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.

Tony Blair.

It was the Labour Government under Blair that introduced tuition fees ...

Yes, some students had to pay up to £1000 a year so if you were one of the ones who had to pay, a degree could cost you as much as £3000!

Yes friends of mine in France, pay around 1000 euros, i think in Germany, they pay nothing at all.

We are supposed to be wealthier than both France and Italy....

In Italy, average undergraduate programmes at public institutions can cost between €900 (~US$1,000) and €4,000 (~US$4,800) per year, with the average being approximately €1,500 (~US$1,800)

John major. I've just checked and hadn't realised her was prime minister for so long.

I was the last cohort to get my degree for free.

Wow. That's a proper "end of an era" moment.

Tony Blair money into education, NHS crime was falling yes I know we spend millions on an unjust war,but that aside I think they were our best times,I hope those times come back because when you see a single mum or dad going without food so their children can eat or an old person sitting on their own inside a cold flat in the winter that is not acceptable in 2023!

I think I would give John Major more credit.

The government he led, against expectations, rowed back from the Lawson boom and ERM crash, and left Tony Blair positioned financially to fulfil much of his manifesto. It was politically and economically painful at the time with massive mortgage rates plus a frightening level of job losses and home repossessions. But to give him his due, he stood his ground and sacrificed personal popularity in service of the one nation while getting on (mostly) quite well with Brussels.

Tony Blair

Yes, agreed.

Wasn't he always doing battle against the ideological wing of the Tory party that has now been in charge of it since Brexit?

"The Bastards"

The mass accession of eastern European countries in 2005 was a game changer. Blair's government underestimated the pull factor and didn't use the option to limit numbers at all, so people flooded into the UK to earn better, and suppressed local earnings... to the delight of folk who wanted cheap nannies, cleaners and builders. And that was a much more important influence on the outcome of the 2016 referendum than is usually acknowledged inside the M25.

But yes, the Tories were fatally split between those who were Team Europe (generally a bit older, with war memories) and those representing constituencies that were hit very hard by a wave of cheap, fairly unskilled labour.

@verdantverdure , please see one post above. No, I don't think Major was at war with ideologues then. There was a furious debate at the time of Maastricht over whether the EEC moved toward political and financial union (the euro) or remained a customs and trading union with cultural exchanges and freedoms to retire or work within the EC. France and Ireland had referenda, two apiece IIRC, before deciding, and Major refused one in the UK. It was mass movement into the original member states from the former Iron Curtain countries that lit the economic blue touch paper.

And if I may trespass further on your attention, a lot of the migration worked well in both directions for many years, at roughly even numbers in and out. A great many British people retired to sunnier climates and renovated properties in depopulating villages and small towns in rural France and Spain where the local population were leaving for better job prospects in cities or other countries, including the UK. The costs of employing (and shedding) staff in much of N Europe has been a brake on employment rates. Youth unemployment in most of S Europe is still running at above 25%.

I don't remember it like that.

I just remember "The Bastards" screwing over their own party, just like they are now.

https://www.theoldie.co.uk/article/beaten-by-the-bastards

https://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/amp/entry/john-major-european-union-conservative-partynn_4142916/

https://www.taxresearch.org.uk/Blog/2023/05/14/the-bastards-have-always-done-for-the-tories/

https://amp.theguardian.com/politics/1993/jul/25/politicalnews.uk

https://www.theneweuropean.co.uk/brexit-news-alastair-campbell-on-the-brexit-trade-deal-6872054/

It was a robust debate, and Major did call the anti-EU element bastards, but he had most of the really big beasts in his camp, including Ken Clarke and Michael Heseltine.

Both France and Ireland voted against further integration in the early 1990s, and needed quite a bit of coaxing. The UK should also have had a referendum on Maastricht at the time and I still think that failure broadened the spearhead of the ERG and their co-combatants.

None there all fales promises and lies

I enjoyed this quote:

"Calling three of my colleagues, or a number of my colleagues, 'bastards' was absolutely unforgivable. My only excuse is that it was true."

Probably the current lot if we’re basing it on job and earnings, although I think that’s in spite of them not because of them. From a personal perspective, definitely Blair. Everything seemed so good and optimistic back then. Maybe that was my age!

@verdantverdure , IMO it is impossible to connect the 1990s Tory party to the current shower.

I was, and remain, a fan of the One Nation Tory Party that governed then. Socially, much more liberal than mainstream Labour, but with business experience and economic common sense. I won't vote for a Tory front bench that JRM supports. I am happy that Sunak's Cabinet is racially representative of the nation the UK is becoming BUT there is a mountain to climb out of the economic abyss.

We need to do something more constructive than just fling money at the NHS, which will soak up almost 45% of GNP very soon, and waste much of it. A significant item in the growing waiting list is the doctor's strike. In their dreams are they going to get 35% pay increases. Take 15% catch up, and RPI.

Caring for older citizens, who worked and contributed by the rules of their day, could absorb the rest, unless we revisit Theresa May's proposals. It really isn't that unfair that old people's estates are expected to contribute to their comfort and safety in their last two or three years, but it is also reasonable to think that having paid their way and bought their houses from tax paid income, that they should be allowed to guard the last £100k (without tax) to leave to their kids, provided they have it to bequeath.

I read somewhere today that Labour plan to depthcharge the IHT free transfer of agricultural land, which I think is a GOOD plan, because (locally) I have watched wealthy people bid up its value to use it as a store of wealth without productive use for food production, knowing they can't lose, and won't pay any tax on inheritance.

He said it in a news interview I watched although that's a good spot. As others have said, he wrote two news columns and landed on the side he thought dog must chance of getting him into number 10.

@verdantverdure , IMO it is impossible to connect the 1990s Tory party to the current shower.

A lot of John Major's "bastards" are still in it .

Iain Duncan Smith
Liam Fox
John Redwood
David Davis
Bill Cash

And their obsession with the EU gave us Brexit.

Brexit is the Tory bastards Maastricht isolationist policy on steroids.

And Liz Truss's "Mini Budget" is their economic wet dream.

Both are currently screwing all of us over.

The Bastard technique of screwing over their own Prime Ministers when they don't get what they want lives on as David Cameron and Theresa May can attest.

And Sunak may be about to find out.

I think there's a link between our lives being better and which policies are being enacted, but you don't have to.

Just think back to your best of times and then think or look up who was PM.

Someone must have been PM during the best of times for you?

I'm earning more now but it's because of me, not because of them. I think I should be a lot better off as a 40 year old. Should own a home and be able to have a decent holiday and my own car given I have a degree, professional job and work pretty hard. Inflation and asset priceinflation/house prices and high rents have made sure this is impossible.

I would have been a lot better off if I was in this position now in the Blair years. Things like education local authorities and the NHS would actually function for a start.

This current lot are bunch of unhinged crooks. I'm not even sure they were born on this planet. Maybe David Icke was right. 😂

The Tories seem intent on leaning into the "unhinged" part at their conference.

It's almost a if they know only the permanently aggrieved and alarmingly gullible might consider voting for them.

I would do a count, but Tony Blair has stormed it, hasn't he?

No contest.