Rank the most recent five UK Conservative Prime Ministers

[Statilius the Epicurean]

Cameron (2010-2016)
May (2016-2019)
Johnson (2019-2022)
Truss (2022)
Sunak (2022-)

[S019]

May
Cameron
Sunak
Johnson
Truss

[Lechasseur]

Sunak
May


Johnson
Cameron


Truss

[SWE]

Truss
May
Sunak
Cameron
Johnson

[Vice President Christian Man]

May
Cameron
Johnson
Sunak
Truss

[Del Tachi]

Johnson
Cameron
May
Sunak?
Truss

[CumbrianLefty]

1) May - even this is relative, in many ways an awful bossyboots authoritarian who was persuaded by the dreaded Tim Nickothy to pander to her (and her party's) worst instincts over Brexit - only trying to reverse that when it was too late. But nonetheless, maybe still the one with the best and least delusional grasp of how a right wing party could win elections in the UK in the 21st century. When she departed Number 10 and talked about "the country I love" you could tell she meant it - even if her idea of what that was actually about was not yours. And partly down to her church upbringing, had a genuine sense of public service. So overall the least bad of the bunch, even if - partly (though of course not entirely) for reasons beyond her own control - her time in office was less than stellar. In that respect she was quite a good Tory analogue of Brown, when you think about it.

2) Cameron - character wise, maybe the easiest to get on with of all the five as a person - and that always serves you well in politics. And had the right instincts about how to return the Tories from the electoral undead post-1997. But his great flaw was (partly though everything coming so easy to him in life) being uninterested in the hard work involved in both governing and managing his party - tasks that he devolved increasingly to his "evil twin", one G O Osborne (think of Timothy's influence on May, but several times over) It was, it is generally accepted, Gidiot who was the main driver of the utterly disastrous Brexit referendum that has come to define the legacy of his PMship so negatively. Plus his privileged upbringing also meant he had little grasp of the consequences of austerity.

3) Johnson - a horrific moral void of a human being in both his personal and political personas, for reasons surely too well known and of recent vintage to need explaining in detail here. For all that, there is no denying he had genuine political skills - as shown both in his actually winning the London mayoralty on two occasions, and then getting the biggest Tory win for over three decades at the last GE - even if it turned to ashes in his (and his party's) mouth so spectacularly in the end. And despite his undeniable general awfulness, he made the right call on two big issues - climate change and Ukraine. But in the round, the final verdict on his premiership is going to be brutal - and rightly so.

4) Sunak - a classic case study in how having "vibes" that impress our mostly shallow and incurious excuses for political "journalists" can take you an awful long way. Gained public popularity for a while by doing stuff as Chancellor (Covid bailouts etc) that he genuinely hated with every fibre of his being. Would have been reasonably acceptable as a "techbro" in Silicon Valley, but not as our PM. And the pandering to the worst people in his party and client press is starting to verge on the scandalous.

5) Truss - seriously, where to even start with the Fifty Days Of Misrule? The thesis that she was some sort of undercover agent all along (who never changed her former left-liberal views) becomes more credible by the day. Her one great virtue may be discrediting right-libertarianism for generations.

[Alcibiades]

1) May - even this is relative, in many ways an awful bossyboots authoritarian who was persuaded by the dreaded Tim Nickothy to pander to her (and her party's) worst instincts over Brexit - only trying to reverse that when in was too late. But still, maybe still the one with the best and least delusional grasp of how a right wing party could win elections in the UK in the 21st century. When she departed number 10 and talked about "the country I love" you could tell she meant it - even if her idea of what that was actually about was not yours. And partly down to her church upbringing, had a genuine sense of public service. So overall the least bad of the bunch, even if - partly (though of course not entirely) for reasons beyond her own control - her time in office was less than stellar. In that respect she was quite a good Tory analogue of Brown, when you think about it.

2) Cameron - character wise, maybe the easiest to get on with of all the five as a person - and that always serves you well in politics. And had the right instincts about how to return the Tories from the electoral undead post-1997. But his great flaw was (partly though everything coming so easy to him in life) being uninterested in the hard work involved in both governing and managing his party - tasks that he devolved increasingly to his "evil twin", one G O Osborne (think of Timothy's influence on May, but several times over) It was, it is generally accepted, Gidiot who was the main driver of the utterly disastrous Brexit referendum that has come to define the legacy of his PMship so negatively. Plus his privileged upbringing also meant he had little grasp of the consequences of austerity.

3) Johnson - a horrific moral void of a human being in both his personal and political personas, for reasons surely too well known and of recent vintage to need explaining in detail here. For all that, there is no denying he had genuine political skills - as shown both in his actually winning the London mayoralty on two occasions, and then getting the biggest Tory win for over three decades at the last GE - even if it turned to ashes in his (and his party's) mouth so spectacularly in the end. And despite his undeniable general awfulness, he made the right call on two big issues - climate change and Ukraine. For all that, the general verdict on his premiership is going to be brutal - and rightly so.

4) Sunak - a classic case study in how having "vibes" that impress our mostly shallow and incurious excuses for political "journalists" can take you an awful long way. Gained public popularity for a while by doing stuff as Chancellor (Covid bailouts etc) that he genuinely hated with every fibre of his being. Would have been reasonably acceptable as a "techbro" in Silicon Valley, but not as our PM. And the pandering to the worst people in his party and client press is starting to verge on the scandalous.

5) Truss - seriously, where to even start with the Fifty Days Of Misrule? The thesis that she was some sort of undercover agent all along (who never changed her former left-liberal views) becomes more credible by the day. Her one great virtue may be discrediting right-libertarianism for generations.

I think this is as good of an attempt as possible at ranking this horrific five. One example I might bring up to add to what you said about Cameron is that his experience with his son Ivan does genuinely reflect well on him as a person, and is a stark contrast to Johnson’s treatment of his spawn. Of course, this kind of personal anecdote is not usually the kind of thing you’d consider alongside policies and historical legacies when ranking leaders, but it goes to show how low the bar is with this bunch that it actually does serve as a discriminator here.

[nicholas.slaydon]

Cameron
May
Sunak
Johnson
Truss

[Sestak]

Truss
May
Sunak
Cameron
Johnson

[mileslunn]

1.  Cameron
2.  May
3.  Sunak
4.  Johnson
5.  Truss

First three while imperfect and made mistakes, I believe on balance have done a good job.  Last one better than Corbyn, but still lousy PM.  Truss a disaster and someone that tried to make UK lab experiment for what various libertarian think tanks propose.  Off course public didn't want that thus why dumped.

[Mr. Smith]

1. Cameron
2. Johnson
3. Sunak
4. May
5. Truss

[TheTide]

1. Sunak (it is likely that he will be the only one to leave the country in a better state than he found it, albeit that perhaps isn't much of achievement)
2. May (basically just a Comedy of Errors, didn't do much in terms of substance)
3. Johnson (without lockdowns I would have probably placed him first)
4. Truss (obviously a disaster, but was out within 50 days)
5. Cameron (smarmy Thatcherite idiot who hid behind faux-centrism, and was in power long enough to do lasting damage)

[Antonio the Sixth]

May > Cameron > the plague > BoJo > Rishi > nuclear annihilation > Truss

[TheTide]

I will also add that May is by far the best 'post-Prime Minister' of the four former PMs here. Again, that's not saying much when you consider the other three.

[Sir Mohamed]

1. Cameron
2. May
3. Sunak
4. Truss
5. Johnson

What a disastrous group.

[🦀🎂🦀🎂]

Trying to see this in terms of their historical creditability as Influential Figures, rather than whether I personally like them or not (I personally dislike the top two far more than the others fwiw). Obviously historical legacy for this lot will ultimately depend on how Brexit and the EU is seen in later centuries, so it is out of their hands.

1) cameron - a less successful 21st century Stanley Baldwin, Cameron deserves some credit for picking up a largely moribund party and, if not reforging it in his own image (mainly because his own image would not be an admirable guise), creating an electorally successful machine. Yes, it only worked once, but the 2015 election was a genuinely impressive move, especially the ruthlessness at which he undermined his coalition partner. The economic legacy of austerity will be felt for some time, and though I don't think it will be a particularly welcome legacy, he did at least manage to successfully action an economic plan to completion (you can tell the bar is set very little). Gay marriage seems like a small thing, but I do appreciate that he pushed through a plan that probably was not tactically useful because he thought it was the right thing for the future. And yeah, he gambled his legacy and failed. Perhaps if he had won the referendum, we would consider him a tactical genius who checkmated the nuts, but he didn't, so he is ultimately a failure.

2) were it not for the fact The Lettuce is also on this list, we could say Boris is one of the most inappropriate (in terms of character) non-royal to hold office in this country. I always thought of him as similar to Kevin Rudd (although that is an insult to KRudd, who is a more sympathetic failure) - he obviously has some raw talent in creating a personal mandate outside of the structures of the conservative party and when carefully guided this energy could be put to a useful end. The teeny problem, of course, is that he was always Boris Johnson - a lazy, licentious, two-faced charlatan who was so personally repulsive that as soon as he lost his electoral use for the conservative party he was violently defenestrated by every single person outside of a tiny personal cult.

3) may - an honourable figure (she was an authoritarian Draco as home security, but that comes with the job title) who plodded along unable to work out the Gordian knot of Brexit, given her absent mandate from the 2017 election. When people start saying how sorry they are for you in your political obits, you know you have failed as a political figure.

4) sunak - even though his career isn't over, there's no magic rabbits he's pulling out his hat. A non-entity in every sense of the word - he can't control his cabinet or his partyy, his chancellor is an empty suit, his home secretary is someone too incompetent to be a tyrant and is basically counting down the days before he can safely flee his job and just become another ultra rich guy.

5) truss - some of you know i like roman history. Liz Truss is a level of terrible that can only be described though comparisons to the absolute worst of the worst Emperors. The ones that come to mind are Vitelius, Didius Julianus and Petronius Maximus, all individuals who stepped into a power vacuum not through great achievements but through behind the scenes politicking and bribes; failed to realise they had absolutely no mandate or legitimacy; acted like autocrats regardless and then ultimately were mercilessly ripped to shreds (literally in the case of Vitelius and Maximus) by everybody simultaneously turning on them in a matter of weeks. Is it unfair to compare Liz Truss to a man who directly caused the sack of Rome by the Vandals? Imo the comparison is favourable to Truss.

[Alben Barkley]

From an outsider's perspective:

1. Johnson. He was funny and supported Ukraine.

2. Sunak. He has succeeded at being so incredibly boring I have heard almost nothing about him. That's the way a UK PM should be damn it!

3. May. She tried, at least, I guess?

4. Truss. LMFAO.

5. Cameron. He is responsible for all this f--king mess to begin with. What he did is like some dumbass allowing their own death sentence to be put to a vote, smugly confident that everyone loves them and thus would NEVER condemn them to death. Well this retard condemned his whole country to death in this fashion, and thus deserves to go down in history as one of the worst, most self-owning idiots of all-time. Resigning in disgrace was far too good a fate for this pig f--ker.

[Battista Minola 1616]

1. May (a nice practicing Anglican woman with a genuine sense of civic commitment but no qualms about being Nasty - is this not the platonic ideal of a Tory?)
2. Truss (not her fault she is insane)
3. Sunak (boring deficit-obsessed finance bro)
4. Cameron (smarmy Etonian with a dishonest presentation)
5. Johnson (smarmy Etonian with an even more dishonest presentation, incredibly pretentious, licentious and corrupt)

[President Punxsutawney Phil]

1. May
2. Sunak
3. Cameron
4. Truss
5. Johnson

[Okay, maybe Mike Johnson is a competent parliamentarian.]

1. COMRADE TRUSS, who killed the Queen, crashed the pound, started a public conversation about BDSM ethics, and discredited the Tory Party in the fifty glorious days of Red Autumn!
2. May; see what others have said about her





3. Strep throat




4. Cameron






5. Poison sumac
6. Poison Sunak




7. The Late Heavy Bombardment


8. BoJo





9. Truss (non-meme)

[The Right Honourable Martin Brian Mulroney PC CC GOQ]

1. Cameron: He basically wins by default. May and Truss achieved nothing of note, Sunak has time but not much really. Cameron gambled away his legacy with Brexit, and as some have pointed out, his legacy wasn't likely to be well-received regardless. In some ways, Brexit might have been an inevitable issue, Euroscepticism is nothing new. A Tory majority not even addressing the issue would have caused internal dissatisfaction anyway, probably pouring even more fuel on the Farage fire. The problem was Cameron didn't take it very seriously, he seemingly expected it to go the way of the Scottish referendum. It was never defined what an actual Brexit looked like, and more charismatic figures like BoJo and Farage jumped on it. I think that really tarnished what was a fairly average British government that could have been a pretty average British PM legacy - hated by most, but with successes for defenders to point at.

2. Johnson: He deserves even more criticism on how Brexit turned out, but as cliché as this is, he got Brexit done. From a purely neutral standpoint, you could look at him as a Prime Minister who was elected on a promise, preceded by a vote by the British people in favour of the very thing he promised, and he delivered on it. You also can't overlook how electorally successful he was. It wasn't just Corbyn who lost it, he was just as much of a leftist crackpot back then, who was expected to get steamrolled by Theresa May, but he tapped into a lot of votes and kept May to a minority. But in 2019, the red wall finally shattered, while Johnson managed to still hold onto a good chunk of remain seats. That said, after Brexit, his whole purpose was fulfilled, and he started getting into the kind of nonsense you'd expect a guy like him to get into. Sloppy mistakes, scandals, and a general air of incompetence while things just kept getting worse and worse.

3. Sunak: He's a pure neutral. He hasn't achieved much of note since taking over, but he also hasn't made things worse. His premiership feels terminal, and the Conservative Party is in disarray. Electorally, the Tories are doing only a bit better than under Truss, but still in annihilation territory. Much of that can be blamed on the two who preceded him, but it's not clear how Sunak plans to turn things around, barring a miraculous economic boom.

4. May: Again, if we were to look at her from a pure neutral perspective, she was a Prime Minister who achieved no major policy wins, who called what seemed like a surefire election but was instead punished by the electorate and brought down to a minority, and had to end her premiership with a defeated resignation, during a period of serious political instability. The more sympathetic view is that she was thrown into impossible circumstances and became a convenient scapegoat. Overall, she's a bit of a side character in a long story, because her legacy is so thin.

5. Truss: Lol. Quite possibly the most incompetent world leader in recent times.

[Filuwaúrdjan]

For reasons that some posters will know about (and for the rest of you, well, use your imagination) I sometimes darkly joke that my pain scale is broken. The brief Truss Premiership has created a comparable issue with the ranking and assessment of Prime Ministers: after experiencing such extreme and acute awfulness, how is it possible to rationally assess PMs according to an objective benchmark, when that whole horror show is now part of the picture?

[Progressive Pessimist]

May > Cameron > Sunak > Johnson > Truss.

All are only about 1% separated from each other in terms of being better though.

[Sumner 1868]

[1] Sunak
[2] May
[3] Johnson
[4] Cameron
[5] Truss

Something like that.