If the PM was ... what would they do?

[Jourdain11]

Intended to be lighthearted?

Jeremy Corbyn? Panic would be in his eyes, I fear. Or he might have proven unexpectedly masterful. Who knows?

Theresa May - would make a lot of set-piece speeches from a podium. ("This is the best way, it is the only way." "I have just chaired a meeting of the Cobra committee, and it has been decided...." "Some people call this the Nasty Virus. And they are right.")

David Cameron - I just can't tell?!?!?

Gordon Brown - would be grumpy and on top of things.

Tony Blair - would be saying "I sincerely believe a lot", and being generally icky, but probably effective.

Can't really remember Major and Thatcher.

Of course, if Bercow were still Speaker, he might have declared himself Emergency Leader, under the power given to him by Standing Order 32, last used in 1641 😂

It could be expanded to recent LOTOs.

Ed Milliband?
Michael Howard 😓
IDS 😱

And PMs that never were, ie, Ken Clarke

Thatcher had a degree in Chemistry (as does Merkel). They can understand an exponential graph and sift through evidence.

Merkel is doing well, so would Thatcher.

Yeah, from all I have heard and read about Thatcher, I can imagine it would be so.

I'm curious what people think about Corbyn. I think he'd either be unexpectedly commanding and amazing or incredibly awful.

Thatcher would have boxed this off in no time.

Cameron - Now let me be clear. We are a society. A Big Society.
Corbyn - Can see him losing his rag and calling panic buyers 'unbelievably selfish' on national television. But would look after us.
Macron - Can just stand there and look commanding, that'll do me!

I miss Barack Obama, he would have sorted the world out no problem.

Yeah, I do think Thatcher would have shown this virus who was boss pretty early on

Corbyn would have told us that we have nothing to fear, as Covid 19 identifies as a common cold

Captain Jack Sparrow.

Would get drunk on rum.

Corbyn would have already decimated the economy, his only hope would be handing out generic paracetamol.

Mind you at least everything would already have been nationalised!

I didn't like Thatcher but she would have understood the issues here and wouldn't have been afraid to make difficult decisions. She actually took climate change seriously because of her understanding of chemistry.

Blair would have made the difficult decisions necessary as well.

There have been no other PMs that I can remember who would have done any better than Johnson. (Major completely screwed up on BSE.)

Margaret Thatcher would remember the great smog of 1952-3 which at the time was estimated to kill ten thousand but was probably far higher. She would have shut the pubs and put troops on the streets much earlier.

Corbyn would seek advice from qualified people and listen to it. He would not have tried to cheer everybody up and promise it would all go just ticketty-boo like BJ.

Cameron would have fucked off to Cornwall with as many of his kids as he could remember.

The intruiging one is Theresa May. Not at all sure whether she would have reached out to the opposition or tried to keep her right-flank onside.

I tend to agree. I personally believe that a major factor in the abysmal governmental response is that we have a prime minister who does not have a science background. They have scientific advisors, but the advisors had to compete with Cummings et al. They probably had to explain the maths first, and after that it would have lacked power and seemed too much like a worst-case hypothetical situation that would never happen.

I think it might also depend how much they care about being popular!

Boris cares. Call Me Dave cared. Major cared. Blair at the start of his premiership cared.

I can imagine that Blair would have been much more decisive at the end of his premiership when he didn't give a damn what anyone thought about him!

Macron definitely has a touch of Tony about him IMO... He's also got a bit of the Chirac "I had 82% of the vote" thing going on (when in both cases, a large part of that vote was against the Hard Right rather than for him....).

Thatcher would have shut this shit down early doors. She loved the army and poured a lot of money into defence. She would have had soldiers out on the streets the first chance she got.

David Cameron would have resigned and run off to his country pile - probably leaving one of his kids behind as he went.