# For British members: Who has been the best PM of your lifetime? **URL:** \ **Category:** Politics & Elections\ **Created:** [July 9, 2017, 9:35pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/for-british-members-who-has-been-the-best-pm-of-your-lifetime/790879 "2017-07-09T21:35:43Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 11\ **Page:** 3
**Author:** ![RickJay](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/bb73d2/32.png) [@RickJay](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/RickJay)\ **Post date:** [July 20, 2017, 6:30pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/for-british-members-who-has-been-the-best-pm-of-your-lifetime/790879/41 "2017-07-20T18:30:40Z")
So what should the British government have done with North Sea oil money to create jobs? Please give specific examples that would actually have been reasonably foreseeable at the time. Nobody knew in 1985 the Web would be a thing, so don’t pretend that’s an option. If the money was in fact thrown into benefits… I mean, aren’t social benefits, you know, of BENEFIT? They help people. ---
**Author:** ![Quartz](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/quartz/32/267_2.png) [@Quartz](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Quartz)\ **Post date:** [July 20, 2017, 9:17pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/for-british-members-who-has-been-the-best-pm-of-your-lifetime/790879/42 "2017-07-20T21:17:46Z")
> [@Gyrate](#): > > It was a win-win for her all around. With frequent insults about the working class added on top. Again you are mistaken. The working classes voted for her in droves. ---
**Author:** ![Gyrate](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/gyrate/32/3588_2.png) [@Gyrate](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Gyrate)\ **Post date:** [July 21, 2017, 9:07am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/for-british-members-who-has-been-the-best-pm-of-your-lifetime/790879/43 "2017-07-21T09:07:20Z")
> [@Quartz](#): > > Again you are mistaken. The working classes voted for her in droves. I am not mistaken. The working class also vote for the Republicans in droves, despite repeated characterisations by Republicans of the working class as lazy scroungers and “animals”. ---
**Author:** ![Evan\_Drake](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/b487fb/32.png) [@Evan\_Drake](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Evan_Drake)\ **Post date:** [July 21, 2017, 9:45am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/for-british-members-who-has-been-the-best-pm-of-your-lifetime/790879/44 "2017-07-21T09:45:45Z")
> [@RickJay](#): > > So what should the British government have done with North Sea oil money to create jobs? Please give specific examples that would actually have been reasonably foreseeable at the time. Nobody knew in 1985 the Web would be a thing, so don’t pretend that’s an option. > > If the money was in fact thrown into benefits… I mean, aren’t social benefits, you know, of BENEFIT? They help people. The web was only a twinkle, however some folk thought computing was going to be quite important in the next 50 to 100 years, wild visionaries that they were. Britain could have hosted a Silicon Valley and thrown a lot into manufacturing to get a keen edge. Off reading, they did have the Sinclair things, the BBC Micro, Acorn, Commodore, Atari etc. — which British computers may have been fine or rubbish for all I know, but there was certainly a ready-made basis for government investment. You don’t get massive dams without a government being involved. ---
**Author:** ![aldiboronti](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/9fc348/32.png) [@aldiboronti](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/aldiboronti)\ **Post date:** [July 21, 2017, 10:39am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/for-british-members-who-has-been-the-best-pm-of-your-lifetime/790879/45 "2017-07-21T10:39:06Z")
I’m old enough to have been alive when Churchill was PM so I have no difficulty at all in making my choice. ---
**Author:** ![Stanislaus](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/stanislaus/32/3391_2.png) [@Stanislaus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Stanislaus)\ **Post date:** [July 21, 2017, 12:32pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/for-british-members-who-has-been-the-best-pm-of-your-lifetime/790879/46 "2017-07-21T12:32:40Z")
> [@RickJay](#): > > How would the government have “invested in new jobs” in any way that would reliably have resulted in new jobs? > > The government deciding what he “new jobs” should be is not an idea with a long history of success. > [@RickJay](#): > > So what should the British government have done with North Sea oil money to create jobs? Please give specific examples that would actually have been reasonably foreseeable at the time. Nobody knew in 1985 the Web would be a thing, so don’t pretend that’s an option. > > If the money was in fact thrown into benefits… I mean, aren’t social benefits, you know, of BENEFIT? They help people. “Investing in new jobs” is probably a bit reductive. What I should have said was investing in R&D, infrastructure and adult education, so that the material conditions to attract private investment were there. A brief history of the collapse of UK industry, using mining as an examplar: Mining villages had one industry only. People worked in the mine, or in ancillary jobs supporting mine work. The government and industry colluded to keep other industries from investing in the area, because mining sucks and if people had a better job they’d go to it, even for a lower wage. When the mining industry collapsed, this meant that people living in mining areas had no alternative employment or alternative skills, and there was no other industry looking for a large influx of ex-miners. Thatcher’s solution was to pay benefits to the people left high and dry, but this was very much “give a man a fish” territory. No-one was taught how to fish, nor - expanding the metaphor beyond all sense - were new fish species introduced. Benefits are of limited benefits. This benign neglect was quite deliberate policy (the rapid growth in those claiming disability benefits during this period was no accident -see Fig 1 and Fig 2 in the appendix [here](http://www.ucl.ac.uk/~uctp39a/Banks_Blundell_Emmerson_IFS_WP201509.pdf)): the government believed that the UK economy needed to be restructured away from manufacturing/heavy industry and towards services, and was happy to pay ex manual workers to sit at home rather than retrain them. The problem is that this has led to “Crap Towns” where well-paying jobs are rare, the labour force is unskilled, education isn’t valued, and companies are reluctant to invest. This [insightful blog](https://flipchartfairytales.wordpress.com/2011/07/12/a-slow-day-in-small-town-britain/)illustrates the problem: > [@](#): > > For example, a couple of years ago, I was talking to an HR director in a company that was planning to shift most of its operations, and possibly even its HQ, away from the south-east. It already had sites around the country including one in a big city with a vibrant centre (let’s call it HubCity) and another in former smokestack single-industry town (let’s call it Coketown). The HR director explained the dilemma to me: > > _We need to get our operations out of the south-east. We should have done it years ago. The property costs and wages are killing us. Expanding the HubCity office looks like our best option. Wages are lower and property is a lot cheaper._ > > “But surely salaries and property costs are even cheaper in Coketown,” I replied. > > \*Well they are but we just can’t get the quality of people in Coketown. HubCity has two universities and a lot of colleges. The people are just better educated, more sophisticated and come with a better attitude. > > We have tremendous problems in Coketown. The older ones were used to working in industrial plants and even the younger ones who didn’t seem to have inherited the same attitudes. Coketown has huge social problems and people bring them into the office. We spend a lot of time trying to manage those problems. By locating ourselves in the middle of all that, we’ve taken on lot of aggro that we didn’t anticipate. > \* > In short, the HR director was saying that the company could cut its costs by moving to a large provincial city but beyond that, it was into diminishing returns. The extra savings from low wages and property costs in Coketown didn’t make up for the difficulty of getting skilled workers and the problems involved in managing the ones they already had. HubCity was, therefore, a much more attractive option for relocation than Coketown. Coketown is, in large part, Thatcher’s legacy. Of course, the other option available was to do what Norway did with their oil money and create a [publicly owned investment fund](http://www.telegraph.co.uk/money/special-reports/how-to-invest-likenorways-700bn-oil-fund/)(theirs is now worth £700bn). Norway turned its oil revenue - always due to run out at some point - into a permanent financial asset. The UK spent it all, and has nothing to show for it. ---
**Author:** ![Elendil\_s\_Heir](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/7cd45c/32.png) [@Elendil\_s\_Heir](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Elendil_s_Heir)\ **Post date:** [July 21, 2017, 6:12pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/for-british-members-who-has-been-the-best-pm-of-your-lifetime/790879/47 "2017-07-21T18:12:02Z")
Not a Brit, but born in 1964 and long interested in British politics. Thatcher and then Blair take top honors in that period, I think, although from different ends of the ideological spectrum and with quite a few caveats, as noted above. ---
**Author:** ![Two\_Many\_Cats](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/8dc957/32.png) [@Two\_Many\_Cats](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Two_Many_Cats)\ **Post date:** [July 21, 2017, 9:34pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/for-british-members-who-has-been-the-best-pm-of-your-lifetime/790879/48 "2017-07-21T21:34:31Z")
I’m not British, but I have watched _Fawlty Towers_. All I can say is, “IT’S BLOODY WILSON!!!” :D:D:D:D:D:D ---
**Author:** ![PatrickLondon](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/patricklondon/32/4422_2.png) [@PatrickLondon](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/PatrickLondon)\ **Post date:** [July 22, 2017, 6:44pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/for-british-members-who-has-been-the-best-pm-of-your-lifetime/790879/49 "2017-07-22T18:44:36Z")
> [@Stanislaus](#): > > Of course, the other option available was to do what Norway did with their oil money and create a [publicly owned investment fund](http://www.telegraph.co.uk/money/special-reports/how-to-invest-likenorways-700bn-oil-fund/)(theirs is now worth £700bn). Norway turned its oil revenue - always due to run out at some point - into a permanent financial asset. The UK spent it all, and has nothing to show for it. I distinctly remember a conversation with an economist at about the time North Sea oil was coming on to the agenda, and he pointed out that that was exactly what was going to happen if the government went on as it was planning to do. ---
**Author:** ![Baron\_Greenback](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/baron_greenback/32/48_2.png) [@Baron\_Greenback](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Baron_Greenback)\ **Post date:** [July 22, 2017, 7:14pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/for-british-members-who-has-been-the-best-pm-of-your-lifetime/790879/50 "2017-07-22T19:14:13Z")
> [@Stanislaus](#): > > Of course, the other option available was to do what Norway did with their oil money and create a [publicly owned investment fund](http://www.telegraph.co.uk/money/special-reports/how-to-invest-likenorways-700bn-oil-fund/)(theirs is now worth £700bn). Norway turned its oil revenue - always due to run out at some point - into a permanent financial asset. The UK spent it all, and has nothing to show for it. Norway also retains a 67% holding in Statoil, whereas Thatcher allowed BNOC (later Britoil) to go into private hands. ---
**Author:** ![Evan\_Drake](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/b487fb/32.png) [@Evan\_Drake](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Evan_Drake)\ **Post date:** [July 22, 2017, 7:43pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/for-british-members-who-has-been-the-best-pm-of-your-lifetime/790879/51 "2017-07-22T19:43:05Z")
> [@Stanislaus](#): > > This [insightful blog](https://flipchartfairytales.wordpress.com/2011/07/12/a-slow-day-in-small-town-britain/)illustrates the problem: > > . Interesting; but the first lines had me wondering about dementia: \*Victoria Wood’s comments on Radio 4’s Today Programme this morning will provoke a few angry letters. She has noticed, she says, that the audiences in the big provincial cities are quicker and more sophisticated than those in small towns and country areas. \* This has been the accepted belief for a few millennia. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/for-british-members-who-has-been-the-best-pm-of-your-lifetime/790879.md?page=2)