There have been 56 British Prime Ministers since Robert Walpole of the 1700s. 53 were men and 3 women. Their legacies are very mixed but quite a few were widely regarded as failures. We will consider North who lost America, Eden with Suez and the scandals under Douglas-Home. In more recent times we will consider whether Johnson and Truss should be added to the list.
- The Impossible Office, A History of the British Prime Ministers, (CUP, 2021), Anthony Seldon, ISBN: 1316511532
- British Prime Ministers, (Stephard-Walwyn, 2005), Roger Ellis and Geoffrey Treasure, ISBN: 978085632345
- The British Prime Ministers, 300 years of Political Leadership, (Hodder and Stoughton, 2022), ISBN: 1529312167
- Criteria for considering effective leadership of PMs in the Westminster parliamentary system
- Administration of 3 PMs who regularly appear on the "worst British PMs" list, Lord North (1770-1782), Antony Eden (1955-1957) and Alec Douglas-Home (1963-1964) and why historians have labelled them as failures
- Administrations of Boris Johnson 2019-2022 and Liz Truss, Sept-Oct 2022 and why current academics and commentators are arguing that they should now be placed on the “worst British PMs” list.
By the end of this course, students should be able to:
- Discuss the main criteria by which historians make judgements about effective political leadership in democratically elected governments.
- Consider the political, social and economic context in which the PMs were leading their party and their country and how context featured strongly in their successes and failures.
- Discuss the factors which lead to disagreement among academics and historians about their “best” and “worst” lists of PMs since the early 18th century.
