiality!

What,? He tried to give people Christmas, just to go and cancel it at the last moment? Oh please.

I don't think he'd made any decisions differently because he never makes any.

Covid has required a response that was not his primary skill but I do think he's clever enough to grow into the job once Covid is over, and hasn't done a bad job. He's been hampered in that he only chose pro Brexit ministers at a time when that was only the second most important thing happening. Gavin Williamson is a huge liability. I think as we finalise the details on Brexit, the country will need someone with imagination to restructure the economy who thinks long term and doesn't get dragged down by a few queues in Kent or other bumps in the road. I do think he'll grow into that job, but he needs to hire carefully to complement the shortfalls in his own skillset.
Not remotely interested in his kids or his private life - completely irrelevant to me.
I assume anyone saying he's thick has also managed to get into both Eton and Oxford (or similar) on a scholarship? There's a reason why that's hard.
Anyone saying he's lazy should check out the link helpfully posted upthread by KennDodd. Makes me feel lazy just reading it and I'm a relentless hard worker to a fault.

He's bumbling along fairly inadequately and not doing much. But he isn't the worst. Imagine what Corbyn would have been like.

I would have rather Theresa May was in charge, or Rory Stewart. I would even have liked Kier Starmer. All 3 seem decent and trustworthy and I would trust them to do the right thing.
A pandemic was always going to be shit, but I have to say that this government seem incompetent and corrupt.

I feel sorry for him - getting Covid obviously scared him badly and he's lost his nerve so he listens too much to the doom mongers. As a natural libertarian it must be hard for him presiding over the lockdowns but he no longer has the confidence to stand up against them.

Worst PM by far was Gordon Brown although I think Mark Drakeford as FM in Wales may just be about to overtake him