Would agree with you about John Major Craig but not about Malcolm Rifkind, unless you mean how he was 25 years ago. He was certainly an astute and charismatic politician in these days and one of the best debaters around.

12 out of 16 for you then. Not bad and an interesting exercise.

(No devolution minister?)

I don’t know if I agree that Major was the best PM of my lifetime (I was born in 1962); that may have been Wilson (kept us out of Vietnam, for one thing), but of my adult life – certainly!

Also agree with Subrosa that Rifkind is long past his best, and have never felt confident of John Redwood’s sanity, but a very good list.

I’m glad you like Sarah Teather. She’s my MP and a bright, honest, non-troughing thoroughly hard working one. She not merely acknowledges correspondence from constituents promptly and at length, but often sends a follow-up brief on action she’s taken. I wish there were more like her.

I was born in 1927, and I’m not sure who was the best PM during my lifetime – I could make a case for Baldwin, who was a social healer though woefully inept on foreign policy. No prizes for guessing the worst, though – Tony Blair!

Now that’s just blatant trolling, Craig!

Happy New Year!

“No prizes for guessing the worst, though – Tony Blair!”

Worse than Chamberlain?

Anyone who suggests anyone for the Department of Climate Change, should also suggest someone for The Ministry of Silly Walks

Tony

It’s a couple of years since I last met Rifkind, but unless anything happened in the interim, he very much had all his marbles. I think we badly undervalue age and experience in our politicians. Rifkind made perhaps the best speech against the Iraq War.

I note that you excluded yourself from the list. What would you want to be?

Blair worse than Chamberlain? Yes, indeed. They were both self-deceivers, and manipulative operators, but Chamberlain was utterly sincere though purblind and I doubt if you can say the same about Blair. Chamberlain vainly sought to avoid more senseless slaughter, while Blair appeared to relish it.

Another strong candidate for best PM is Attlee – still a much underrated one but a better and less devious Labour leader than Harold Wilson.

This is the most not inconsiderable bogus sham in peacetime since the war and that is the unanimous verdict of us all. What we wunt…

Major’s a stinking hypocrite and an opportunist.

Funny timing to denounce the war, when it’s past the point where it’ll affect the war and yet convenient to help the other party at the coming elections.

Major says he believed Blair based on the evidence Blair showed at the time. What evidence? There was none. Now Major says that new information sheds doubt on that evidence. New information, like the UN weapons inspectors saying AT THE TIME that there was virtually no chance of Iraq having WMDs?

Many of the people I knew AT THE TIME saw through the lies; surely Major could have as well, especially given he would have been privy both to more inside information and to the workings of the US and UK governments and the schemes and lies people would try to pull.

There is no way in hell Major didn’t know the war was predicated on lies unless he is a complete and utter moron, which I doubt he is.

Major would have supported the 2nd gulf war just the same as he supported the 1st.

And for him to then complain about spin and slogans when he government kept harping on about “back to basics” and delivering bullshit like “we need to understand a little less and condemn a little more…”

Major may have been the best PM of recent times, and he may be telling some convenient truths today, but that doesn’t make him a good PM who would have done the right thing if he was in Blair’s shoes. Being the best PM is like being the serial killer who killed the fewest people.

Harold Wilson may well have been devious, but he is the only Prime Minister I have seen standing on a soap box in Winston Churchill’s and William Cobbett’s old constituency Oldham in the Open Outdoor Market…who told America to go and do one and kept us out of the Vietnam War which my older Active Young Conservative Brother fully supported…

And so far as The Department of Climate Change is concerned, imposing legislation with regards to how the Sun is going to behave is as sensible buying one of the most powerful computers ever for the Met Office who are about as good at forecasting anything as the BBC’s propaganda.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IqhlQfXUk7w

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/topics/weather/6921281/Britain-facing-one-of-the-coldest-winters-in-100-years-experts-predict.html

Tony

Well, Tony, my grandmother’s Victorian forebears came from Saddleworth and two of them were Town Clerks of Ashton-under-Lyne for many years. The elder – who started as a Liberal but fell out with the mill owners and became a stalwart Tory – once made a speech saying “I have taken part in many elections, not always with clean hands”!

What we need now – but won’t get – is a new PM who will say “a great many wrong policy decisions have been taken during the past 20 and more years, so I am ordering a complete rethink of domestic and foreign policy and won’t hesitate to make drastic changes if necessary.”

Alas, our so-called democracy doesn’t work like that any more.

Best idea is goverment selected by lottery. It’s an old Greek thing – those ancient buggers were so right about so much. The folk who understood incommensurability easily deduced that elections don’t work and simply observed that people who want power shouldn’t be given it.

So Craig, your selected cabinet is in fact self-selected – they’re all worthless arseholes who have positioned themselves to seek only their own greater fortune, and are perfectly happy to ride towards it on the back of that pantomime horse we call democracy.

We could make life impossible for them, and just cut cards. Serious suggestion.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Dice_Man

tony, *weather* in the *UK* is not the same as *worldwide* *climate*.

Wiki has a decent article on sortition:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sortition

anticant,

I remain the eternal optimist, and whilst I realise you are 82 and not in the best of health, I reckon your spirit is strong enough for you to live long enough to see a positive outcome to the changes that are currently happenning.

I heard Early on New Year’s Day, that the Guy who taught me to Fly has broken his hip from his niece in the pub and has had a hip replacement operation (my Mother-in-Law has bust both of hers and is still dancing)

This was just after watching the Blue Max – in which he flew the most hairy stunts.

I reckon Derek Piggott will make a full recovery and still be flying his Glider upside down 10 feet above the ground on his 100th Birthday

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Derek_Piggott

Tony

amk,

I suggest you go back to school/college/university and do a PhD in Physics and Maths – so that you have some understanding of real science and also in Psychology so that you have some understanding of Propaganda.

Its never too late to learn and change your mind based on evidence rather than political or religious propaganda

Can I now explain my New Religion?

To my Amazement Prot mentioned it in the 2001 Film K-Pax

I thought FFS how does Kevin Spacey know about this – then realised that my friend at College – who we jointly developed the theory of life, everything and the universe had probably become highly influential

Tony

THE REAL FANTASY WORLD WOULD BE DEMOCRACY

The assistant to a top Canadian politician (who is a household name in Canada) complained that I was putting her boss “on the spot” simply by asking for justice on my issue. Indeed a political strategist (conservative) here in Alberta tried to help. He explained that I was wasting my time trying to involve politicians in my issue stating to me “I’ve been around politicians for over 30 years, and I have never met an honest one yet” My experience in Canada can be viewed by clicking on my name to see the short article I wrote just before Xmas “Canada’s Moral Dilemma: Torture by CSIS – A Crisis in Democracy”.

My experience in the UK was 10 times worse than in Canada and I find it hard to believe that any honest politician would be allowed to reach front bench rank. Craig, the answer to the ideal government is none of the above. What is wrong with electing the government directly, or are the people too immature to be trusted with some real democracy?

“John Major was the best Prime Minister”?

“Criminal Complaint Against the United States of America and Others for Crimes Against the People of Iraq for Causing the Deaths of More Than 1,500,000 People Including 750,000 Children Under Five and Injury to the Entire Population By Genocidal Sanctions.

Charges:

“2. The United States, its President Bill Clinton and other officials, the United Kingdom and its Prime Minister John Major and other officials have committed a crime against humanity as defined in the Nuremberg Charter against the population of Iraq and engaged in a continuing and massive attack on the entire civilian population in violation of Articles 48, 51, 52, 54 and 55 of Protocol I Additional to the Geneva Convention 1977.

“3. The United States, its President Bill Clinton and other officials, the United Kingdom and its Prime Minister John Major and other officials have committed genocide as defined in the Convention against Genocide against the population of Iraq including genocide by starvation and sickness through use of sanctions as a weapon of mass destruction and violation of Article 54, Protection of Objects Indispensable to the Civilian Population, of Protocol I Additional to the Geneva Convention 1977.”

These charges were issued by Ramsey Clark, former Attorney General of the United States, at the International Court On Crimes Against Humanity Committed by the UN Security Council on Iraq held in Madrid, Spain on the 16th and 17th of November, 1996. The panel of judges consisted of many legal and human rights experts from around the world.

Info from ‘Behind the War on Terror’, by Nafeez Mosaddeq Ahmed.

Formal criminal charges here:

http://www.iacenter.org/folder01/charges.htm

Tony, Random Capitalisation is a sure sign of a lunatic with delusions of competence. Thanks for adding another point of data.

Incidentally:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dunning?“Kruger_effect

Craig,

The idea of the same old system continuing in the same old way ( even if you put new names to play the same game) will not really change anything.

You are a highly intelligent man, with a lot of credibility. I find your thoughts interesting, and never having met you, none the less, I have a sense of affection and respect for you. Thus, you find me blogging here.

I think that the crisis goes well beyond shuffling the cards/faces in the parliament. There are some pressing global issues that require some profound changes – not merely face changes. Otherwise you end up with an “Obama” result. Different face – same wars.

The planet is being stretched to the limits by environmental degradation and the wars – well – resource wars – oil wars – human beings being killed for no good reason. The issues go far beyond – face changes ?”for the sustaining of a so-called “democracy”.

Listen to Chomsky – and – if you disagree – let me hear why so?

Watch this….http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article24302.htm

Speaking of Chomsky, the below is a quote from him:

“In December, a conference in Copenhagen is “to sign a new global accord on global warming,” which will tell us “whether or not our political systems are up to the unprecedented challenge that climate change represents.” I am quoting Bill McKibben, one of the most knowledgeable researchers. He is mildly hopeful, but that may be optimistic unless there are really large-scale public campaigns to overcome the insistence of the managers of the state-corporate sector on privileging short-term gain for the few over the hope that their grandchildren will have a decent future.”

http://www.chomsky.info/articles/200910–.htm

Chomsky, for decades a champion of the poor and powerless, sees AGW as real and sees the selfish interests of the rich and powerful being to resist measures to combat climate change – precisely the opposite the conspiracy theory Tony advocates.

When the planet is stretched to the limit and oil as the energy source leads to wars in Iraq and Afghanistan – then the real processes by which this world operates will reveal the difficulty our presently organised dysfunctional system faces.

Consider that India, China, Russia and ultimately Africa are supposed to be on the same trajectory of an oil based system of economic development that the US was built on. Truth be told, it is not feasible. The planet cannot sustain the environmental degradation. The point I am making ( at least trying to) is that the dysfunctional environmental processes that the world is witnessing are in competition with the dysfunctional political processes that promote these wars.

Craig,

The system that you were a part of as a diplomat – is not a functional system ( not if you start to count the welfare of billions of people around the world as an essential part of the purpose of government). You have to advance to a process of thought that realises that the superimposition of a bullshit parliament on the “sheeple” is not going to address the issues that Britain within the global system can sensibly rely on to address real issues affecting us ( the global community) all. If you doubt me then listen to this guy speak in a parliament that he gave up on…

http://blogs.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=blog.view&friendId=268243956&blogId=414808202

“I hold the deeply unfashionable view that John Major was the best Prime Minister in my lifetime”

LOL. Murray just gets funnier every day, even if not in a good way.

Major was a born non-leader, reactive rather then proactive, which already means that he was a useless PM. He was also promoted well beyond the point of the Peters Principle.

After fifty years, I can say beyond doubt that the quality I most desire in a PM is quiet.

Craig,

Let me hear you reply on this one:-

“The system that you were a part of as a diplomat – is not a functional system ( not if you start to count the welfare of billions of people around the world as an essential part of the purpose of government).”

Craig,

Let me hear you reply on this one:-

“The system that you were a part of as a diplomat – is not a functional system ( not if you start to count the welfare of billions of people around the world as an essential part of the purpose of government).”

Malcolm Rifkind?! The betrayer of Bosnia? I can only assume you chose him because he’s Scottish.

Courtenay,

I think that over the last sixty years great progress had been made in developing the system of international law – a process much set back by Bush and Blair.

Leaving the politics aside, one thing that impressed me about Major was his ability to handle a radio phone-in and show, or at least give the impression, that he was totally familiar with his brief. Combined with a willingness to admit ignorance of some detailed issues, this made for a very impressive performance.

I may be naive in this regard, particularly knowing what we now do about the BBC, but I was impressed at the time. Reminded me of Bill Clinton and Jimmy Carter. Up front.

I am inclined to do the “travelling companion” test on these people and Major would have certainly passed that.

John Major was a good guy all round for sure. His strategy towards N. Ireland was wise.

However…. What about the Edwina Currie episode?

I am not expecting our politicians to be saints – but Edwina Currie? What was in John Major’s head? Or what was he smoking?

Your Cabinet looks good except Rifkind worries me – too much of an all knowing headmaster at a minor public school. I would prefer Ken Clarke for the top job.

Unfortunately “politician” is now a disgraced profession and, with the exception of Craig, I would now harbour the same suspicions toward anyone running for office as society does toward a male wishing to teach primary school children.

Craig, I wasn’t suggesting Rifkind has lost any of his marbles, but he has lost the fire he had when younger.

I was always hopeful he would take a prominent role in Scottish politics, but once he lost his seat here, his interest appeared to wane. He would have been a tremendous asset to the tories here.

I’m disappointed to see only two women suggested.

Hilary Benn is a politician’s politician.

Will he spend his whole life saying nothing and towing the party line?

Malcolm Rifkind didn’t find anything to say until Maggie was gone.

John Redwood is a Conservative propaganda machine. David Davis likes playing parliamentary games.

John Major had learned patience through physical pain and served his time.

Yes, I agree, all made from solid wood, unlike the chipboard incumbents now.

On leaving office Major took a a job with the Carlyle Group (armaments etc), principal shareholders the Bush and bin Laden families. Nice people to do business with.

In the reference in the Guardian, we have Major saying:

—start quote

“I had myself been prime minister in the first Gulf war and I knew when I said something I was utterly certain that it was correct, and I said less than I knew.”

—end quote

Maybe his good friend George HW Bush had been less than frank with him, because the photographs of Iraqi tanks massing outside Saudi Arabia’s borders (which frightened the Saudis into granting US establishment of an airbase, using their airspace etc. to attack Iraq) was fake. The stories about Iraqi soldiers dumping premature babies out of incubators in Kuwait was fake (as tearfully told by the Kuwait ambassador’s daughter, pretending to be a nurse)… the lies and propaganda made the entire Gulf-War-1 atrocity another war under false pretenses – right down to Kuwait’s slant-drilling into Iraq, and April Gillespie telling S. Hussein that “We take no position on border disputes”, when SH asked America for permission to invade Kuwait.

If Major didn’t know anything about that, or see anything dodgy about the premise for war, then perhaps he was not a good person to have been in charge of the country. A fellow Carlyle Group member is HW Bush. I wonder if that ever came up when they met.

Then again, the Carlyle Group has made plenty of money for Major. He is a partner in the group, not just a member, together with George Soros. Soros had made a fortune betting against Major (before either joined). I wonder if that caused friction during board meetings – Soros joined Carlyle one year after ‘Black Wednesday’. Major joined in 1997. Forgive and forget, eh?

Major’s “over-riding objective” was to restore confidence in the pound – Soros put a $10 billion bet against it (which was a lot of money back then), and that largely helped in bringing the UK economy to its knees, and cost us many billions of pounds. Being partners with HW Bush in what transpired (if not known at the time) to be a war based on untruths, hundreds of thousands, perhaps over a million killed, and the man that helped ruin the UK economy. That’s just two of Major’s new partners, and he has no problem.

Major accompanied HW Bush on trips to Saudi Arabia, seeing the bin Laden family, and has represented the military industrial complex ever since.

I’m pushed to see how Major – incompetent, probably corrupt, and deceitful – can possibly be seen as the best PM in recent decades. Chamberlain is of course every war-monger’s favourite whipping-boy. Can Wilson truly be called ‘devious’ given what he was up against? Was Callaghan incompetent, when the IMF caused a run on the pound, and unions slammed a brake on the economy?

It’s a tough choice, but Major would have come a long way from the top of my list for best PM. Cozy, affable, sure… but a war-profiteer with a lot of blood on his hands nonetheless, not least because of the free use of depleted uranium and a medieval siege against Iraq in the form of ‘sanctions’.

Hear hear Glenn

Glenn

Who would be your best PM since 1958 then? Harold Wilson was close to Israel, to say he least. Callaghan was a reactionary old git

Barbara

I thought very seriously about women and ethnic minorities. problem is, confining myself to Parliament for the purposes of the exercise, they are all pretty crap.

The more I look at that list (and any comments thereon would be libellous) I think it was an early April 1st joke.

Craig wrote:

—start quote

Glenn

Who would be your best PM since 1958 then? Harold Wilson was close to Israel, to say he least. Callaghan was a reactionary old git

—end quote

That’s a tough one. Macmillan perhaps? I’d have preferred the job of answering which PM had been the worst, even though any candidate would be up against some pretty stiff competition!

Craig, from your list I admire Kenneth Clarke and Vince Cable. I’d put Claire Short in as Foreign Secretary as a reward for resigning over the issues you presented her.

The problem with trying to compile a list like this for the majority, is that not many people hear about their MP’s unless they are one of the ‘big hitters’.

I think I would admire Hilary Benn, but alas I know little of what he does, or how well he does it.

OK Craig, you confined your selection to currently serving (serving themselves most generously, that is) parliamentarians. What would your list be if you didn’t?

Here’s my dream team. It assumes that I can work around some problems of nationality, and resurrect the dead:

Prime Minister: Me (don’t trust any other bastard)

Deputy Prime Minister: My girlfriend (necessary balance, agrees with me on nothing)

Chancellor: Herman E Daly

Foreign Secretary: You

Home Secretary: Alex Salmond

Defence Secretary: Colin Campbell, late of the SNP who was entrusted with defining the party’s defence policy and more or less gave up, pronouncing the whole defence thing ‘too ugly’.

Education: My sister, a retired teacher

Health: Hippocrates. The ideal has become somewhat corrupted since his time.

DFID: Maybe you again

Trade and Industry: Karl Marx

Environment and Rural Affairs: Andy Rowell

Lord Chancellor: Post eliminated

Transport and Communications: William Cobbett

Chief Secretary: Post eliminated

Work and Pensions: The Big Issue seller who stands outside our local Aldi’s

Energy and Climate Change: Carmelo Ruiz-Marrero

Google any names you don’t know.

Not sure why anyone still thinks politicians can do as they please. It doesn’t matter who you elect. They still have to do as they’re told on the big issues.

Even Obamerama must do as he’s told.

Just look at how they’re all jumping on the knickers bomber and planning attacks on Yemen. The central orchestration would be funny if it weren’t so serious.

The only thing that changes is the manner of their following the leader.

For really disgusting, just listen to Louise Ellman.

Wilson and Vietnam was a whole other world away.

The good guys lost…

“the lies and propaganda made the entire Gulf-War-1 atrocity another war under false pretenses ”

And Iraq never attacked Kuwait. And Germany was defending itself against Polish aggression in 1939.

Idiot.

“I think I would admire Hilary Benn, but alas I know little of what he does, or how well he does it.”

He proved himself a disgusting Stalinist when he was running Ealing council.

Short and Clarke … reach for the brown bag.

“Germany was defending itself against Polish aggression in 1939″

Interestingly, that was indeed the claim at the time, as stated by the Nazi leadership and obediently repeated by the media. Jewish-Communist terrorists congregating on the border. Just goes to show: the remotest period of history is the recent past. A lesson for us all perhaps.

So you would appreciate a quiet PM, would you?

In no way would I agree with your gender imbalance and I am also missing your ‘heart throb’ Claire Short in the line up.

As much as I would liek to see a grand coalition of minds, not a reag tag dog-matic party lording it over all others, I regard this thread a bit like a dream wish list never to be of any value.

I like to see a decentralisation of politics and power, away from mallable single people who can be nobbled at every corner on the way.

What are the realities we are presented with today? and

Do we want more of the same? If we do, lets bare our backsides for some more stars and stripes, please sir, can we have some more….

Gordon Bennet: You quote 1/4 of a sentence, and call me an idiot, because I say our (sorry, the British) action in the first Gulf War was based on lies? I did not claim that Iraq did not invade Kuwait. You lied there. Why can’t you get by without lying with every statement you make?

It’s a bit late for Rifkind to say this 14 years later.

‘Conservative MP Malcolm Rifkind, who was defence secretary at the time of the crash, said the documents obtained by the BBC added to the “growing, and almost unanswerable, amount of evidence that the finding of gross negligence against these two pilots was unsafe”.

He said the Ministry of Defence had failed to inform ministers of software problems and criticised the RAF inquiry.

“Their finding of gross negligence is not because there was hard evidence of gross negligence – it was because they had ruled out everything else,” he said.

He added that it was “bureaucratic stubbornness” stopping the Ministry of Defence from reconsidering the matter.’

a~

I listened to the anguish of the father of one of the pilots on Radio 4 Today this morning. His grief is evident at the cover up that took place at the enquiry. I hope that his son’s name and that of the other pilot will be cleared.

This is yet another example of the deceit that exists in the rotten system of government that we have in the UK. The report on Radio 4 said that the HoC and HoL had both criticized the findings of the enquiry. Why was nothing done to re-open the enquiry and tell the truth that the faulty software was to blame?

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/8438659.stm

http://news.bbc.co.uk/today/hi/today/newsid_8438000/8438883.stm

The two segments are at 7.31am and 8.10am

Craig,

The two cabinet posts that matter the most in today’s world affairs are the Prime Minister and the Foreign Secretary. Neither of your choices have the courage or political direction to do anything but tow the establishment line. We need people who are active today and engaged in taking on the ‘powers that be’. We need people that are knowledgeable and not afraid of exposing establishment and media lies; which are used to stir-up (or placate) the public about certain issues; people who will get the truth out whether it offends the powerful or not.

Prime Minister: Jeremy Corbyn.

Foreign Secretary: George Galloway.

Kenneth Clarke? Mr. British American Tobacco Directorship, PFI and rail privatisation (with public subsidies). Don’t understand that one – he’s good at appearing honest and reasonable and middle-of-the-road, but appearances are one thing, his policies are another.

Hilary Benn voted for the Iraq war and couldn’t be more different from his father. So that one’s difficult to understand too.

John Redwood is amazingly right wing.

The rest are either excellent (e.g Corbyn, Hughes) or ok (e.g David Davis is honest enough even if i disagree with his Thatcherism) or i’ve never heard of them.