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I have been impressed by Sturgeons very level headed approach of late. I also thinking she is admirably charting a difficult path through the current situation with her former boss.
As a caveat on being tested though, she is fortunate as a leader to be able to take credit for good things and has a scapegoat for any downsides.
Who was the female Labour MP who sadly died at the hands of a moron?
By all accounts, she was a decent sort of person one too few in politics.
Jo Cox.
Ken Clarke
Dianne Abbott (forget the press witch hunt and find out for yourself)
Dale (now Baron) Campbell Savours - sadly no longer our MP, but sits in the other house, so still a politician.
Nicola Sturgeon? Talks sense - https://twitter.com/janeygodley/status/1088147622798475264?lang=en
David Lammy and Caroline Lucas leap out - I quite like Jess Phillips, she's local to us and seems to talk sense.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-47233605
Looks like somebody else is playing the game....
John McDonnell has branded Sir Winston Churchill a "villain" over his role in dealing with striking miners in 1910.
Speaking at a Politico event and when asked whether Churchill was a hero or villain, the shadow chancellor replied: "Tonypandy - villain".
During the Tonypandy riots of 1910, troops were sent out to control striking miners who wrecked town centre shops and mine-owners' property.
In a black and white world everything gets a lot simpler.
Goldie was exactly the right person at the time, and she played the role very well.
Davidson I'm really not sure of. I kind of naturally like her, but she's pretty cynical and dishonest (which often works well, but isn't creditable). She totally failed to use her power at westminster- the DUP were able to name their price in order to vote with May, but the Scottish tories are just as important when it comes to getting the job done and she got absolutely nothing for that- in fact she got her nose rubbed in the DUP deal without even a moment's regret.
And at the end of the day, her wins aren't really over to her- the last election in Scotland was fantastical, with Labour openingly campaigning for the Tories in places then celebrating the Tory wins as a success even as they put the Tories into Westminster. Davidson didn't need to be competent to gain from that insanity, she just had to keep breathing. And the SNP's run could never last- bizarre really that when they delivered the second best general election results of any party since the war, that could be spun as a failure, but that's one of the things that's empowered Davidson.
She won't be able to hide from the impact of westminster next time round though, it took a loooooong time to put water between scottish tories and westminster and now it's all gone in just a couple of years. That might be her legacy.
Sturgeon's kind of the epitome of competent- not that inspiring, not imaginative, but... competent. Solid.
There's really not many in the westminster front benches I can get behind. McDonnell shouldn't stand out, but in the current bunch he does. People like what Starmer has to say but what does he actually deliver? Lammy I like, a lot, but similarly I struggle to point at achievements rather than points scored, maybe that's unfair though
Keir Starmer
Rory Stewart
Ken Clarke
Anna Soubry
Caroline Lucas - PM
David Lammy - Home Sec
Ken Clarke - Chancellor of Ex
Stella Creasy - Foreign Sec
Dominic Grieve - Justice Sec
Vince Cable - Business Sec
Sarah Wollaston - Health
Layla Moran - Education
Rory Stewart - Defense
… hold on … am I playing the right game?
There are some great SNP MPs… I've been very impressed by a fair few of them… but I have a horrible feeling we won't be able to use them to help us sort out the UK as whole.
Are they supposed to come from Pro-EU politicians only?
To me most of the politicians listed in this thread are in the "championship league" Not the "Premier league".
Dennis Skinner is fine but he shouts too much hence he never get "promoted".
(Not restricted to Sturgeons but merely an example) Sturgeons is just riding the wave at the right time. I mean the way Sturgeons handles a simple short question is by dragging the answer into 30 mins speech, and by the time you hear her last few words you would have forgotten what the question is all about.
Churchill - racist, responsible for awful atrocities in Africa and Tonypandy can be very much seen as using the troops to crush dissent.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-29701767
Interesting choices so far. Very few who have had much power - only Ken Clarke and Nicola Sturgeon- and so real opportunity to be blamed for something.
Lammy and Cooper popular for Brexit stance but arguably easy to sound competent when offering reason against the insanity of the brexit shit storms. Lammy is more eloquent on Brexit and other issues but has a lot of constituency voter support for his stance on Brexit. Cooper on the other hand is MP for Pontefract band Castleford - 70% leave territory so is showing quite a lot of personal integrity on brexit.
Personally I had quite a lot of time for Alan Johnson - not exactly a firebrand left winger but a decent person.
I’m glad to see Nicola Sturgeon on this list. I worked in the Scottish Parliament for a number of years, back when she was just another MSP and there was no party leadership on the horizon. She’s the one among them from that time that stood out as seeming to be a nice person uncorrupted by a desire to win or hold on to power, but sticking to what she believes in. I don’t agree with all her policies, but I do respect her retaining her focus, and I appreciated her being a pleasant human being.
Patrick Harvie leader of the Scottish Greens.
There are loads and loads of politicians from all parties, and at all levels of government, doing lots of good work out there. The problem is that the vast majority of it goes unnoticed because it's dull, routine sort of stuff.
However if that "dull" stuff is getting a crossing outside your child's school, sorting a visa problem, keeping a bridleway open, improving services at your local GP or a multitude of other things, it may not be important to the country as a whole to to individuals and communities the work many politicians do can be crucial. It's not all Brexit.
I appreciate that doesn't fit in with the "all politicians are useless, corrupt and self-serving" moans that we generally get, but it's probably a lot nearer the truth.
By far my favourite suggestion of the thread is 'Mayor of London Amir Khan' 😂
Ken Clarke was and still is wasted on the the Tories.
If you ignore his shameful treatment of haemophiliacs when he was health secretary.
Not Ruth Davidson.
She's a very good orator, seems a nice person, someone I'd love to have a blether with, but I'm afraid that Scotroutes is right, she's a proven liar who just seems to have fallen onto the same old routine of sniping at the Scotgov from the sidelines (along with the arseholes Mundell and Carlaw).
And she's toeing the party line on Brexit, despite knowing it's the road to ruin.
I'm out.
KennyP +1
Most politicians are very hard working and do a lot for their communities. But most politicians are never nocticdd, it’s just a select few. And most people won’t ever need to contact their MP so will only know about them through the press (if there is any) or biased opinions of others.
I’m a big fan of my MP, Andy Slaughter, and would like to vote for him again. It’s just a shame that his party leader is so incredibly useless...
Anyone else looking back fondly to when Ken Clarke and Michael Heseltine were still big names in the Tories?
Wasn't keen on them when they were in power in the 80s, but Ken Clarke is now one of the handful of MPs who actually believes in doing what he thinks is right.
Tom Watson, anyone?
boxelder
Dianne Abbott (forget the press witch hunt and find out for yourself)
Go on then, I'll bite.
Even discounting the constant stream of gaffes, she's shown herself to be at the very least a hypocrite (and quite possibly also a racist) a number of times http://www.independent.co.uk/news/diane-abbott-is-sorry-for-the-record-miss-finland-is-also-black-1354725.htm l">going back at least twenty years.
So let's hear why in your opinion she's competent?
Kevin Brennan, but I'm biased as he used to teach me History.
Aside from him Starmer and Lammy.
Caroline Lucas - one of the tragedies of our first past the post electoral system is that it's rendered the Greens a relative irrelevance in Parliamentary terms, which is a shame, we need more principled, honest, intelligent politicians like her. I like David Lammy too and Yvette Cooper. And Keir Starmer who comes across like a grown-up in a world where our PM sits smirking like an idiot in the face of the worst crisis in generations.
I also have a lot of admiration for our local Labour MP in the High Peak, Ruth George. She unseated a ****less, tobacco-lobbyist Tory at the last election with a big swing and has been absolutely stellar since. She interacts with the constituency more or less continuously using social media and has sent out a series of surveys to help her gauge opinions in the area, particularly on Brexit. She's a brilliant local MP rather than a power-hungry egotist and I think she genuinely does care about the best interests of her constituents.
The trouble with our party political system is that you end up with leaders like May who care more about their narrow party interests than they do about the national interest. It's also becoming apparent that a lot of MPs simply just aren't very bright.
Caroline Lucas – one of the tragedies of our first past the post electoral system is that it’s rendered the Greens a relative irrelevance in Parliamentary terms, which is a shame, we need more principled, honest, intelligent politicians like her.
Our local green candidate, my mate Matthew, is brilliant - after hustings events several Labour members tried to convince him to defect to them as he'd do a much better job than our current MP. If you want to know what our current MP thinks on an issue, you'll have to wait for the manifesto to be published.
In 1996, Abbott was criticised after she claimed that at her local hospital "blonde, blue-eyed Finnish girls" were unsuitable as nurses because they had "never met a black person before".[87] In response Marc Wadsworth, executive member of the Anti-Racist Alliance, who is half-Finnish, pointed out that the then-current Miss Finland, Lola Odusoga, is black, of Nigerian and Finnish descent. "She's a black Finn like me," he said. Abbott's position was supported by fellow Labour MP Bernie Grant: "Bringing someone here from Finland who has never seen a black person before and expecting them to have some empathy with black people is nonsense. Scandinavian people don't know black people—they probably don't know how to take their temperature".[88][89]
Wow.
There was me thinking that physiologically and genetically humans aren't significantly different! But it turns out the racists were right!
Mhairi Black
Yep, and AOC in the US.
So let’s hear why in your opinion she’s competent?
Some starters here:
https://cookingonabootstrap.com/2017/06/07/we-need-to-talk-about-diane-abbott-now-explicit-content/
Interesting that in all the parade of useless fools listed out in this thread, it's only the Dianne Abbott who inspires people to write tomes on her faults. Why is that, I wonder?
There will be people who dislike her because she's black DrJ.
However, I quite like her but she does not help herself at all. She's a bit like the left wing version of Nigel Farage.
Are they supposed to come from Pro-EU politicians only?
Of course not. Now, which Anti-EU MPs have impressed you in recent years? The key ones seem to be very unimpressive when dealing with most issues, even when entirely unrelated to the EU. That might be just a coincidence, or it could be the rabidly Pro-EU press painting them in a poor light (that might be a joke).
She’s a bit like the left wing version of Nigel Farage.
Except that she is actually elected. And re-elected.
it’s only the Dianne Abbott who inspires people to write tomes on her faults. Why is that, I wonder?
it's a lot to do with the patronising way she talks to people in TV and radio appearances, when it is clear she is bullsh1tting and blustering. Looking upwards, talking slowly, repeating herself. Plus the hypocrisy of her kids schooling and her rascist statements...
This video is worth watching only for Portillos smirking and Andrew Neil hammers Diane
it’s a lot to do with the patronising way she talks to people in TV and radio appearances, when it is clear she is bullsh1tting and blustering. Looking upwards, talking slowly, repeating herself
So - bad media style. That's what politics has come to. Not something you could accuse Blair - or indeed Cameron - of, eh?
That video is hilarious and toe curling in equal measures.
I think she is an appalling, patronising and odious person.
I'm not sure who enjoyed that more, O'Neil or Portillo
Kenneth Clarke has a dubious past, HIV/Hepatitis contaminated Factor 8 blood products happened on his watch.
So – bad media style
if only it were that simple but she keeps on screwing up - and it's not really media style on a show like that is it - it is just facing up to questioning - could be anywhere.
if only it were that simple but she keeps on screwing up
Lot's of people "screw up" - the imbecile Rory Stewart inventing percentages being an obvious recent example - but people keep bringing up Diane Abbott like she's unique in that respect. I agree that she has an annoying way of speaking - I can't bear to listen to her either - but why does running the country have to get mixed up with light entertainment? Shall we have Graham Norton for PM?
Ken Clarke, the best PM we've never had.
Keir Starmer, seems to talk a lot of sense.
So "competent" now means "remarkable", "doing the right thing by their constituents" etc. etc. rather than (being capable of) doing what they are paid to do, effectively. I'd say most of them are competent, if not at all remarkable. Even May is competent, though far from impressive. Similarly Cameron, though he blew it when he gambled with the referendum. The woman with the speeding ticket was incompetent.
imbecile Rory Stewart inventing percentages being an obvious recent example
Which he retracted immediately.
Stewart isn't an imbecile, his lectures on foreign policy in the middle East are well worth listening to.
There are loads and loads of politicians from all parties, and at all levels of government, doing lots of good work out there. The problem is that the vast majority of it goes unnoticed because it’s dull, routine sort of stuff.
However if that “dull” stuff is getting a crossing outside your child’s school, sorting a visa problem, keeping a bridleway open, improving services at your local GP or a multitude of other things, it may not be important to the country as a whole to to individuals and communities the work many politicians do can be crucial. It’s not all Brexit.
I appreciate that doesn’t fit in with the “all politicians are useless, corrupt and self-serving” moans that we generally get, but it’s probably a lot nearer the truth.
Very much this. I've been involved in local government at the most grass roots of levels for a while now and it's been a real eye opener. Far from being self serving politicians IME have been doing a ton of work for the very best of reasons and making pretty good decisions. There's no party distinctions either when you deal with these people. I defy anyone to identify the party of a bunch of local politicians in a meeting. Even the parties we mostly regard as mad.
Civil servants and local officials are good as well.
Best of all there's always vacancies at the lowest levels. So anyone who thinks a job isn't being done right can step in and fix it.
Nico
Member
So “competent” now means “remarkable”, “doing the right thing by their constituents” etc.
Shouldn't mean remarkable, but "doing the right thing by their constituents" is right there in the job description, that's competence defined.
footflaps
Member
Wasn’t keen on them when they were in power in the 80s, but Ken Clarke is now one of the handful of MPs who actually believes in doing what he thinks is right.
That gets much easier to do once you're basically retired and there's no consequences.
“doing the right thing by their constituents” is right there in the job description, that’s competence defined.
The question relates to all politicians. Not just (back-bench) MPs. Competence for the PM would involve a lot more than looking after her constituents.
I'm not sure quite what doing the right thing by their constituents means. Does it mean vote/campaign to the will of their constituents or make a value judgement about what is right for them? For example - I believe it is still the case that the majority of the population if asked would want to bring back the death penalty. Thankfully few MPs campaign for that to happen despite knowing it is the will of their constituents. I suspect they take the opinion that the proles are too daft/ill educated for that opinion to count and 'do the right thing' by their constituents by quietly ignoring their opinion.
To be honest I want my MP (and all the other MPs come to that) to do the right thing by me by being honest in their campaigning prior to election, intelligent, experienced in something other than politics, empathetic but prepared to make hard decisions and hold unpopular views. I'd also like to see them boycott the more farcical elements of parliament such as prime ministers question time.