the Best and Worst PMs that never were

ok I want people to come up with a list of the five best(in your view) Prime Minster of the UK and five worse(again in your view) try to keep it post-1900, though if you must you can use pre-1900 people, it has to be people that could have been PM in OTL, they have to have been at lest a member of Parliament.

I couldn't do best so worst!

1. Sir Oswald Mosley (British Union of Fascists)
2. Enoch Powell (National Front)
3. George Brown (Labour)
4. Nick Griffin (British National Party )
5. Nigel Farage (UK Independence Party)
 
Norman Tebbitt would be up there for worst. Tony Benn could be in both categories - for some people he would pursue the agenda that the public had been mandating since 1945, but he was not a good figure when it came to uniting party and government, so any skill and ideological soundness he had would probably have become bogged down in a collapsing government.

Best we never had would include the likes of John Smith, Joseph Chamberlain, John Wheatley, Barbara Castle, Shirley Williams and Tony Crosland.
 
Best:
  • Joseph Chamberlain: Liberal-Unionist
  • Sir Oswald Mosley: Labour*
  • Kenneth Clarke: Conservative**
  • Charles Kennedy: Liberal Democrats
  • David Davis: Conservative

Worst:
  • John Prescott: Labour
  • Sir Oswald Mosley: British Union of Fascists*
  • Ed Balls: Labour
  • Randolph Churchill: Conservative
  • Sir Menzies Campbell: Liberal Democrat

*I believe that if Oswald Mosley had stayed in the Labour party he would've been a good and popular PM, though when he strayed to Fascism I think his domestic policies would've been horrible (with the influence of William Joyce as well).
**While I don't agree with his pro-European Integration views, I think he would have been a good PM.

P.S. You say they have to be an MP, but neither Nick Griffin nor Nigel Farage have been MPs ;)
 
Best:

Austen Chamberlain (Conservative)
Winston Churchill (Liberal)
Lloyd George (Liberal)*

Worst:

Lord Curzon (Conservative)

Samuel Hoare (Conservative)

* Would have liked to have seen him lead a peacetime Liberal government.
 
Best:

John Smith (Labour)

David Steel (Liberal)
Paddy Ashdown (Liberal Democrat)
Margaret Beckett (Labour)
William Hague (Conservative)


Worst:

Oswald Mosley (British Union of Fascists)
Harriet Harman (Labour)
Michael Portillo (Conservative)
Charles Stewart Parnell (Irish Nationalist)

Ian Paisley (snr.) (DUP)
 
Phil Piratin had a lot of potential and in a more leftist UK could have been a great PM. But it wasn't his world.
 
ok I want people to come up with a list of the five best(in your view) Prime Minster of the UK and five worse(again in your view) try to keep it post-1900, though if you must you can use pre-1900 people, it has to be people that could have been PM in OTL, they have to have been at lest a member of Parliament.

I couldn't do best so worst!

1. Sir Oswald Mosley (British Union of Fascists)
2. Enoch Powell (National Front)
3. George Brown (Labour)
4. Nick Griffin (British National Party )
5. Nigel Farage (UK Independence Party)

Four right wing nutters and a drunk. OK!!

Worst UK Prime ministers we've never had but were elected MP's:

1 Gerry Adams (Sinn Fein)

2 Martin MacGuiness (Sinn Fein)

3 Bobby Sands (Sinn Fein)

4 George Galloway (Socialist Taliban Aliance)

5 Rab Bulter (Tory but makes it on the list for being an appeaser in the 1930's)
 

Thande

Donor
Mosley would I think have been totally unpredictable as PM. EdT's A Greater Britain is a best case scenario, whereas the more common treatment of Mosley as PM is a dystopia (written by writers who know nothing about Mosley except he was 'an evol fascist!!111')

In real life you've got a man who started out as a Conservative, switched to Labour, broke off to form a more centrist 'SDP' type party, then randomly decided fascism was the Next Big Thing and embraced it wholeheartedly, got locked up, got released and then decided to become a passionate eurofederalist. And I may have missed out a few on the way. Mosley's one of those people who you would call hopelessly implausible if someone wrote out OTL in the style of an ATL.
 
Mosley would I think have been totally unpredictable as PM. EdT's A Greater Britain is a best case scenario, whereas the more common treatment of Mosley as PM is a dystopia (written by writers who know nothing about Mosley except he was 'an evol fascist!!111')

In real life you've got a man who started out as a Conservative, switched to Labour, broke off to form a more centrist 'SDP' type party, then randomly decided fascism was the Next Big Thing and embraced it wholeheartedly, got locked up, got released and then decided to become a passionate eurofederalist. And I may have missed out a few on the way. Mosley's one of those people who you would call hopelessly implausible if someone wrote out OTL in the style of an ATL.

You can view Mosley in two ways I guess.

1 He was flexible and open to new ideas hence the continuous change in parties and views.

2 He was a nutter.
 
Mosley would I think have been totally unpredictable as PM. EdT's A Greater Britain is a best case scenario, whereas the more common treatment of Mosley as PM is a dystopia (written by writers who know nothing about Mosley except he was 'an evol fascist!!111')

In real life you've got a man who started out as a Conservative, switched to Labour, broke off to form a more centrist 'SDP' type party, then randomly decided fascism was the Next Big Thing and embraced it wholeheartedly, got locked up, got released and then decided to become a passionate eurofederalist. And I may have missed out a few on the way. Mosley's one of those people who you would call hopelessly implausible if someone wrote out OTL in the style of an ATL.

Take a look at Mosley in my TL. He's a semi-Stalinist authoritarian with a benevolent streak (he's only doing it to ensure Britain industrialises enough to defend herself and provide a better quality of life for Britons), and spends most of his time chilling out with Eric Blair. A flexible character indeed.
 

Thande

Donor
Take a look at Mosley in my TL. He's a semi-Stalinist authoritarian with a benevolent streak (he's only doing it to ensure Britain industrialises enough to defend herself and provide a better quality of life for Britons), and spends most of his time chilling out with Eric Blair. A flexible character indeed.

It occurs to me that you can write a TL with a WW1/1920s POD and have Mosley doing pretty much anything a couple of decades down the line, from campaigning for Indian home-rule to supporting apartheid to decriminalising homosexuality... :D
 
It occurs to me that you can write a TL with a WW1/1920s POD and have Mosley doing pretty much anything a couple of decades down the line, from campaigning for Indian home-rule to supporting apartheid to decriminalising homosexuality... :D

I agree - Mosley's vanity and willingness to pander to whatever the 'next big thing' is at any point in time means that he could have ended up leading just about any party given different circumstances.
 
Hm...

Best (from a variety of TLs) :

Horatio Bottomley (Lib): Architect of the post-war welfare state and destroyer of Germany, the first Prime Minister of humble origins, he dominated British poltiics from his appointment as Chancellor during the National Emergency Government of 1911 to his retirement in 1922. His associations with the swindler and con-artist David Lloyd-George may have prematurely ended his political career but were very much overblown.

John Fuller (New): Not only did Fuller win the war for Britain in 1919, he swept aside the old regime, and brought Britain fully into the Age of the Machine. The motorway system, the Channel Bridge, Buckminster Fuller's great dome over London; all of this is Fuller's work.

Noel Pemberton-Billing (Con): For all that his use of the RAF to flatten the Rhineland rather than let the Germans occupy it was controversial, it showed the Germans who was boss. His replacement of the Lords with the Women's Parliament was also a stroke of genius. Would probably have accomplished far more had the interantional homosexual conspiracy not offed him in the late 1930s.

Cristabel Pankhurst (Con): Her inspirational leadership in the darkest days of the war undoubtedly saved Britain from German occupation. These days her religious fervour might be a little out of fashion, but her decision to don a monk's habit and lead the Brittany landings in person undoubtedly contributed to the operation's overall succes, and her susequent burning at the stake by the SS ensured that the Allies pursued the war to the finish.

Walter Walker (Civil Assistance): A controversial choice I know, but regardless of the legality of his actions, we have to accept that Walker's intervention saved Britain from Communist Trade Union agitation, not to mention the permissive society.
 
Channel... Bridge...

Excuse me, I need to have a lie down. That was too awesome for me to comprehend.
 
Channel... Bridge...

Excuse me, I need to have a lie down. That was too awesome for me to comprehend.

:cool:

Anyway, another possibility.

Bertrand Russell (Lib): A descendent of the former Liberal Prime Minister, Russell was originally disinterested with politics, choosing to devote his life to academia. After graduating with first class honours from Cambridge, where he was described by one tutor, A.F. Whitehead as "Quite the ablest man I have ever taught", he embarked on the then customary "Grand Tour" of Europe which would forever shape his political leanings. Appalled at the poor standards of living he witnessed both home and away, Russell became one of the founding members of the Darwinist Society, a socialist group calling for gradual change in British society. Russell played a key role in breaking away from the group's original Imperialist dogma in favour of a more pacifistic tone and was one of the founding members of the London School of Economics, where he lectured on Modern Political Theory between 1883 and 1909. He resigned from this position following his election to Parliament as a member of the newly formed Radical Liberal Party.

Although only one of only three of that party's MP's elected that year, alongside Sidney Webb and Henry Wells. Russell played a major role in opening ties with the fledgling Independent Labour Party and the Liberal Party of Herbert Gladstone who collectivity brought down Lord Curzon's minority administration in the aftermath of the Third Transvaal War. Following the formation of a three-party pact between the three parties, Russell became Foreign Secretary following the 1909 General Election. Soon after, the Radical Liberals folded back into the larger, national party.

Russell would adopt a strongly neutral position during his tenure at the Foreign Office, refusing to countenance any further alliance with France and Russia over fears that All attempts at creating strictly bi-national relations inevitably lead to conflict with opposing powers". Russell would be vindicated in his fears after France's defeat to Germany in the short but bloody conflict prompted by the 1913 Marrakesh Crisis and the horrific casualty rates seen in the Great Eastern War between Russia, Austria-Hungary and the Ottoman Empire. Hailed as a hero by the public and seen as being one of the most vocal supporters of social reforms, Russell became Prime Minister the following year at the age of 42, the youngest for over half a century.

Russell's premiership would last for just over eight years during which time the British Empire would undergo radical restructuring. Russell personally loathed Imperialism, but would state that, "Pragmatically, one must admit that the Empire can be a tremendous force for good in the world". Together with his successor at the Foreign Office, Herbert Asquith, the Empire was further devolved in power. With Winston Churchill, the Colonial Secretary, Russell masterminded the plan was was to give India full home rule as a Dominion and with his Chancellor, George Lansbury, the wide-ranging social reforms that established the modern day welfare state would begin.

Despite this, Russell's idealism was to prove his downfall. Despite presiding over a further merger between the Liberals and the majority of the Labour Party, his attempts to stare down the House of Lords following the 1922 Budget deadlock were to rob him of much of his parliamentary support. Despite managing to win the subsequent general election, he was mentally and physically exhausted by the campaign and resigned the following year, succeeded by his talented protégé, Stafford Cripps who would continue his reforming zeal before the Liberal defeat to the resurgent Conservative-Vitalist victory in 1926, the first to be held under proportional representation.

Following his retirement, Russell served the remainder of his long life in world affairs. He became the first General-Secretary of the International League of Labour Reform in 1930 where he pushed for the global abolition of the slave trade as well as playing a key role in the mediation between the Empire of Japan and the Russian Republic in the aftermath of the Sino-Japanese War.
 
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