Reply #13: Most, not all..

[LeftishBrit]

I would certainly exempt Asquith and especially Lloyd George from my strictures. I don't know enough about Campbell-Bannerman to comment. However, I would definitely regard Chamberlain, Baldwin, Bonar Law and Macdonald as bad PMs.

Blair is in my opinion bad on many aspects of domestic policy as well as foreign policy. He IS relatively good on the economy (or, rather, Gordon Brown is); and he has been more successful on industrial relations than Heath or Callaghan - though that may be partly because trade unions have less influence in the past. This reduced influence is partly due to changes in the types of jobs that people are doing (more 'middle-class' and more casual at the same time); and partly because Thatcher ran over the unions with her steam-roller. But Blair has allowed managerialism to run amok; put excessive emphasis on meeting administrative 'targets', which , especially in the health service, has led to some very unfortunate consequences; pursued some disastrous policies on education; acted in an extremely mean-spirited way towards people with disabilities; moved toward the creation of a 'Big Brother' state with compulsory ID cards, etc.; and allowed "Daily Mail" types to drive policies toward asylum-seekers, to the point of sending people back to Zimbabwe despute the well-publicized disastrous situation there.

Re the difference between Heath and Thatcher: it is true that virtually no one would regard Heath as a *great* Prime Minister, while some people, though an increasingly small minority, do regard Thatcher in this way. However, I do think that Thatcher did a great deal more active, and virtually irreversible, *harm* to the country than Heath - or most other PMs for that matter.