Rating 20^th-Century British Prime Ministers

Abstract

This article reports the results of a 2004 survey of academics, specialising in British politics and/or modern British history, asking them to rate all the 20th‐century British prime ministers in terms of their success in office and also asking them to assess the key characteristics of successful prime ministers. The top‐ranked PMs were (in order) Attlee, Churchill, Lloyd George and Thatcher. In contrast to the many and regular surveys of American academics ranking US presidents, this is the first large‐scale exercise of this type in British political science. Analysis of the findings in terms of the characteristics of the survey respondents helps shed light on the survey results.

A Multi-Criteria Decision Analytic Model to Determine the Best Candidate for Executive Leadership

“…The lack of objectivity due to the qualitative nature of the inputs into the rating process has been controversial and elicited strong rebuttals from opposing camps of scholars. 'Over the years, many other studies have appeared criticizing the whole idea of ranking presidents as meaningless (trying to 'measure the immeasurable'); alleging that such an exercise has a built-in bias towards so-called 'activist' presidents or that the respondents' political orientations skew the results ('a Harvard-eastern elitist-Democratic plot', thundered one critic)' 'Trying to comparatively assess prime ministerial performance and rating the leaders of the past was simply 'the ultimate parlor game for political junkies' (Riddell, 2004;Theakston and Gill, 2005). Operations Research (OR) of which the Simplex is a pivot has now come of age and MCDA, a member of the OR family is as good a tool as any, for managing the analytical complexities in the political domain.…”

British MPs on British PMs: Parliamentary Evaluations of Prime Ministerial Success

“…To keep things simple, the project was built around the central question posed by Theakston and Gill (; ) in their two surveys of academics: ‘How successful or unsuccessful do you think each of the following post‐war Prime Ministers was in office? Please answer using the 0 to 10 scale, where 0 means highly unsuccessful and 10 means highly successful’.…”

“…More specifically, it analyses the goals that MPs say Prime Ministers ought to pursue, the personal traits that MPs say are necessary for a Prime Minister to be successful, and the perceived success or otherwise of every post‐war Prime Minister from Clement Attlee to Gordon Brown. The use of expert surveys to rank British Prime Ministers has become something of a cottage industry in recent years (Theakston, ; Theakston and Gill, and ). While the views of historians and political scientists are of obvious interest, the views of practising politicians constitute a distinct and no less important body of opinion.…”

Political leadership as statecraft? Aligning theory with praxis in conversation with British party leaders

“…A prominent debate within this scholarship has developed about how prime ministerial and party leadership should be understood and assessed (Bennister, 't Hart, and Worthy 2014;Buller and James 2012;Byrne, Randall, and Theakston 2017;Greenstein 2009;Heppell 2014;Royal Holloway Group 2015;Theakston and Gill 2006;Theakston 2011;Theakston and Gill 2011). One leading framework for assessing political leaders is the neo-statecraft approach.…”