I say Lord Palmerston was England's greatest Prime Minister...

[Drunken Irishman]

[T_i_B]

1. I say it was Earl Gray!

The Great Reform Act and a very nice cup of tea! :bounce:

[elleng]

9. Right. Grey.

Delightful

[mikeytherat]

2. Pitt, the elder

mikey_the_rat

[Drunken Irishman]

4. Lord Palmerston!

[mikeytherat]

6. Pitt, the elder!

http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_f_LoP82Fns8/RxeGnWyhVbI/AAAAAAAAABQ/JkQG_C30QbQ/S220/Boggs+Simponsonizes.gif

mikey_the_rat

[Drunken Irishman]

7. Okay, you asked for it, Boggs!

[Captain Hilts]

3. And King George VI it's greatest king in 200 years. Palmerston helped UK get wrapped up in Crimea..

which wasn't cool.

[geardaddy]

5. David Lloyd George.

[Bucky]

8. A man with three first names and no last name.

Anyway, everyone knows the greatest PM the Brits ever had was the Right Honourable Jim Hacker.

[geardaddy]

11. Bah!

That's Jerry from The Good Life.

[struggle4progress]

10. I too am still angry Queen Isabella didn't marry Leopold Saxe-Coburg

I was gonna wait until 10 to start drinking, but you've upset me so much by reminding me about this ...

[Demoiselle]

12. Lord Melbourne was pretty sexy.

At least as played by Paul Bettany.
Anybody else catch that splendidly costumed Young Victoria soap opera? My very funny son suffered through it with us and then declared it "a gilded turd." A very accurate description.

[Tommy_Carcetti]

13. Balderdash!

Dear sir, I do say I think we all know that William Cavendish-Bentinck--also known as the 3rd Duke of Portland--was the finest prime minister to ever to grace the United Kingdom of Great Britain.

[Ishoutandscream2]

14. Churchill, by God!!

:hide:

[Ikonoklast]

15. Benjamin Disraeli, the rest all come in second.

Except Winston. He's good for a tie.

[ikri]

16. Francis Urquhart

You're not a real prime minister until you've thrown a reporter from the roof of a three storey building

[gl_5500]

17. churchill, no question

[NNadir]

18. "It is alarming and also nauseating to see Mr. Gandhi...striding half-naked up the steps...

...of the viceregal palace, while he is still organizing and conducting a defiant campaign of civil disobedience, to parley on equal terms with the representative of the king-emperor."

- Winston Churchill, 1930

http://www.kamat.com/mmgandhi/churchill.htm

Winston Churchill had a great mind, great talent, great ambition, and great lust for life.

He was also racist, imperialist, and prone to creating disasters, like Gallopoli, where none other than http://www.dailykos.com/story/2007/2/10/91157/6580%20/673/300353">Henry Moseley had his head blown to bits.

Churchill's greatest achievement of course, was to use his tendency for pig headedness, if brilliant pig headedness, in exactly the right place at exactly the right time in history, when it came to Hitler.

His most inspiring speech was "the finest hour" speech in which he referred to a British Empire lasting a thousand years, rhetoric familiar in those times in Germany, albeit used in reference to a thousand year Reich.

I admire Churchill, I really do. But I think his flaws, as big as his place in history, need more examination.