Into the merde

Here's a brain teaser. Is Theresa May's government the most incompetent ever? Considering their approach to Brexit one might say yes. They are thoroughly clueless. But look back in time. Sad to say the Blair/Brown governments can be marked down for Iraq and city deregulation, both matters which still rankle today. John Major's government, remembered for Black Wednesday and the traffic cones hotline was hardly a non-starter in the incompetence stakes. Thatcher - whose record on mass unemployment, creating the conditions for the Falklands war, supporting apartheid and so on and so on - well, there's another contender for pole position. Callaghan and the Winter of Discontent? Ted Heath and the Barber boom and the secondary banking crisis? Not to mention a legacy of inflation which was hung around Wilson's neck? The first Wilson governments seem to have enjoyed a period of relative competence, not least when we recall he kept us out (more or less) of Vietnam. Douglas-Home I don't think was around long enough to merit attention, Macmillan doesn't seem to have mucked things up too badly, unlike Anthony Eden whose post-imperial hubris led to Suez. Churchill as we know was a bit far gone. Then there was Attlee. All things considered, his government gets the gong for being the most competent. Compared to the challenges his post-war government faced, Theresa May's government's little problem with Brexit is hardly much of a challenge, but all the evidence points to them completely screwing it up.

Oopps. I've just realised that I've not mentioned Cameron. Must have been a Freudian slip. Governments don't get much more incompetent than his.