Who was PM during the best of times for you?

[verdantverdure]

Me?

Blair. Brown, first bit of Cameron.

On paper I earn more money now but everything's tits up isn't it? From the economy to shit on beaches to being able to get access to the NHS when needed.

Blair for me.

*If you ask the question in 30 years the people who are 18 or so now will probably say Rishi Sunak (if he's around long enough) purely because, as the OP stated, he was PM during their best times. Not because he's a great PM but because it was their best times - young, beautiful, carefree (for five minutes ), able to travel, party with friends, go to university. No ties, few responsibilities, self belief.

As I said upthread, Thatcher was PM during my best times, but my best times had nothing to do with her, they were to do with being young, free, single and the world being my oyster*

I asked some 18 year olds at a party recently and they talked about climate change, sewage, Brexit screwing up study/travel/science, the things they can’t have/do because mortgages have gone up and potentially never being able to have children or a home of their own because wages are so low

It’s certainly possible they’ll say Sunak was PM during the best of times for them…

But only if things continue to get even worse.

Wilson and Callaghan.

I was 18 when Wilson got elected for the second time. I had a public sector job and my wages went up loads of times. I was 19 when I left home, and moved into a really cheap, but big, rented flat with my boyfriend and another friend.

I have never felt so well off as I did then. We had at least two holidays a year, ran cars, I bought my work clothes in Jaeger and all my shoes came from Russell & Bromley, we were always going out: seeing bands, eating out, going to the theatre, the races, all sorts of stuff.

Then Thatcher got elected and it all went to shit.

Blair for me. I wasn't 18 nor was I carefree.

I had to assure my god-daughters (18 & 20) on FaceTime last night that things can get better so I don't think they'll be answering Sunak to this question in the future.

Blair caused most of the problems we are suffering today and the conservatives made it worse with Brexit and the Trussterfuck.

I think the biggest issues we are facing is on cost of living, so housing and rents - Thatcher sold off council housing, effectively privatising social housing for the least well off.
She also privatised our utilities (so can charge what they like) and failed to put in a state controlled system for North sea oil (as Norway did) so this golden opportunity wasted.

So think we need to go back a decade or two before we blame Blair.

Blair sold off the council houses, water, energy and the railways?

Thatcher also encouraged the 'I'm alright Jack, sod the poor' mentality that seems to be prevalent now. The 'greed is good ' decade. I think a lot of this attitude came via the US but it was definitely fostered by the Thatcherite Tories.

All of those things are true, but eventually any government would have done that as the alternative would be to raise taxes and that wouldn't win elections.

In my humble opinion, the Blair government introduced a sense of entitlement to the generations since. I think he did the wrong thing for the right reasons. Take obtaining a degree. Controversial this may be but not everyone should have a degree. Everyone should have the chance to strive for one though which I think was his intention. What actually happened was that people now have a degree in underwater basket weaving and it's devalued the whole education system.

Since Blair there also seems to have been a shift of nobody taking responsibility for their own actions. It's always up to a mysterious 'they' to sort it out.

It can't be laid at the door of any single party though, as they are all as bad as each other. I think maybe a better question might be to asl which prime minister do you believe genuinely had the best interests of the UK at heart? For me this definitely is not Blair, who went to war for personal gain, i would say Brown did, i think Thatcher did although again didnt necessarily do the right things, i think May did but the rest? Not really. John Smith probably would have been good, or David Milliband.

@verdantverdure Blair did continue selling council houses when he could have stopped doing so.

I think the current system is unworkable now. I am politically homeless as I don't trust any of them. Starter isn't inspiring any sort of confidence, and I could never vote for the party that took us out of the EU.

@HappiestSleeping

For me, the sense of entitlement has always been there, the NHS, free education, social security safety net!
What has probably changed is personal responsibility has been removed, its always someone else's fault.

The UK is still about average for numbers of students who get a degree, we really did lag behind before & i don't know any Uni that offers a course in basket weaving, the issue we have now is student debt.

I don't think Blair went to war for personal gain, i think he had no choice, Sadam had used WMD in the past, no evidence he had destroyed them and Blair took the USA at face value.
What if Sadam had stayed in power, then used them on the Marsh Arabs, attacked Kuwait with them?
We'd all be saying Blair has their deaths on his hands!

Anyway, on balance, i'd still say Blair! but agree on EU and Starmer - not sure who i will vote for.

Lionel Jospin 😉

@Howpo

Yes, I agree about the personal responsibility. I am probably viewing the sense of entitlement as changing maybe because it came into my consciousness as a thing as I became aware of politics. Maybe it was there before. The fact that many expect to take out but complain about putting in verifies your point.

I was being facetious about the underwater basket weaving, I just meant that the majority of applicants I get for jobs now have degrees in weird and wonderful things, whereas they used to have degrees relevant for the workplace. I had a guy rock up for a senior position very proud of his achievement of a degree in contemporary circus.

It is true that Blair could not have gone to war without the whole due process and getting a vote through parliament, and it is also true that there were apparent threats that needed dealing with. It is also true that it didn't hurt his bank account as his investments in oil companies did very well as a result. I don't imagine he sleeps easily at night, but it is more comfortable crying in a Mercedes-Benz than it would be on a bicycle.

For years I've spoilt my ballot paper as it's the only way to vote for 'none of the above', but this is now too important to do that. The Conservatives cannot be allowed to continue to screw up the country. They're too detached from reality.

I don't think people are entitled as such - we pay quite a lot in tax for health services and other services, so we are paying for it and shod expect it to be there when we need it. We also pay private companies lots of money, so would expect the same and not to expect them to do things like polite our waters abd make us ill.

Some things are about basic rights, for instance a child with SEN should be able to access a suitable education, which isn't happening for all children now. I think this 'everyone's entitled' attitude has allowed the government to not really do their job and build a functioning, growing country and instead has allowed corruption and plundering from wealthy elites to be rife. We have bailed out businesses and banks and they never change their behaviour, always expect bailouts to be funded by tax payers. That's pretty fucking entitled if you ask me.

@HappiestSleeping Yes i do always vote, i d never ruin my ballot paper, it just encourages them.
I think i will vote for whoever looks like getting out the incumbent Tory.

Must admit i didn't realise Blair had a financial interest in oil companies, i did check.

Contemporary Circus sounds very tough, Bath Spa offer it and its full on performing and directing but i would like to think that people who do this, would try to work in the relevant sector.

Imho people in the UK don't pay enough tax to feel entitled to so many "free" things, if we want European levels of public service, we are going to have to pay European tax levels and get rid of Trident.

Blair / Brown for us

It's been Blair/Brown for most of us I think.

We can't all be the same age can we?!

I wouldn't have thought so maybe it's because it was a long stretch of time that was so different to the years prior.

Controversial but I have happy nostalgic memories of Boris doing his lockdown announcements. I don’t know why. Theresa May wasn’t too bad though IMO and David Cameron was an idiot but also thought he held his own well!

Tony Blair

John Major for the fact that I was at secondary school and enjoyed that - nothing to do with the govt!

Blair/ Brown for the fact that you felt the govt were actually trying to improve people’s lives/ the country, and things basically worked. Shame about Iraq but otherwise was a good time to be alive!

Yeah that might have been it.

Things settled down and were looking up.

I'm not sure if we would have had kids without the Blair/Brown years. It felt "safe" to somehow. I know that sounds weird.

Brown - I got the health in pregnancy grant when havig DC1 and a child trust fund which started me saving for the DCs futures and child benefit which helped with the costs of having DC. I took the DC to state funded childrens centres activities when little.

Under Cameron/Osborne's time in office they stopped child benefit being a universal benefit. I still think its grossly unfair that two parents earning 50k each (100k) can keep their CB but the children of a single earner on 60k doesn't get it. The local childrens centres lost their funding and have to fundraise independently since Cameron & Osborne cut the funding for them.

The Blair years were brilliant. It was a time of such hope and it was hands down the best time to work in education.

It was a time of great optimism - quite the opposite of now.

I'm early 40s. I do think as a teen/late teen and early 20s in the Blair/Brown era there was more hope. I recall Labour coming in when I was 15 and my elder peers feeling really happy about it. Personally I still felt poor due to being on a rate of pay linked to my age, but looking back I somehow managed to go on a few holidays, buy clothes and go out and still managed my rent (maybe with the help of credit). By the time I though about buying a home in my early twenties it was pre-financial crash and out of reach for me and has never since been affordable, although I went to uni in my 20's and then onto a low paid job/had kids for a while, so timing has been awful for getting ahead in life. I think the GFC was an opportunity to sort out social mobility and housing, but instead it has gotten far worse.

Partner and I have an pretty reasonable household income now, buy yet again the boom and bust cycle isn't too favourable for us. I think we would have felt better off having our kids during the late 90s and early 00's. Colleagues of mine who brought kids up during this time were shocked I couldn't just stay at home and be better off than working FT. They expected us to get quite a bit of help due to us both working in low paid roles. They couldn't understand why there was no benefits or we couldn't just get a council house, but this was in 2014 when we were well into austerity.

I think hope for anyone having a bright future has been decimated now. So I guess I would say probably the Blair years just because people felt hopeful then. They were a lot more focused on children and their future and less focused on keeping older voters happy. I really didn't like Blair that much though, but policy wise it was a lot better. The current incumbents are utter fruitcakes.