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politicalbetting.com » Blog Archive » The Thatcher polling continues….Best PM since ’45 and her greatest achievements
YouGov’s ‘Greatest British PM since 1945′ findings broken down by party support twitter.com/MSmithsonPB/st…
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Edited extra bit: just had a weird error. Tried posting the above very shortly after the thread was created and had a 'DiscussionID required' box pop up. I checked, and was already signed in. Upon the second attempt the message went through fine.
I'm hoping this is just a one off. Incidentally, thanks Mr. Smithson for your e-mail.
Poor old Heath. no votes at all....
Given when the poll was done it's results are not a huge surprise.
For heaven's sake, she was a politician, a formidable one, I grant you, a necessary one by the end of the 1970's. She achieved much; she made some appalling errors and she started to believe her own propaganda. There is stuff to learn, both from her successes and mistakes.
But she is not some non-partisan Mother of the Nation and all this nostalgia is becoming a bit gross, frankly, and risks backfiring on the Tories.
Your uncle sounds amazing.
Best PM since 1945? Churchill gets 24% despite only being in office 6 months?
Sir Winston Churchill is the correct answer to that question. That his achievements after 1945 were relatively slight is neither here nor there. He was Prime Minister and he was the greatest of the list available to pick from.
Mr. M, Churchill won in 1951, I think, after Attlee scraped a victory in 1950 and then Churchill kept the PCP camped in Westminster to inflict endless defeats on Labour, prompting another election which Churchill then won.
I'm not sure his record in that period was overly remarkable though?
Blair too high, Attlee too low is a given.
Thatcher
Attlee
Blair
Heath
Wilson
On the basis of a combination of 'getting things done' (Thatcher, Attlee, Heath (EEC)) and 'winning elections' (Blair, Wilson).
Still waiting for the internals of the Guardian ICM poll to see who the fans of nationalised industry are....
Certainly nothing to compare with Thatcher and the Falklands, or Blair and 9/11 and the fall out from that. Sometimes great PM's are created due to events and things outside of their control (and how they cope with it).
If anything, luckily world affairs are pretty small fry and localised at the moment.
On the semantics, the others 'have been' PM, which is what the question asks, Cameron is PM, and can not be judged in the past tense (although many wish his premiership could be judged in the past).
http://ukgeneralelection2015.blogspot.co.uk/
He can only be assessed properly when his time is done, not unlike a roast parsnip.
Lord Home of the Hirsel
Baroness Thatcher
Earl Attlee
Earl of Stockton
Sir Edward Heath
Edited as I demoted SuperMac to a mere Viscountcy !!
Perhaps to understand the seventies you have to have sat round the gas lamps playing cards during the three day week when Joe Gormley turned the lights off.
You have to have heard the stories of vicious intimidation of honest workers during show of hands votes on strikes, often held in car parks.
You have to have ridden in an Austin Allegro.
Thatcher
Churchill
MacMillan
And thats it the rest for one reason or another are so far beneath those three they do not deserve a vote.......
Furthermore, may I thank the left for reminding me why its so easy to despise them. Its enough to make people vote Tory again.
You can drag the left out of the sewers but you can't drag the sewer out of the left
And with that I shall depart in the knowledge that it seems Margaret Thatcher can do the one thing Cameron is utterly incapable of doing. Even in death it seems she is able to give the Tory polling figures a lift! Pity for Dave such a bounce won't last very long.....
One day I pulled up the handbrake and the mounting fell out of the chassis.
http://blogs.spectator.co.uk/alex-massie/2013/04/margaret-thatcher-an-accidental-libertarian-heroine/
"That is, just as socialism was challenged and ultimately defeated by Thatcherite economics so too was social conservatism. The triumph of economic liberalism begat the victory of social liberalism too. Margaret Thatcher’s economic libertarianism (if it can so be called) would eventually advance the cause of social libertarianism as well. That she would have disapproved of this matters little; it is part of her legacy too. And a welcome one."
Macmillan was raised to the peerage as Earl of Stockton and Viscount Macmillan of Ovenden.
The fact is that much of British industry was putting itself in the scrapyard due to its woeful performance. A legion of excuses was trotted out for why we weren't any good. The Germans had 'newer plant' due to the Marshall plan, for example.
Thank you.
I remember my uncle complaining about his Morris Marina. All of the instruments on the dashboard slipped out of their mountings within months of purchase.
I hated that car.
After Wednesday, I doubt we'll hear from him again....
RT @nicholaswatt: Speech by @conor_burnsMP worth watching. Planning to speak from spot where Lady Thatcher made her maiden speech + where she sat after PM
(not to mention I inherited my grandparents on in about 1997...needless to say it didn't last long in the hands of a 17yr old...), so technically that was my first car.
If I'm ever famous enough to be the 'star in a reasonably priced car' on Top Gear I might have to lie and make a better history for myself...
Mini - clapped out gearbox, cramped.
Marina - clapped out, underpowered, hideous colours.
Allegro - worse than the marina.
Maxi - fit only for a forfeit at a party, go outside - laugh at a Austin Maxi and return.
MG Midget - too small, hideous colours.
TR7 - made in Speke so badly than even BL closed the factory down. Great example of a mediocre replacement of better designs.
In the 70s, the Germans and Japanese were still able to sell cars here in spite of revaluations of the mark and yen which made their products more expensive. BL, Hillman -Chrylser- Talbot purveyors of unreliable, poorly designed, poorly assembled junk.
As far as Attlee goes, his importance on the administrative side of WWII gets forgotten, beyond that he was a prime minister who effected massive change over a short time, more than almost any other PM.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IQE6-jIx3CQ
http://news.bbc.co.uk/onthisday/hi/dates/stories/april/5/newsid_2822000/2822959.stm
On the plus side, I've never seen the slightest point in consciously buying British ever since.
He was, iirc, the only MP to ever hold his final constituency.
As Churchill said: "Atlee is a modest man, and has plenty to be modest about".</blockquote>
'mod·est
[mod-ist]
adjective
1. having or showing a moderate or humble estimate of one's merits, importance, etc.; free from vanity, egotism, boastfulness, or great pretensions.'
I think that may lie within the category of possibly apocryphal Churchill-isms, but if not he was being uncharacteristically loose with language unless he wished to imply that Atlee underestimated his own plentiful qualities.
As was that ludicrous flying wedge of boxiness, the Austin Princess.
It was the complete lack of pride that really got me. Even the features these cars had were only grudgingly put there because the competition had them.
Left to their own devices, they would have been producing trabants.
In tribute to Thatcher in Commons, Cameron says attendance of those who "profoundly disagreed" with her shows "generosity of spirit"....and statesmanship....