Round 3: Which Tory leader is the shittiest?

[Bernard Marx]

Well, we're here now. With Starmer narrowly winning the Labour poll and Swinson crushing the Lib Dem poll by an obvious landslide, I thought it'd be apt to jump straight to the Tory thread.

This is the toughest yet, by a long stretch. So many possible candidates for the worst one...

[ClockworkOcean]

More than any other British politician in living memory, I have an undying hatred of Cameron. From 2010-2016, he presided over radical changes to the welfare system that drove thousands of vulnerable disabled people to starvation and suicide, and did it all with a degree of self-satisfied smugness that was utterly vomit-inducing even by the usual Etonian twat standards of Westminster. The man seemed to get some sort of sick, masochistic thrill out of fokking over the disabled. For example, the very first act of his majority government in 2015, literally a couple of hours after winning the election, was to announce massive cuts to the highly successful Access to Work scheme - after years of whining that not enough people with disabilities were in work. On a related note, Starmer's bitch of a shadow chancellor Rachel Reeves' only complaint about any of this was that he didn't go far enough. Labour can get fokked too.

[Bernard Marx]

Aug 29, 2021 18:39:46 GMT ClockworkOcean said:

The man seemed to get some sort of sick, masochistic thrill out of fokking over the disabled. 

And that's despite having a deceased disabled son too. What an absolute c.unt.

Cameron doesn't get anywhere near as much hate as he should. He's one of the absolute worst Prime Ministers of all time. I'll offer a more in-depth breakdown of each of my considered candidates in a later post, but for now, I'm trying to get a sodding squirrel out of my house. 

[Bernard Marx]

This is a particularly difficult selection to choose from, because almost every candidate from 1979 onwards has a particularly odious quality that makes it tempting to vote for any single one of them, although the ones I gravitate most towards are Thatcher, IDS, Cameron and Johnson. Major was instantly forgettable, whilst Hague and Howard had their moments of amusement in PMQs but were otherwise complete non-entities, though may well have contended with the main four had they actually seen power.

Margaret Thatcher, for all intents and purposes, is the most damaging of the whole lot of them in the long-term. Adopting Milton Friedman and Friedrich Hayek's economic model of neoliberalism (owing a debt to austerity based hegemony and private ownership) marked an extremely damaging shift in both the economy and the public consciousness as a whole. Spectacle and spin began to overrule substance and sincerity, whilst a widespread notion of selfishness in the name of "social mobility" and the disregard for those unable to provide for themselves came to characterise a large portion of the population during her tenure, ultimately coming to affect the opposition party in the coming years too. The damage inflicted on working-class communities (and particularly mining communities) during her tenure is remarkable, coupled with a callousness difficult to rival, and the fact that the country has had no legitimate break from the ethos of 1980s Britain since the era concluded has only gradually contributed to the political miasma of the present day. Truly an odious woman on every level.

IDS has the unenviable reputation as one of the most incompetent opposition leaders in living memory- a leader so useless and ineffectual, he was deposed merely two years into his leadership, only to become integral to the disabled-neglecting mantra of the Cameron/Clegg coalition. 

Cameron is a classic case of concentrated entitlement, arrogance, privilege and conceitedness all manifest within one politician. Contrary to Thatcher, who simply despised the poor, Cameron simply had absolutely no understanding of them. When asked about his wife in interview, he described her as "unconventional" on the grounds that she "went to a day school". According to this man, if you don't go to an expensive boarding school, you're supposedly "unconventional"- the blinkered prism through which this Etonian twat sees the world. Beyond this, he was effectively a more ineffectual Blair, and more brutal on economic and social policy. Having taking the likes of ATOS introduced under New Labour and exacerbated them beyond belief, as well as making PIP assessments all the more discomforting via new regulations (as somebody who has undertaken one myself), and introduced a slew of cuts that Thatcher would have found inconceivable, his economic record and treatment of the disabled is absolutely dire, rivalled by no other. And that's before we get to the pig-f.ucking scandal and his incalculable cock-up on the issue of Brexit, the latter easily deeming him one of the most reckless and arrogant Prime Ministers of all time in his abject hubris in him taking his own preferred result for granted. 

Johnson, meanwhile, is the most deceptive of the above, having lied to Parliament and to everyone under the sun more times than it remains possible to count, as well as remaining the most audacious in his dishonesty. The notion of the man somehow being a pro-working-class and anti-neoliberal Tory bellies all belief when one examines his own voting record (and his own Etonian status), and his inability to orate a convincing or articulate argument under any circumstances makes him a testament to how the combination of populism and a political vacuum (helped no end by either a stunted or useless opposition, as is the case today) can place even the most dishonest of individuals in a state of trusted security. The most disturbingly Kafkaesque of each and every candidate above.

In terms of immediate brutal damage, Cameron is the worst. In terms of long-term damage, Thatcher is the worst. In terms of showing the truly odious colours of today's political climate with no shame or reservation, Johnson is the worst. In terms of ineffectiveness, IDS is easily the worst by a long way. In the end, it's best to weigh up which of these qualities is the most dislikable. As crap as IDS was, his immediate and long-term influence isn't as strong as the other three, whilst Cameron's appallingly draconian economic policy is offset somewhat by not quite being as overtly soulless or disingenuous as Thatcher or Johnson respectively (despite sailing very close in both counts, given the recent Greensill scandal as a contemporary example). 

So that leaves Thatcher and Johnson. As bad as the former was, she was honest about her intentions and didn't shy away from admitting she was a callous wanker, and there was at least a visible public pushback towards her during her tenure as PM. Johnson, aided no end by an era of political apathy induced by the political movement of "spin" (pioneered during the Blair-Cameron years, where catchphrases and mass media culture dominated the debate), has no such pushback. That, alongside his Kafkaesque tendency of distorting the truth and therefore bringing out the absolute worst elements of our political establishment to the forefront, makes him my candidate for the worst Tory leader, representing everything wrong with today's political climate.

[RobFilth]

Thatcher for me.

Johnsons a lying c.unt, Cameron gambled the country away, and Iain Duncan Smith caused genocide amongst the most vulnerable, but none of these bastards would have got away with it if Thatcher hadn't ripped the post-war Consensus to shreds in the first place.

She is undoubtedly the worst Prime Minster ever with Blair coming a close second.

[Bernard Marx]

Interesting how varied the results are so far- makes a change from the resounding result on the Lib Dem thread!

I'm unsure if we'll get a clear winner, all told.

[burrunjor]

Aug 29, 2021 18:39:46 GMT ClockworkOcean said:

More than any other British politician in living memory, I have an undying hatred of Cameron. From 2010-2016, he presided over radical changes to the welfare system that drove thousands of vulnerable disabled people to starvation and suicide, and did it all with a degree of self-satisfied smugness that was utterly vomit-inducing even by the usual Etonian twat standards of Westminster. The man seemed to get some sort of sick, masochistic thrill out of fokking over the disabled. For example, the very first act of his majority government in 2015, literally a couple of hours after winning the election, was to announce massive cuts to the highly successful Access to Work scheme - after years of whining that not enough people with disabilities were in work. On a related note, Starmer's bitch of a shadow chancellor Rachel Reeves' only complaint about any of this was that he didn't go far enough. Labour can get fokked too.

He was also responsible for the Libyan crisis, or at least partly responsible for it, which led to the destablisation of Libya, the brutal murder of Gaddaffi, a refugee crisis, and a rise in f*cking ISIS. Ironically he was also among the hardest on refugees into the bargain!

I do agree somewhat that you should never let in a massive group of refugees at a time (no matter where they are from.) For practical reasons as too many at the one time can often lead to them being set up in shitty camps, with no way to actually integrate into society, but still Cameron not only had no plans round that, he was also the one that helped f*ck up Libya, a secular country in the first place!

The fact that Cameron is often overlooked as one of the worst shows how shallow a lot of people's politics are. He isn't cartoonishly stupid on the surface like say Trump or Bush, but to be honest he is almost as bad as Bush and far worse than Trump, yet people don't get obsessed with him because they think he was just a bland leader. 

Having said all of that, I voted for Thatcher over Cameron. It was a very close call, but ultimately Thatcher was the one that started all of this off. Her disgusting brand of Ayn Randian politics set Britain back by hundreds of years. From the undermining of the NHS, to the corruption of left wing politics (she said New Labour was her greatest legacy.) To passing the first new homophobic laws this country had seen in over 100 years with section 28. Thatcher undermined almost all of the great progress we had made from the 40s-70s where we ensured safety nets for those at the bottom like the welfare state and repelled homophobic laws. 

[mott1]

For me it's the half-witted IDS, not just for his abysmal leadership - which many have forgotten now - but for his embarrassing behaviour as the self-appointed 'Champion of Brexit', on top of his treatment of the financially disadvantaged. Perhaps his lowest moment was declaring the WA was unfair despite voting for it (and not bothering to read it!)

[Bernard Marx]

There's an extremely valid argument for each of the votes cast, and it's hard to disagree with any of them. I suppose my vote for Johnson comes down to his audacity and what he represents, despite recognising that Thatcher's long-term influence and Cameron's economic, foreign and domestic policy is inherently worse.

[Bernard Marx]

You guys have convinced me- I'm withdrawing my vote for Johnson and opting for Thatcher instead. I can't abide the woman, and she's ultimately responsible in the long-run for everything else I criticise about the other three leaders in my post above.

I hope Johnson *does* get a vote of his own, because he deserves it, but objectively speaking, he's not done anywhere near as much damage as of yet.