UKH

My wife and I just idly discussed which member of the cabinet would be best to take over as PM if the Cummings business brings Johnson down. However, this became very depressing very quickly.

So, a more interesting game: which of your lifetime's PMs would you choose to put in the hot seat right now?

I astonished myself by choosing a Tory (and not the one with the science degree either)...

Tony Blair

Hmm, that's a surprisingly unpleasant question to answer!

I'm horrified to say I'd have to go for John Major, as the most level-headed, pragmatic, moderate and trustworthy option (hopefully to be ousted by a sensible leftie at an election once the various crises have passed).

Second choice would probably have to be Gordon Brown, which also makes me a little nauseous.

Hah, someone's edited the current PM on this page:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_prime_ministers_of_the_United_Kingdom

It won't last long, so here's a screenshot:

For PM from the start of this year, Thatcher or Brown would have been the most effective, though every PM in my memory would have been far better than Johnson. Right now, Major or early years Blair would be more suitable. 
For replacement, Hunt seems the most obvious. Gove is probably the most powerful man in the cabinet, but he has been the single most disappointing Minister in this crisis. Rory Stewart called this earlier than any U.K. politician, and deserves credit. 

Major for me too. Possibly Blair or Brown, but actually right now I think I'd pick Major.

Of the current crop... ye gods, when Hunt seem to be the best bet, we're in trouble. Actually I'd probably say Sunak. He strikes me as least incompetent...

I couldn't pick Blair, as I think it was probably his government that put the idea that honesty actually matters into terminal decline, leading us to where we are today.

Post-war I would choose Clement Attlee; took a war broken bankrupt country, and in spite of this poor 'wicket' managed to form the NHS, Welfare state and overhaul living and accommodation standards with 'homes fit for hero's' . Also, more controversially,  he wasn't scarred of nationalizing critical infrastructure....which is something we need to think about for PPE, Testing ect.

More recent John Major, listened to his advisors, had no ego to get in the way of decision making, and wasn't afraid to attempt to address apparently intractable problems in the form of NI and just keep working away at it for the common good......had the decency to keep his affair private!

If forced Tony Blair, but first term only.

Yes, and his legacy was so profound, the Tories are still struggling to try to dismantle parts of it decades later.

If you're old enough, maybe. I can't go any further back than Callaghan, and I can't say I remember much about him...

Miss-read the OP's post as 'living memory'...............Attlee is clearly still a memory for our oldest generation.

I thought Atlee would have been such an obvious choice!  Somewhat before my time, though.

Argh, I'd have to have had a past life and remember it to pick Attlee, since I missed the lifetime part of the OP. 

Gordon Brown or John Mayor for me then, they both seem to have enough sense to listen to scientists or 'the experts' and put their ego to one side in the national interest, at least in a crisis, since there's got to be some ego involved in wanting to  be PM. In their own ways they both have concerns for the poorest in society (which covid is hitting the most), you can't act in the interests of those if you don't in a fundamental way, like those do. They're both decent in that sense.

Indeed, the nhs was initiated by those evil Tories under Churchill following a review during the war years. Attlee was fortunate to be in office later. Much like Major got the ball rolling with NI peace but receives next to no credit. 

Major would be my choice, or sunak. It's a desire cast to pick from though. Could be worse, USA elections soon!! 

I would EVEN have May back.....at least she looked at details and even understood that many saw the Tories as the nasty party. Well , it's got nastier since then.

Enver Hoxha, Mao Zedong, Leonid Ilyich Brezhnev, Walter Ulbricht, Erich Honecker,Fidel, etcetc

Even she had a couple of dubious advisors. She's not the first or last. Clearly to rise to through the ranks  any party and even be elected as an mp you have to be reasonably astute to some level, be it driven by skills, cash, or influence. But so many show such poor wisdom in who they choose as advisors. 

I actually think Theresa May might have done a reasonable job of it.  As, I expect, would her idol Thatcher - I have no time for her politics generally, but her authoritativeness and decisiveness would have probably worked quite well in this specific context.

May was perhaps a little "weak and wobbly" but fundamentally she was not a liar.

Definitely not Bliar.  He's good for nothing but serving himself.

Nicola Sturgeon.  First Minister of independent Scotland.  Next year.

But then she was actually quite nasty. 

"So how will you keep people safe and stop the economy from crashing, Mrs. May?"

"Well I really have been absolutely clear about this. I've told you before, and I'll tell you again: covid means covid."

Well, if I remember my distant A-level history, the review was by Beveridge, who became a Liberal, working within a coalition government. I can't see how this makes it a "Tory" initiative. Better to celebrate the long-gone days of cross-party consensus. And it certainly was a Tory who put paid to those!

Can we join you please ?

I know it's like comparing turds but BJ is smellier.

I wouldn't celebrate it as anyone's individual initative, but it's Labour who keep trying to claim it as theirs. 

Cross party... other than the odd committee, it arguably ended in 1945. 

Somebody sensible and with democratic principles, so that Scotland can finalise the terms of our independence agreement in a constructive and amicable fashion.

I’d pick Diane Abbott 

In my lifetime would mean as far back as Callaghan. I'd have any of them in a heartbeat over this callous, lying, devious individual currently in charge. I don't care much for his puppet Mr Johnson either. 

Her briefings have been both sincere and coherent.

A marked contrast to the insincere, venal incompetents we have had to endure.

Sunak. Smart, capable, ideologically flexible and has proven pride won't get in the way of getting things done when he pandered to Cummings for the promotion.

Blair. Major or Brown would do just fine too but Blair's communication flair tips him into the lead.

Hardly matters which side. Capable, decent, diligent, open... Everything Johnson isn't. The ideology and what their party will back won't really come into play for a year or so until the health crisis passes into a real economic collapse and escalating international tensions.

Jk

Agreed about Clement Attlee.

For another option, how about Harold Wilson? First time around (1964-70) rather than second (1974-76).

I agree. Wilson, Callaghan, Blair

ANYONE except the ****ing Tories who don't have a SHRED of integrity left

Have you watched the windscale disaster documentary. It's on you tube it's very good with lots of interviews with the people who worked there. Mr Wilson very nearly took us to the brink through his desperate wish to match the Americans with the bomb. There was no one left to say no to him. Then the fire. 

Theresa May didn’t cover herself in glory as Home Sec with her handling of the Windrush generation.

Blair is a pathological liar.  He'd have been in Barnard Castle (as that's the place to go, it seems) within hours of starting lockdown.

No contribution to the wartime coalition government  from the likes of Atlee, Herbert Morrison and Arthur Greenwood then?

Brown is not strong enough. He micromanaged everything and what you need is a leader who will delegate and support people..

Hunt would be the most reassuring just because he is calmer and has weathered a few political storms. You need expereince of the way govt works to get a grip. He is the only one.

The issue with Bojo at the moment is that he is not looking beyond the circle of Brexiteers. He needs to widen it a bit by bringing in Hunt and Greg Cark.

My Mrs expects Cummins to have gone withing a couple of days and that then may force Bojo to widen his cabintet,

Living in hope.

Perhaps she'd pick you as deputy? Diane Abbott and Num Num - dream team.

None of them have been a UK PM though have they?

Callaghan was before I was old enough to vote, although I think he is the only person to have been Chancellor, Home Sec, Foreign Sec. and PM, so I guess he would have been competent

Since I started, voting I'd have to say Major as well, probably the last Tory PM I have any time for.

Major.

Brown.

Maybe early Thatcher.

He's more a Lumley Castle sorta guy.

'Hunt would be the most reassuring just because he is calmer and has weathered a few political storms.'

The various competing factions under the DoH umbrella that are making such a horlicks of our response were either created or nurtured under his watch. He's the b*stard that was in charge when Cygnet reported that we needed to prepare for a pandemic. Being calm can be a good attribute - Obama is the best example I can think of - but in Hunt's case he was just stubborn. And unsuccessful, even by his own lights.

I thought that view of him has changed now.

There's always Ted Heath, he was decent - and took us into Europe.

Agree wholeheartedly with Clem Atlee (within my lifetime, though I wasn't aware of him at the time - I'm three weeks younger than the NHS). Clear vision and a gin-trap of a mind.

Among the Tories I have a soft spot for Harold MacMillan. Behind his tweedy image he was a quiet radical who understood the need for change. He was certainly left of Tony Blair.

Like many of their generation of politicians they had both seen military service in the First World War and then cut their political teeth in the Slump and the Second World War. The experience had given them strong humanitarian views which transcended political left and right - what we now call "the post-war settlement".

'I thought that view of him has changed now.'

We'll be welcoming back Neil Hamilton next.

Wow, that is some of the most stunning batshit revisionist history I have ever witnessed. Churchill actively campaigned against the formation of the NHS. The Conservative supporting Daily Sketch reported: "The state medical service is part of a Socialist plot to convert Great Britain in to a National Socialist economy."

Attlee was also Deputy Prime Minister at the time of the Beverage Report. The report was commissioned by Arthur Greenwood, Minister without Portfolio (Labour). A number of Conservative Cabinet Ministers did try and suppress its publication.

I think, for all her many inadequacies, May's religious faith may have ensured she had a bit more empathy and compassion than most of the present cabinet are demonstrating. BJ and Cummings both think they are the Messiah! May might confess her sins and ask for forgiveness which Cummings would never do.

If you read my comment at 20:16 on Monday, I said I wouldn't attribute it to anyone one individual. It's only Labour who claim it as theirs. If anything it's more liberal than tory or Labour. 

With anyone else it would be obvious but you'll have to use a little winky emoji so we know you are joking!

Beverage was a civil servant turned academic, who was drafted in as a non-political advisor, paid as a civil servant to write the report. He became a politician later. 
The report was commissioned by Labour members of the coalition government, including Attlee, but specifically Arthur Greenwood. Conservative  members of the coalition government tried to block its publication.

The 1945 Labour government implemented significant parts of the report. The Conservatives heavily opposed it. The Labour Party commissioned the report implemented it, something that the Liberals were not in a position to do. To says it  owes more to the Liberals than Labour (not to mention initially crediting Churchill) is ignorant of history.

Speaking as someone whose wife is an EU immigrant, I can assure you that is not the case. But don't just take my word for it - ask the Windrush generation.

At least Johnson just doesn't care who he hurts, May seemed to relish it.

I doubt he'd take the job.  The Bastards are even more firmly entrenched now than they were then.

Enoch Powell : )

'May's religious faith may have ensured she had a bit more empathy and compassion than most of the present cabinet are demonstrating.'

Crikey, people have short memories. For all her empathy, compassion, skipping through corn fields and all the rest, it didn't stop her presiding over a Home Office whose explicit ethos was to create a hostile environment for would-be immigrants and asylum seekers. Torture victims, orphaned children, women fleeing systematic rape, husbands trying to reunite with wives, people who had supported OUR armed forces in Afghanistan and Iraq - all having to plead and beg. Compassion my a*se.

From everything I've have ever seen or read of the women, hers is the sort of religion that allows you to do anything 6 days a week and be absolved on the 7th. I have news for you Mrs May - if there IS a God (and there isn't), you're toast.

As I have previously acknowledged, it's like comparing turds.....I just think Johnson is a bigger and smellier one. I was thinking of Windrush when I mentioned all her faults.

Afraid I'm too young for Attlee.

I'd agree with that

I'd disagree with that and go with Gordon Brown, as Timmd said.

Harold Wilson had nothing at all to do with the Windscale disaster - it happened when the Tories were in power. I also need to remind you that Windscale was/is (Sellafield) a nuclear power plant - not much to do with nuclear bombs. Finally, Harold Wilson won the General Election in 1964 by emphasising domestic issues and cutting superfluous defence funding. To his eternal credit, Harold Wilson prevented the UK from joining the Vietnam War - why one earth would he be involved in a nuclear arms race with the US?

Hear, hear! Even Basil Brush could do a better job than Cameron, May or BoJo.

He was decent, but taking us into Europe is the only achievement of his government. Harold Wilson tried to get us into Europe, but that supercilious Anglophobe De Gaulle stopped him.

Heath managed something many economists thought impossible at the time - stagflation. This was increasing unemployment and inflation and poor economic growth. He also made a right pig's breakfast of the miner's dispute, leading to the 3-day week, industrial decline and widespread power cuts.

His role in finally bringing drinkable coffee to the high streets of Britain certainly deserves to be better known. 

Power was a by-product of the facility. The only purpose of Windscale Piles 1 & 2 was to create plutonium for the nuclear weapons programme.

The Magnox reactors served both purposes, but it was the Pile that caught fire.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windscale_fire

Have a like, I’ve no excuse, I even checked a few dates on his biog, so I should really have spelt his name correctly.

So you should be! While not at all in the same league as Thatcher, Camoron, Mayflower or BoJo, seriously - pull the other one! Back to Basics, cones hotline and the motorway services toilets speech. And don't get me started on the privatisation of British Rail.

Cheers for this. What a surprisingly devious front for a nuclear weapons plant! (even for a Tory government).

Your right got the wrong Harold PM.

An interesting question that has set me reviewing all the  pms I have known in my lifetime.

I'll pass over the first prime ministers of my lifetime, Ramsay MacDonald, Baldwin, Chamberlain as I was too young to remember them (except to note that “Peace in our time” was exactly what Britain wanted in 1938). Churchill: what to say except one needs to distinguish his time as War Leader of a coalition govt from his subsequent period as pm. 

The end of the war saw a landslide victory for radical change by the Attlee gvt. I am interested and pleased to see the support he has on this forum. But first it must be remembered that many of the reforms had been agreed during the war (notably the Beveridge report). The changes implemented were revolutionary  and many aspects necessary. The war debt and ongoing financial crisis called for stringent measures, but it is here that those who lived through that period may have reservations. It is impossible to separate a pm from his cabinet(s). The principal ones from the wartime cabinet, Bevin, Morrison understood the spirit of reform but many who assumed high office did not. Bevan at least flaunted his origins in class hatred (lower than vermin), but there were too many semi-intellectuals from public school backgrounds who imposed unnecessarily unpopular measures. It suffices to remember, Dalton Eton, and Stafford Cripps Winchester, both Chancellors of the Exchequer, Strachey, Eton (a former communist) at Food , Gaitskell, Winchester Fuel and Power. The latter two were particularly unpopular, quite unable to grasp in their superiority that the British populace was fed to the back teeth with an austerity that had lasted longer than the war itself. 

The result was a return of the Conservatives  under Churchill, too often right for the wrong reason and vice versa. He was succeeded by Eden (Suez!) and then Macmillan (an astute operator with a wicked sense of humour). And a final year under Douglas-Home, a nonentity.

There followed 12 years of vacillating attempted compromise, Wilson yuk, Heath, double yuk, and Wilson again. Wilson was followed a decent, experienced and kindly Labour leader, James Callaghan who was brought down by the extremism of the very Unions he had done so much to foster. “The Winter of Discontent” resulted in Thatcher, whose strong handling was necessary, but whose uncompromising “reign” illustrates the danger of an inflexible pm holding power too long. Her replacement Major was an untrustworthy opportunist who went down before the new power in the land, the new Labour of Tony Blair. He would be my choice for a recent prime minister to take control, except I would have to forgive him for Iraq! His successor Brown I wouldn’t trust further than I could throw him and so to Cameron, a disaster. There have been a lot worse pms than Teresa May but she had an impossible job and was too remote. So we pass to the final disaster of Johnson who has never put his country’s interest before his own. I won’t enlarge here. 

Did you read the Wiki article?

The programme to develop British nuclear weapons was taken almost immediately after WW2, by the newly-elected Labour Government, under Attlee. Construction started in September 1947, and the Piles were up and running by the end of 1950.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windscale_Piles

He he. Course it never has been.

You mean "Supermac"? Good PM, but remember he kept all the Attlee reforms and reaped the benefits of a boom that was coming anyway.

Sellafield is reaped in dodgy history. I used to get emails thinking I was a on site contractor. They wanted me to price tidying up the front for Panorama doing a documentry. I think they thought it was going to be a pat on back documentry. It turned out to be a quite the opposite with wistleblowers about the state of the tanks etc.

Remember Sellafield took waste all across the world. Remember greenpeace with their boats under the dumping barrels at sea. They have very little records of what it was or where it was dumped.Some was returned due to records but only a fraction.

Thoughtful, incisive and impressive summary!

However...

I agree that strong handling was necessary, but Thatcher put millions out of work, often unnecessarily. Unemployment rose from 1.3 to nearly 4 million, creating a tragic "underclass" within society. She robbed the poor to pay for the rich - an initial tax cut on top earners was exacerbated by a doubling of VAT, which affected the less well off disproportionately. The 1980s saw an absolute (not to mind relative drop) in mean average income for the bottom 10% of society.

The privatisation of public utilities was a scam which enriched the shareholding elite at the expense of services, which should never have been nationalised (such as gas and electricity), leading to pricing schemes of labyrinthine complexity and woeful value for money.

North Sea oil revenues were squandered to stockpile coal to crush the Miner's strike (as well as funding tax cuts for parasitic stock market speculators), instead of investing in Clean Coal technology. Admittedly, some jobs would have been lost in heavy industry, but conditions could easily have been created to replace these more effectively with a more modern manufacturing base. It never entered her mind that many closed pits were clearly profitable and even those that were not were best kept open rather than spending more money on importing poor quality Polish coal and paying the newly unemployed miners dole. A more conciliatory approach, perhaps similar to Barbara Castle's excellent document from 1969 ("In Place of Strife") would have led to a fairer and more prosperous society.

School league tables and exams for kids as young as seven created a highly divisive education system, while leaving top private schools untouched. A culture of government top-down initiatives and quangos strengthened centralised power at the cost of effective local government. In principle, right to buy Council houses in itself could perhaps have worked, but not when the revenue was prevented from being invested in more social housing or indeed housing associations, which never received the help they needed. A society where Nurses, Teachers and Fire-fighters (to mention just 3 professions) could not afford basic accommodation in huge areas of the South East of England.

The NHS was deliberately under-funded, making it ripe in her eyes for US style market-type reforms, with hospitals set up in competition with each other, with divisive and disastrous results.

This country has been crying out for some kind of restitution of society. I had hoped that Jezza could provide this and it looked like his approach was working when he effectively fought May to a stalemate in 2017. However, JC was particularly unfortunate to have his chances wrecked by Brexit - surely the worst disaster for UK politics in recent years, prior to the Covid 19 outbreak and created by Camoron and BoJo - probably the two worst PMs in the UK since the war and the only two who were clearly worse than the malevolent, divisive and vindictive Thatcher.

Good point, although Labour had been out of power for 6 years when the accident happened in 1957 - surely the then Tory government ought to take most responsibility.

Agreed!

I think nuclear power in its entirety has a pretty dodgy history!

He did improve the country (not hard after an eye-watering 18 years of Thatcherism), but I also need to forgive him for PFI and not raising tax on very high incomes (I suppose over £100,000 in today's money to use an entirely arbitrary figure) to 50%. In fact, he probably would not have needed PFI if he did this!

Only if you want to make it a political issue.

It was an operational/design error baked into the rather quick and dirty, expedient design.

I'm neither Tory by inclination/voting, nor a Tory apologist.