Never change, Guardian
this post was submitted on 12 Nov 2023
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Ok, whilst we are here, I want to present a point of view and happy to discuss it.
David Cameron. Worst PM ever....
And yes I know, there is some stiff competition in that lineup but, he's the worst.
In a line-up including Liz Truss he is only just about able to squeeze into the top three of any "Worst ? Ever" list.
There's an argument to be made that without David Cameron's decision to sacrifice the country's relationship with Europe and appeal to UKIP with the Brexit referendum we wouldn't have had May, Brexit, Boris, Truss or Sunak. To be honest I think we would have had Boris anyway but we maybe wouldn't have had such a lurch to the far right as we've had.
Having said that, I think the shift to the right was already underway, a Boris follow-up was pretty inevitable with how skilled he is at fooling people with charisma (that somehow made everyone forget or forgive his leaked conversation to have a journalist assaulted). His legacy will always be his completely inadequate and corrupt handling of COVID. The one good thing I'll say about him especially compared to Sunak is that he does seem to genuinely care about the environment and did enact some positive environment policy.
I think any Tory leader would've been forced to do the same as Cameron did in that political climate. I know he made the actual decision to have a referendum which was arguably the worst decision in the recent history of our country, but I think with the impact UKIP was having at the time, it was relatively inevitable.
Similar to how the SNP making such huge gain is what forced a Scottish independence referendum.
Edit: I also dread to think about the 'what if?' would be like if we didn't have Covid to kind of push Bojo out.
The 2015 general election definitely feels like a Sliding Doors moment.
It's debatable that BoJo would have been elected without him (cynically) going all in for Leave and we'd have had someone more competent during the pandemic.
It's their complete refusal to consider the possibility that they are wrong. That they have made a mistake and that perhaps they should have a contingency plan in place.
Yeah they're evil and psychotic and try and take money away from public services, but the thing about them that makes them terrible is their arrogance, their completely unjustified arrogance. That complete lack of any actual talent has no bearing on their opinion of their own abilities.
Absolutely agreed. I think the ability of the person, their morals and their impact are important but long term consequences have to play a major role.
Trusses' impacts were immediate and large but have mostly receded. She wasn't around long enough to do any real damage and she's still out there garnering support from the same crazy fuckheads in the first place so no real changes there. They'll just put up someone else instead.
Johnson was by far the worst individual but the damage was relatively small because of how incompetent he was and in fact, he highlighted a lot of issues that will hopefully change for the better now. If another evil politician turns up and makes use of those but is actually competent, they'll go number one with Bojo number 2. Anybody would've struggled with covid and although he made it worse, I think other institutions lessened the impact somewhat.
Blair has the Iraq war, impact on Middle East and the start of the British fall in international relations, which probably puts him pretty high but I think some of the other stuff (e.g. making the BoE independent) probably does just enough to and him.
Brown was in power for too little of a time really but was instrumental in Blair's got so takes some of that heat.
A lot of the country would argue Thatcher should be up there. Her policies continue to have much support in the Tories and some parts of other parties. Definitely a contender.
Brexit has had the worst impacts on every part of our lives and will continue to do so for quite some time. It's also messed up NI, Ireland and the EU itself has suffered from it too. Cameron caused it and then jumped ship because he couldn't help or wasn't willing to, and either way is pretty bad. He has my vote for sure. No other single politic move has caused such a large negative impact.
I am here to tell you that the economic effects of Truss are still being keenly felt by people who are still using food banks and unable to heat their homes.
I'd argue those same people were using food banks long before Lizz Truss wormed her way into power. She's obviously made the situation significantly worse, and it now encompasses a larger section of society...but Cameron's government is what got us into this mess in the first place.
That was my only point, disagreeing with @brewery that Truss's impact didn't cause much real damage. I absolutely agree that Cameron is at the root of all we see today.
Yeah that is a fair point counter to what I said about Truss and yeah, I also forgot to add austerity to the Cameron list! He still ends up on top in my view.
I guess you could argue the Ukraine war for heating costs and brexit is the ultimate problem for higher interest rates but Truss definitely caused the spike and expanded the issues to make them much worse, much more quickly. I retract the mostly receded point.
Their choice to spread the cost of the financial crisis amongst the whole country and including the vulnerable was the worst decision ever (assuming you care about the British public I guess...), Brexit then helped to keep us down and have nothing left when covid happened. Even the UN envoys on poverty are saying that about austerity being done in a tragic way.