Britain's Worst Prime Minister

Dan Snow's History Hit

History Hit

History

4.7 • 12.9K Ratings

🗓️ 17 October 2022

⏱️ 31 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

Could Liz Truss be Britain's worst Prime Minister? As the political scene in the UK hurtles into further disarray, Dan gets together historians Tim Bale, Catherine Haddon and Robin Eagles to put forward who they think has been Britain's worst Prime Minister over the centuries. Anthony Eden, Edward Heath and the 3rd Earl of Bute contend for first place.

This episode was produced by James Hickmann and edited by Dougal Patmore.

If you'd like to learn more, we have hundreds of history documentaries, ad-free podcasts and audiobooks at History Hit - subscribe to History Hit today!

To download the History Hit app please go to the Android or Apple store.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Transcript

Click on a timestamp to play from that location

0:00.0	Hi everyone, Mark and to Dan Snow's history hit, Prime Minister Liz Truss, the first Lord
0:05.8	of the Treasury, the UK's Prime Minister, is currently according to an opinion poll,
0:11.1	the most unpopular Prime Minister in history since the advent of modern polling.
0:18.4	She seems to have caused a financial crisis in Britain with her budget announcement of
0:27.0	gigantic unfunded tax cuts. She is, objectively, a very, very bad public speaker. She chose a cabinet
0:36.3	narrowly from inside her own rather small, periscope power base inside the Conservative
0:42.1	Party. She did not extend the hand of friendship to opponents. But is she the worst Prime Minister?
0:48.7	In the 300 year history of the office, there have been some rungs in this podcast, folks,
0:55.8	we're going there. In this podcast, we're going to find out who was the worst and are they
1:00.5	worse than Liz Truss? Will it be Lord North? It's difficult for me to talk about this. The man
1:06.5	who lost the American colonies, not all the American colonies, of course, held onto Canada,
1:10.9	didn't he? The best bit, obviously, was it Eden? Too old. Full of drugs, I joke you not.
1:17.6	Who went on a and fetamin-fueled bender that led to a collapse in Britain's global position,
1:23.6	global prestige? Was it Callahan? Was it Rosebury who didn't seem to be that fast about being
1:31.1	Prime Minister at all? Was it the Duke of Devonshire who did sort of nothing, really?
1:37.4	I'm going to run through some of the worst and then we're going to hear from experts,
1:40.8	friends of the podcast, with their vote. There are plenty of Prime Ministers to choose from.
1:46.2	It's probably 56, although there is a little bit of controversy there. Probably 56 Prime Ministers.
1:51.9	Many of whom served non-consecutive terms. Gladstone, for example, was Prime Minister on four
1:59.9	separate occasions, one of which was only for a couple of months. The office now is about 302
2:06.0	years old, and like many things do with the British constitution, the origination of the office is
2:11.2	a little bit obscure. There was never a point in time when a law was passed, when the new office of
	...

Please login to see the full transcript.

Previous episode | Next episode

Disclaimer: The podcast and artwork embedded on this page are from History Hit, and are the property of its owner and not affiliated with or endorsed by Tapesearch.

Generated transcripts are the property of History Hit and are distributed freely under the Fair Use doctrine. Transcripts generated by Tapesearch are not guaranteed to be accurate.