Who was the best Conservative Party leader since WWII? Who was the worst?

Please give reasons.|||Macmillan. The wily old fox who looked over 100 and at death's door 25 years before he was berating Margaret Thatcher for selling off the family silver. We never had it so good, and he was right. I don't think Britain has been so prosperous since, certainly not since WW2. Pity about Beeching.





Another surprise was Dracula - Michael Howard, whose finest hour was after he resigned the leadership and arranged the masterful Big Brother Eviction election of his successor that gripped the nation for weeks. I had no hopes for the man who inflicted the Poll Tax on us, yet in leadership, he became a born-again Disraeli and really very statesmanlike.





The worst? There are several contenders for different reasons:


Eden was absolutely idiotic over Suez, and would have broken up the Commonwealth too it we let him.


Iain Duncan Smith - from what I heard, his relationship with party workers was catastrophic, and the ultimate farce was when he got a fit of the giggles on the Today programme and went off like the Laughing Policeman. He might yet recover his standing if his Government can resist the temptation to bash the dole scrounger, and concentrate instead on giving them proper jobs to go to.





For me though, it must be Margaret Thatcher. I had a taste of her hypocrisy when she was Education Secretary and was Guest of Honour at my school Founder's Day. She parotted what the Headmaster had just said, without thinking whether it was right or not, and then bought the school by giving them an extra half day holiday.





She squandered the North Sea oil riches that should have made us as rich as Norway, and closed down our industrial base handing the loot over to a bunch of cowboys, who are ruining the world now.





She was responsible for the post-Soviet kleptocracy that threatens to make Russia the crime capital of the world, and everyone keen to follow their example, as Russia followed hers.





She brought us the European Single Market, while saying No No No to Europe, contradicting the very thing she was doing.





Hers was the Poll Tax, and she arranged the selling off of public utilities to foreigners - an act of Treason hard to beat.





Her strident "there is no such thing as society" and "there is no alternative" is what has made the UK such a brutal, hateful, grasping, celebrity aspirational bunch of philistine louts that bring shame down on our heads abroad, and reinforces the concept that Britain is only there to be fleeced.|||Most of my friends would yell out REAGAN. I find him the worst for a few reasons, first he did fund train and equip Bin Laden. He did give arms for hostages. He did create liberal laws and regulations that destroyed S%26amp;L banking industry. He also raised taxes more than even Obama (and Obama's tax heights have not happened yet so we have the lowest taxes in history under Obama).





To me the best conservative party leader is probably Obama, he is not even a conservative party leader. He has kept gitmo opened, expanded wars, used the patriot act to kill and assassinate 7 of the top 10 al qeida, and taken out dictators in both egypt and libya. Obama has also cut taxes to an all time low, and kept banks relatively deregulated (meaning no glass steagall).|||Reagan was the best! He lowered taxes and created millions of jobs.

Bush Jr probably the worst since he was stuck with Pelosi and Harry Reid and was manipulated and lied to by them. Really it was mostly all Barney Frank and Dodd who destroy the economy and Bush was fooled by them. Kinda his fault for trusting those losers! Bush probably should not have allowed that Tarp that was handed to Obama - that began the destruction of America.|||Eisenhower was the best. A traditional conservative, who never would have dreamed of the type of corruption and shilling for the wealthy that the rest of the con's since WWII, seem to do on a regular basis.



Reagan was the worst, although Bush was arguably more in incompetent. Since Reagan, the American economy has been a roller coaster ride of bubbles and busts. American workers have seen their wages stagnate and decline for all but the very top incomes (which have dramatically increased). American households now need 2 workers to maintain a middle class lifestyle, where prior to Reagan it took only 1. American households have had to take on massive debt (credit cards, home equity) to try to maintain a middle class lifestyle since Reagan's economic trickle down policy's started being implemented. America never had the kind of "out of control" debt, growing larger every year, prior to Reagan slashing the top marginal tax rates (and raising taxes on working people).



Reagan's presidency was a major shift in direction for America. Since Reagan we have gone from a society working to have a strong middle class and shifted to getting government (We The People) out of the way of big business's and the wealthy, and transferring our nations wealth into the hands of a very wealthy and elite few... at We The People's expense.



EDIT: Sorry about that. From my perspective of the UK (a somewhat limited knowlege there) I would say that Thatcher was probably one of the worst Conservative leaders there. Our worst in America, which was Reagan, actually followed many of the very same policy's and tactics as Thatcher.|||Accepting that different times call for different qualities I would say the best is a close call between Churchill and Thatcher, and the worst for my money was Heath.





Why? The former built the country up not just in terms of wealth but also prestige. Ted Heath was unable to stand up to certain pressures (eg trade unions and the lure of the Common Market) and both those influences have had a disastrous effect on our country. Trade unions and their greed led to the loss of thousands of jobs we will probably never see again and the Common Market became the EU which is crippling us.|||undoubtedly margaret thatcher i would swim the seven seas and crawl across a burning desert just kiss the wxxxy that makes love to her