Rating the Post-War PMs

Here is an FT list, via Dale, of how "academics" would rate the post-war PMs:

Well, I'm in academia at the moment, and here's how I'd rate them (and why):

12: Brown: An odious, incapable man who should never have been allowed to become Prime Minister. He wrecked the country's economy, damaged our international standing and left our country in broken pieces for his successor government to try to put back together. I've said it before but I'll say it again - the only way for Cameron to be worse than Brown is if he actually declares war on the British people.

11: Eden: Massively over-hyped before he got into power, he wasn't up to the job and his raging paranoia over would-be aggressive dictators nearly got us into a shooting war with the US and made it very clear that Britain was no longer as great on the world stage as it had been. It also inspired a couple of unusually tedious Dennis Potter dramas.

1o: Callaghan: He may have been a genial chap from all accounts, but as PM he was pretty much useless. He bowed down to the unions and let them run this country pretty much into the ground, before committing a major strategic blunder and delaying an election that he could have won but that he would later lose.

9: Douglas-Home: Difficult to know what to say about Douglas-Home other than he lost an election. He's a non-entity - simultaneously neither a good Prime Minister nor a bad one.

8: Blair: A formidable election winner, Blair's legacy will, however, be constantly undermined by the Iraq War, the fact that his supposed economic success was built on shifting sands and his failure to prevent the clearly unsuitable Brown becoming his replacement.

7: Heath: He had the potential to be a genuinely reforming Prime Minister, but he took us into Europe, failed to win his battle with the unions and ultimately revealed himself to be a repugnant man both in No.10 and afterwards on the Tory back-benches.

6: Wilson: Well, he won more than he lost and he managed, despite the pressure from the US, to keep us out of Vietnam. But he did a lot to break the economy and hand the country over to the Unions, and he also managed to stay on at No.10 for far longer than he should have done.

5: Major: Yep, there was Black Wednesday. But prior to that there was one of the most spectacular electoral upsets in history, and after Black Wednesday Major's government did much to rebuild the economy (inbetween conducting a debilitating intra-party civil war). Crucially, the country he handed over was in better shape than when he got it. Just a shame, really, that he handed it over to Nu Labour...

4: Churchill: Ok, as a post-war PM he was largely inactive. He maintained the status quo and seemed to be slowly counting down the days until he was no longer able to do the job and had to retire. Nonetheless, he is the only one in this list who genuinely managed to become a British icon.

3: Macmillan: A caretaker PM in the best sense of the word - he did little to transform the country, but effectively managed it and rebuilt it and his party after the disaster that was Anthony Eden. Like Major, he left a country in a better state than when he found it.

2: Attlee: An odd choice for No.2 given I'm a Libertarian, Attlee is this high because he believed in a political ideology and actually set out to implement it, rather than just talking about it. Furthermore, his reforms may have created a bloated state, but they also helped to end communism as a potential alternative in this country. I'd doubt I've have voted for him, but Attlee scores highly in part because the vast majority of those who have followed him have been far less capable than him.

1: Thatcher: A socially conservative PM who grew increasingly loopy while in power and ultimately ended up shooting herself in the head politically with the poll tax, Thatcher at least understood the need to reduce the size and the scope of the state, albeit only in some areas. And to date, she is the only Prime Minister who has (a) understood this and (b) tried to do something about it.

And Cameron? He can't really be rated until he has ceased to be PM. At the moment, he would rate quite highly if only because he has yet to spectacularly drop the ball. I don't doubt for a moment that at some point he will, so only time will tell how badly he fares in future polls.

If/when you disagree, please feel free to put your thoughts in the comments section. If said comments aren't jarringly dull, I may even respond...

Cameron and the Unions

Well said, young man:

Conservative leader David Cameron has told the BBC trade unions "scented weakness" in the government's response to Unite's row with British Airways.

He said Gordon Brown failed to back non-strikers, although Mr Brown said he wanted "negotiation" to take place.

Of course, this weakness when it comes to dealing with the unions and failing to support those who do not wish to strike is not unique to Gordon Brown. It is something that happens during the course of every Labour government, and was particularly pronounced the last time Labour led the country toward the shit-heap under Jim Callaghan. The unions are in ascendance again because there is a Labour government in power - and the Labour party, of course, is more reliant than ever on funding from their most reliable sugar daddies; those within the Trade Union movement.

But it isn't just Labour Prime Ministers who have been shown to be weak in the face of union action. The same has been true of Tory Prime Ministers as well. In many ways, Thatcher was the exception, rather than the rule, and her battle against the NUM - as controversial as it was - was only successful for the government because her government knew the confrontation was coming, and prepared themselves for it.

Unions can break governments - witness the demise of Heath's administration. And there is no reason for thinking that the unions won't challenge Cameron as soon as/if he is elected. But he should relish that challenge - he should use it as an opportunity to show that he has teeth. Whether or not he has the fight in him remains open to debate - after all, thus far his time as leader of the Tories has shown him to be a man of compromise rather than confrontation, of consensus rather than clashes. However, I think this fight is going to come to him, whether he likes it or not. And he needs to start preparing right now if he is going to show himself in a different light to Brown's cowed compliance against resurgent unions.

Fixed Election Dates

Much has been made - including by your humble author - of Gordon Brown's failure to call a General Election just after he won the (uncontested) Labour leadership contest. Yet, for Brown haters everywhere, that probably would have been counter-productive. In that Brown probably would have won that General Election. So, rather than looking at the humiliating defeat of that bastard in about a year's time, we'd probably be looking at another three or so years of the grey ghoul in Number 10. Sure, with longer in power to let a new PM consolidate, the Labour party might be more eager to replace Brown had they won an election just after he became Prime Minister, but it would still mean another three years of Labour rule. 

Normally, the very fact that the PM can choose when to fight a General Election is of massive benefit to the incumbent Prime Minister. A savvy political operator (like Wilson in '66 or Thatcher in '83) can time the election to maximise their chances of winning a landslide. Likewise, bad times for elections can also be avoided - yeah, I know that the spin machine came up with a credible excuse for the delay, but Blair would have been mindlessly stupid to have a General Election in the middle of the foot and mouth crisis in 2001. 

Likewise, the alternative - for example, in the US, where Presidents know when they have to fight for re-election as the date is set by law - can create losers who, had they been able to choose the date for an election, probably would have won. The classic is the first President Bush. Had he had the capability, he would have been mad not to fight for re-election just after the end of hostilities in Iraq when his approval rating was through the roof. However, he was forced to fight in 1992, when the economy was down the toilet and any incumbent politician that year was going to be about as popular as the clap.

There are other advantages to having a fixed date for elections too. Party machines and electoral funding are far easier to organise, and there is no chance for the ruling party to call a surprise election in the hope of catching the opposition off guard and in a state of poor preparedness. The voters know when they will be able to go to the polls as well, and far less of the political debate is about the demands of the opposition for the ruling party to call an election. 

Yet I'm still not sure that there is a case for changing the way Britain's political system works and creating fixed dates for elections. It is only an advantage to the ruling party if they use it as an advantage - witness Brown dropping the ball when he first came to power just as Callaghan did before the Winter of Discontent. Besides, our electoral system is far from perfect for a variety of different reasons, and fixed term elections are not a cure-all for those problems. In fact, any such change could be seen as change for change's sake, which is about a meaningful as a Gordon Brown Promise. 

At the end of the day, there are far more pressing problems facing the UK today than the timings of elections. As with all constitutional reform, it tends to become the last refuge of the desperate politician trying to avoid the real issues that are drowning them.