[Closed] Who is the most useless politcal party leader ever?

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Has to be Blair.

Bankrupt the country, lied to the country, illegal wars.

I rather agree on Ed M. Pointless individual.

all Liverpool managers since 1990 but Rafa was my favourite
ed is the Labour parties IDS moment

RealMan ended the thread before it had begun!

Godwins law has already been invoked!

How long have you got?

José Luis Zapatero.
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Who bears an uncanny resemblance in looks, mannerisms and ability to do anything to Mr Bean.
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It was inevitable.

call me dave has to be up there doesn't he ?

failing to secure a majority in the last general election given the state of the economy, the general unelectability of brown, the unpopular wars etc etc.

pretty woeful really.

Aaaaaaaah Junkyard. I miss Rafa. There's nothing like hearing Old Trafford in full song. FAT SPANISH WAITER! YOU'RE JUST A FAT SPANISH WAITER! FAT SPANISH WAIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIITER 😀

Ed Milliband? Oh yeah, almost forgot about him. Have we ever had a more low profile leader of the opposition. One can only hope that he is secretly plotting a masterstroke that will kill off "Call Me" Dave and "Blowjob anyone?" Nick in one fell swoop. Sadly though, I doubt it. I like to think that he is still rather bewildered over how he managed to pull off winning the leadership contest in the first place.

Ed is really very bad. Watch him flopping around like a dead fish on the strikes today, just awful. Doesn't dare to have an opinion, "Well the strikers are bad but so is the government". He's trying to do the David Cameron say nothing then you can never be wrong thing, but he's useless at it.

Blair was shoddy. Hitler was incredibly succesful as a party leader, just not so good at the not murdering people thing, then not good enough at the conquering the world.

Thatcher was a demon-possesed s**tec**t but I suppose she was a good leader.

Ed Milliband seems absolutely bewildered that he's a party leader. The rest of the labour party know it and are having nowt to do with him, so they can bide their time for the inevitable leadership contest, which.. please god... happens before they lose the next election

I know, I'll be decisive. I'll anounce 30 different 'policy reviews' to form what kind of opinion I'm meant to have on stuff. Embarrassing. IDS looks like Churchill in comparison

Emperor Justinian. Controversial.

I guess the jury's still out on Nick Clegg then. Halving his party's support overnight obviously doesn't cut the mustard.

Michael Foot is the most useless political leader in my lifetime - and it's not close. Great man, but eminently useless leader of a mainstream political party.

If you subscribe to various conspiracy theories that he was installed by progressive labour MPs to kill the socialist wing of the party, the longest suicide note in history etc, then he wasn't useless at all from that PoV.

Campbell Bannerman

Don't be mean to Nick, you'll make him [url= http://nickclegglookingsad.tumblr.com/ ]sad[/url]

Although joking aside, I wouldn't be surprised of clegg dropped down dead, or turns Kilroy-Silk mad, he looks utterly ****ed these days

Ed Milliband, pathetic and wet. God knows what Labour thought in voting in him as leader when others would have been better suited to lead them back into power.
George Bush and the evil twins; Gordon Brown and Tony Blair all leaders by some freak of nature that we will all suffer from for decades to come.

Junkyard - Kenny Dalglish didnt leave until Feb 1991...

Anyway, surely Il Duce was more useless than Hitler

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Milliband - weak and vacant.

very funny thread guys. obviously we all know anybody elected to public office has to be next to useless at everything. the concept that someone is a genius because they belong to one party and yet another is an idiot because they belong to a different party is as ridiculous as suggesting one football team is in some way superior to another because they're called united rather than city.

good stuff. keep it coming.

saying that ;-), blair, while clearly smart, was absolutely useless. what a pathetic man.

All of them except Dear Leader.

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Nasty, sad little man.
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And this guy:
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Of whom it was famously said:
1. That he was so stupid he couldn't fart and chew gum at the same time.
&
2. That he'd spent too much time playing football without a helmet.

two words.. micheal foot

Michael Foot being 'useless' as party leader

Worth listening to - I only wish we could still hear this sort of stuff

http://news.bbc.co.uk/democracylive/hi/historic_moments/newsid_8195000/8195545.stm

Foot was a great orator, but in a PR, image concious world he was a disastrous choice for leader.

IDS for me, with Billiam Vague a close 2nd.

This guy, captured on film demonstrating exactly [i]why[/i] he was useless, for posterity.

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I think that Justinian was pretty effective as an Emperor.

My money would be on Thatcher. She may have got what she wanted so successful on that level, but took the UK backwards culturally, economically, morally etc about 250 years, so staggeringly unsuccessful on a wider level.

Trotsky ended up pretty ineffective too once Stalin got him in his sights. Not sure if he counts as a prty leader though.

Thatcher was never useless. Very easy to disagree with her policies but she was visionary in much of what she did and had more balls and conviction than any of the shower we have had since.

This guy, captured on film demonstrating exactly why he was useless, for posterity.

Why do you say that ?

what she did and had more balls

it doesn't take balls to destroy people, just megalomania and a total lack of compassion

Pretty inevitable that after hugely influential leaders like Thatcher and Blair you get numbnuts like Major and Brown, and then after defeat the second-raters set up for failure like Milliband (I can't even remember the names of the Tory ones).

Having said that, Cameron isn't exactly impressive. Not sure what happened in the cycle there.

King John. More hereditary than political I grant you, but he was a leader (of sorts) and left an interesting, albeit unintentional, legacy. His apalling judgement led to the loss of his continental posessions thus forcing England to stand on its own two feet rather than exist as some remote vassal state, ultimately paving the way for the dominance of centuries to come. And then there was Magna Carta... sometimes you have to be crap to do good!

Jim Callaghan was pretty hopeless too

This guy, captured on film demonstrating exactly why he was useless, for posterity.

Why do you say that ?

This guy, captured on film demonstrating exactly why he was useless, for posterity.

Hindsight is very nice but at the time that picture was taken nobody had actually experienced the kind of war we were about to have and it was genuinely believed that in the first night of the blitz alone half a million civilians would die.

In the year that he delayed our entry into the war we built our Spitfires and our Anderson shelters and evacuated our children from the cities. We built the factories that would supply our forces. The preparations we made for war in that year were immense, and that lead time in terms of both strategy and production were invaluable. And it was our building and manufacturing strategies as much as our fighting that won.

In that year Hitler also started his invasions so it became clear what his actions would be rather than what his rhetoric was. And that was very important, with some people, not least the Daily Mail (still owned by the same family incidently) openly backing Hitler up to the point where he started to play his hand we wouldn't have gone into the war with the universally held moral superiority that we needed. That kind of moral superiority that we[u] don't [/u]have in Afganistan or Iraq for instance. As it was though our men would cross the channel carrying just six bullets but know they were doing the right thing.

So, some people think he won the war for us. And that picture up there, thats a picture or a man with a piece of paper in his hand [i]and[/i] terminal cancer. He was dead within a couple of months of leaving office.

Do you think anyone ever suggested to Hitler that the moustache was a mistake?

I don't think he was that bad but this pic makes me laugh...I hate the Sun though

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Do you think anyone ever suggested to Hitler that the moustache was a mistake?

No, it was his choice of gear ratios that were more questionable. It has been said (Stephen Fry so it must be true) that Hitler's mustache was a homage to Charlie Chaplin, even though he knew that the Great Dictator was taking the piss out of him he still wore a Chaplin maustache anyway, so he was being ironic.

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this pic makes me laugh...

yeah, helped give us another 5 years of tory rule and one of the most disasterously inept governments ever.

hilarious.

Foot, brilliant in so many ways, could not lead his party (which makes him useless as a party leader).

Thatcher, despicable in so many ways, led her party very effectively.

uplink - Member
what she did and had more balls
it doesn't take balls to destroy people, just megalomania and a total lack of compassion
POSTED 3 HOURS AGO # REPORT-POST

William Hague and the baseball cap stand out for me. Has anyone ever been so poorly advised and lost so much credibility over such a trivial thing!

that guy that's stepping down as the leader of scottish labour, no idea what his name is. but aye him, worst politician i've ever seen.

"As it was though our men would cross the channel carrying just six bullets but know they were doing the right thing."

Shocking, amazing and humbling.

Macrusiken - excellently said. And the year's delay from 1938 - 1939 allowed Britain to get radar functioning, which was arguably the necessary edge in the Battle of Britain.

So basically all of them

Thatcher was not useless as a leader and neither was Blair or indeed Hitler. You can argue with both of their policies but they fact they had got policies and got them through parliament inherently makes them not useless. I would also argue that any leader who wins a general election has to have a degree of competence, though actual amounts do vary.

In modern times I think IDS and Ed Milliband are about as bad as you can get. Neither had their party on side, neither seem to have/had any ideas and both seem somewhat bewildered about how they got there.

William Hague and the baseball cap stand out for me

Sharing a hotel bed with another bloke makes wearing a hat, well, superficial.

Jeremy Thorpe

I can't listen to Ed Milliband, his lisp is just so incredibly annoying. It's impothible to take him theriothly.

http://www.thedailymash.co.uk/politics/politics-headlines/miliband-nervous-breakdown-starts-early-201107014023/

Foot, brilliant in so many ways, could not lead his party (which makes him useless as a party leader).

What people always seem to forget concerning Foot's leadership of the Labour Party is the systematic and highly coordinated sabotage from within the party that his leadership had to endure. I know of no other leader of the Labour Party, or any other party, who has ever had to endure anything like that.

When Michael Foot was first elected leader of the Labour Party the hard right within the party were absolutely mortified, and they then did everything they could possibly do to undermine and attack him and, the democratically decided policies of the party. Finally they made a very concerted and ultimately highly successful bid, to sabotage all hope of Labour winning the '83 general election.

The famous "longest suicide note in history" gibe which has long been associated with him came originally not from a Tory politician or a Tory newspaper, but from a prominent MP within his party - Gerald Kaufman. Likewise the famous sneering taunt which is often repeated that he looked like "an unemployed navvy" was originally made by a Labour MP - although you could be forgiven for thinking that only a Tory would consider insulting someone by comparing them with a manual worker without a job.

Of course some very highly prominent Labour politicians went much further than just denouncing and ridiculing Michael Foot to the media, they actively and very openly organised a split within the Labour Party so that any chance of Labour winning a general election would be scuppered.

And the Gang of Four were no small fry by any means, they included a former Foreign Secretary and Chancellor of the Exchequer. What was so galling was the fact that despite remaining in the party, the Gang of Four were so open about what they were doing, and media gave them such huge publicity.

Even more disgraceful is the fact that they were never expelled from the Labour Party and they simply left when the final touches to their party had been completed. Indeed in an desperate attempt to encourage them to stay in the Labour Party, Shirley Williams received the highest vote of any candidate in Labour's NEC elections just a couple of weeks before launching a new party to rival Labour.

And there is no doubt at all what the purpose of the new party was. There was never any chance that it could win a general election - it was simply too small even with its 28 Labour MPs and countless councillors, David Owen made it clear at the time that the priority was to stop Labour winning and guarantee a Tory win.

In the end they formed an electoral alliance with the Liberals which received 25% of the vote in the '83 election, about 12% up on what the Liberals had received in the previous general election. The SDP undoubtedly split the Labour vote - which is what they intended to do, had the SDP not been formed and Labour not lost that 12% in '83 they would have had a very reasonable result.

Michael Foot was never going to be the best leader the Labour Party leader ever - he was a very talented but old and tired man to stepped in to help his party at a time of crises and when there was no other natural choice. But he had everything stacked against him as a result of internal sabotage.

It would be interesting to speculate how well David Cameron would have done as leader of the Conservatives, if when he was leader of the opposition, his own MPs had ridiculed and taunted him. And if very prominent Tory politicians such as William Hague and Ken Clarke, and dozen of other Tory MPs, had split the Tory vote by setting up a rival Conservative Party. David Cameron didn't actually do very well last election - with everything stacked in his favour.

David Owen made it clear at the time that the priority was to stop Labour winning and guarantee a Tory win.

did he/ quote please! IIRC they marketed themselves as the alternative opposition due to labour being so left wing and riddled with Militant (although not named at the time)

she did and had more balls and conviction than any of the shower we have had since

Yeah, she destroyed so many villages and communities. There have been other leaders with similar strengths of conviction...

Yeah, she destroyed so many villages and communities.

did he/ quote please!

Find your own bleedin' quotes, what to you think I am - a defence lawyer that needs to provide exhibits to a court ?

It was absolutely clear when the SDP was formed that they stood no actual chance of winning a general election, and that the most they could expect was to split the Labour vote. When that was put to David Owen, as it obviously was, he replied that it would be better for the Tories to win than for Labour to win. His priorities were very clear.

btw big and daft I'm surprised to read my post - it was very long and you never agree with anything I say anyway. But such dedication eh ?

Actual worst in the western world is probably [url= http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kim_Campbell ]Kim Campbell[/url] of the Canadian conservatives. Took over from an unpopular Mulroney in 1993, called an election and got beaten like a rented mule. Went from 150 seats to 2 (!), lost her own seat and ended the party as a political force. Nothing to match that in the UK from the last century AFAIK.

I always knew what Thatcher, Foot, Kinnock and Major stood for. And I knew what Blair and Brown wanted to do as well.

I have no idea what Milliband wants or believes in. And what's more I don't even care.

I as prepared to give Miliband the benefit of the doubt until I saw this:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-13971770
see also - http://www.twitlonger.com/show/bfensm

[i]), lost her own seat and ended the party as a political force. Nothing to match that in the UK from the last century AFAIK. [/i]

I'm fairly certain killing 13 million people beats that. I mean I'm not totally keen on saying how great the nazi party and their leader were but I suspect the greatest war ever on earth ever, wins over her big time.

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Unfortunately there are so many now to choose from.

Blair sold us all out, he fell in love with his own image and ultimately will be remembered for being all about personality and not about substance. However, Cameron, Clegg et all seem to be cast from the same mould.

None of the current political elite want to pin their colours to anything, even when they're elected. The upshot is that the electorate get none of what they voted for and plenty of what they didn't vote for.

We're going to get more and more drones, with fewer and fewer palatable policies that wind up being watered down simply because most of us are so disillusioned that we expect nothing better.

mastiles_fanylion - Member

[s]Thatcher[/s] Hitler was never useless. Very easy to disagree with [s]her[/s]his policies but [s]s[/s]he was visionary in much of what [s]s[/s]he did and had more balls and conviction than any of the shower we have had since.

Do you see what I did there? very clever innit? 😛

Also, this is excellent:

Find your own bleedin' quotes, what to you think I am - a defence lawyer that needs to provide exhibits to a court ?

you may rightly hate politicians such as Hitler and Thatcher, but they are far from useless at their job. These are people who persuaded people to vote for them, which after all is the point of a politician.

For a truly useless political leader you need to find someone who has done badly with the electorate, someone no one actually remembers or cares about,

"For a truly useless political leader you need to find someone who has done badly with the electorate, someone no one actually remembers or cares about"

If that's the criteria, then it's that undead-botherer Michael Howard then.

Always remembering that with four years to go to the next election it isn't really worth an opposition leader coming up with the goods right now.

Far better to let everything settle down and start the build up in time to peak when it's important, and without the government nicking all your best ideas.

Millibot seems up there on current form.

The MP for Dunny-on-the-Wold, leader of The Adder Party
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Millibot seems up there on current form.

And yet the latest opinion poll in the Sun puts Labour on a clear lead over all other parties, as it generally has been since "Millibot" has been its leader. Which isn't exactly the worst result any leader of a political party has ever achieved.

CON 37%, LAB 42%, LDEM 8% .........30 June 2011

@ ernie_lynch

I read your post in full too, it was interesting. But I too would be keen to know if you have any references to support it. If not whilst it might still be true it would be less easy to believe.

Yeah it's all true spw3, the SDP was formed by very prominent Labour politicians including a former Foreign Secretary and a former Chancellor of the Exchequer - think of the effect to a Tory vote if William Hague and Ken Clarke had formed a breakaway conservative party to stand against David Cameron's party. Michael Foot had his attempt to win the 1983 general election seriously sabotaged from within the party.

And the originator of the "longest suicide note in history" was indeed Labour MP Gerald Kaufman. The taunts and ridicule that Michael Foot looked like an "unemployed navvy" also came from a Labour MP. And Shirley Williams did stand for the Labour's NEC as she was actively forming a new party to oppose the Labour Party - and she did get the highest vote of any candidate in that election.

The hard right would never have done those things if they had wanted Labour to win in '83 ...... obviously.