British Prime Minister Quotes & Sayings

No British Prime Minister of the last seventy years has been more harshly stereotyped than Stanley Baldwin. No one has been so much ignored, after the initial judgements of contemporaries had been made. — Stanley Baldwin

This was absolutely an attack on [British Prime Minister] Tony Blair, principally, and the perspective which is really predominant in Europe right now that he's not questioning enough of Mr. Bush's policies. (about his latest song Shoot the Dog) — George Michael

If I'm the British prime minister I won't be dictated to on the timetable or the manner of the negotiations. — Michael Gove

Don't tell me about the Press. I know *exactly* who reads the papers. The Daily Mirror is read by the people who think they run the country. The Guardian is read by people who think they *ought* to run the country. The Times is read by the people who actually *do* run the country. The Daily Mail is read by the wives of the people who run the country. The Financial Times is read by people who *own* the country. The Morning Star is read by people who think the country ought to be run by *another* country. The Daily Telegraph is read by the people who think it is.'

"Prime Minister, what about the people who read The Sun?"

"Sun readers don't care *who* runs the country - as long as she's got big tits. — Antony Jay

The British prime minister will want to have a strong and positive relationship with European leaders always. — Michael Gove

Government entomologists and chemical company publicists freely employed metaphors that compared insects and Communists. At Columbia University in 1946, former British prime minister Winston Churchill suggested that Communists should study termites in order to see what their future had in store. Unintentionally clarifying the threatening metaphor, the president of the American Economic Entomologists entitled his 1947 speech "Totalitarian Insects. — Mark Hamilton Lytle

Prime Minister to the Emperor of Ethiopia 9 May 41 It is with deep and universal pleasure that the British nation and Empire have learned of Your Imperial Majesty's welcome home to your capital at Addis Ababa. Your Majesty was the first of the lawful sovereigns to be driven from his throne and country by the Fascist-Nazi criminals, and you are now the first to return in triumph. Your Majesty's thanks will be duly conveyed to the commanders, officers, and men of the British and Empire forces who have aided the Ethiopian patriots in the total and final destruction of the Italian military usurpation. His Majesty's Government look forward to a long period of peace and progress in Ethiopia after the forces of evil have been finally overthrown. — Winston S. Churchill

This is the BBC in London. You will now hear a statement from the Prime Minister." "I am speaking to you from the Cabinet room, Ten Downing Street. This morning the British Ambassador in Berlin handed the German government a final note, stating that unless we heard from them by eleven o'clock, that they were prepared at once to withdraw their troops from Poland, a state of war would exist between us. I have to tell you now, that no such undertaking has been received, and that consequently, this country is at war with Germany. — Jeffrey Archer

America is replicated at every level of British life, from the taxi driver to the prime minister. — Timothy Garton Ash

Hunting because of the 2004 Hunting Act. This is not a good advertisement for legislation. Yet, to appreciate the full force of the sham, recall, in wonder, the great ruptures between town and country, left and right, liberals and animal-welfare nuts, that preceded the ban. The march of 400,000 wax-jacketed pro-hunt protesters through London, the 700 hours of parliamentary debates devoted to the issue, the threat from Labour backbenchers to oppose all government business unless the ban was brought - it was madness. Even at the time, it seemed so: a dilettantish, illiberal, class-infused blot on what was otherwise a British golden age, for politics and the economy - as even the ban's reluctant main architect, Tony Blair, later admitted. A man not given to regrets, the then prime minister considered the ban one of his biggest. "God only knows," he reflected, what the point of it was. — Anonymous

Pitt the Younger was a great British Prime Minister. He saved Europe from Napoleon, he was the pilot who weathered the storm. I don't know whether he'd have done it any better or quicker had he been married. — Edward Heath

I can stand here today, leader of the Labour Party, Prime Minister, and say to the British people: you have never had it so ... prudent. — Tony Blair

The Carlyle Group is the most politically connected investment firm in the world. The company has mastered the art of influence peddling on a global scale, hiring executives and consultants ranging from Republican power broker James Baker and former president George Herbert Walker Bush to foreign leaders like former British prime minister John Major and former Philippine president Fidel Ramos. — William Hartung

There is an honourable tradition in British public life that those charged with authority at the top of an organisation should accept responsibility for what happens in that organisation. I am therefore writing to the prime minister today to tender my resignation as chairman of the BBC. — Gavyn Davies

...Andrew Feldman put £2,000 behind the bar, and [David] Cameron told a joke about a farmer inviting a new neighbour to come to his house for a party where there might be dancing, drinking and 'rough sex'. When the neighbour asks what to wear, the farmer says, 'It doesn't matter, it's only going to be you and me. — Tim Shipman

It is our job to work for the government of the day and so that means working for Gordon Brown as Prime Minister, and we need to do those preparations just to be sure that we're ready for whoever you, the British public, elect and that's core to our civil service values over the last 150 years. — Gus O'Donnell

Tony Blair is not just the worst prime minister we've ever had, but by far the worst prime minister we've ever had. It makes my blood boil to think of the British soldiers who've died for that little liar. — George MacDonald Fraser

Once, when a British Prime Minister sneezed, men half a world away would blow their noses. Now when a British Prime Minister sneezes nobody else will even say 'Bless You'. — Bernard Levin

I don't just want a better deal for Britain. I want a better deal for Europe too. So I speak as British prime minister with a positive vision for the future of the European Union. A future in which Britain wants, and should want, to play a committed and active part. — David Cameron

The truth, Prime Minister, is that you have run out of our money. The country as a whole is now in negative equity. Every British child is born owing around 20,000 pounds. Servicing the interest on that debt is going to cost more than educating the child. — Daniel Hannan

I refer to the misunderstanding of Soviet Russia as an aggressive power, militaristically and ideologically bent upon world domination 'seeing', to quote a recent speech of the British Prime Minister, 'the rest of the world as its rightful fiefdom.' How any rational person, viewing objectively the history of the last thirty-five years, could entertain this 'international misunderstanding' challenges, if it does not defeat, comprehension. The notion has no basis in fact ... If Russia is bent on world conquest, she has been remarkably slothful and remarkably unsuccessful. — Enoch Powell

On Sunday, the president flies to the Azores islands to attend a summit with British Prime Minister Tony Blair and Spanish Prime Minister Jose Aznar, and here's my prediction: Bush gets voted off. — Craig Kilborn

The spring of 1942 was given over to a very impassioned, strategic debate about where we should first attack in counterpunching against the Germans and Italians. The British argued very persuasively on the part of Winston Churchill, prime minister, that this was a very green American Army, green soldiers, green commanders. — Rick Atkinson

Bartimaeus: "A small piece of advice," I said "it isn't wise to be rude to someone bigger than you, especially when they've just trapped you under a boulder."
Imp: "You can stick your advice up ... "
"This brief pause replaces a short, censored episode, characterized by bad language and some sadly necessary violence. When we pick up the story again, everything is as before, except that I am perspiring slightly and the contrite imp is the model of cooperation."
Bartimaeus: "I'll ask again: who is Rupert Deveraeux?"
Imp: "He's the British Prime Minister, oh Most Bounteous and Merciful one. — Jonathan Stroud

Two famous happy warriors - Reagan and his political soulmate, British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher - knew they were fighting their own ideological and external wars. But they did so with the sunny dispositions and positive outlooks of those who knew they were on the right side of history. — Monica Crowley

We want a comprehensive package that covers export subsidies, tariffs and overall levels of support. British Prime Minister Tony Blair is making central to his summit speech that he wants to abolish all export subsidies. It is up to him to push the European Union in that direction, and the U.S. needs to reciprocate. — Kevin Watkins

But because it seldom happens people forget that a caucus in the British parliamentary system can remove a leader, including a prime minister. — Chantal Hebert

This is the beginning of the end (talking about the war) ... Everyone was saying ... But the British Prime Minister said, "This is not the end. It is not even the beginning of the end. But it is, perhaps, the end of the beginning." Do you see the difference? — Anne Frank

You cannot imagine, to give you another example, that you may have, one day, a prime minister (it would go against my modesty to breathe his name) who, one day, after announcing in Parliament, in a cool, impassive voice, that, as the result of a number of carefully thought out diplomatic manoeuvres he has refrained from discussing before (for he is not a man of many words), he has succeeded in annexing Britain as an ordinary colony of Hungary, and that he is taking this opportunity to apprise the House of the fact; - Well, as I say, after explaining this in a cool and impassive tone, ignoring the shouting, jubilant Members who want to carry him round on their shoulders, suddenly he takes up a fencing posture and, right there, on the premier's rostrum, employing a formidable, hitherto unknown jujitsu hold, floors the Australian world wrestling champion whom the British opposition treacherously hid under the rostrum in order to assassinate the greatest European. — Frigyes Karinthy

When Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain's government fell in May 1940, the nation turned to Churchill. At last, his unique qualities were brought to bear on a supreme challenge, and with his unshakable optimism, his heroic vision, and above all, his splendid speeches, Churchill roused the spirit of the British people. — Gretchen Rubin

The uncritically admiring supporters and friends of the prime minister [Benjamin Netanyahu], in whose ranks I certainly don't include David [Brooks], but include Charles Krauthammer, the columnist, and Mike Huckabee, the former governor of Arkansas, insist on comparing him to the incomparable leader of the British forces in country in part of - during World War II. — Mark Shields

Short of being prime minister there isn't a better job in British politics than running London. — Ken Livingstone

That woman," Bandar liked to say of the British prime minister, "was a hell of a man. — Robert Lacey

I remember when America was strong. The situation that has arisen due to "The Interview" and North Korea's Kim Jong Un is bizarre! More bizarre is that the pressure worked - and the movie will not be released. This is a comedy - a satirical look at a serious situation. Rob Lowe was right when he said, "Hollywood has done Neville Chamberlain proud today," referring to the British prime minister who appeased Hitler. — Anonymous

You see, before I became prime minister, the Australian prime minister only attended ever two meetings in the world: the British Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting and the South Pacific Forum. — Paul Keating

He was flying over India now, still making notes. He remembered hearing an Indian politician on TV talking about the British prime minister and being unable to pronounce her name properly. "Mrs. Torture," he kept saying. "Mrs. Margaret Torture." This was unaccountably funny. — Salman Rushdie

President Obama hosted a state dinner for British Prime Minister David Cameron. The president and the British are getting along a lot better lately. They love to compare notes on ways the Tea Party's always trying to overthrow their rule in America. — Argus Hamilton

No medieval monarch in the whole of British history ever had such power as every modern British Prime Minister has in his or her hands. Nor does any American President have power approaching this — Tony Benn

But I never did escape from this plot-driven world into a more congenial, subtly probable, innerly propelled narrative of my own devising
didn't make it to the airport, ...
and that was because in the taxi I remembered a political cartoon I'd seen in the British papers when I was living in London during the Lebanon war, a detestable cartoon of a big-nosed Jew, his hands meekly opened out in front of him and his shoulders raised in a shrug as though to disavow responsibility, standing atop a pyramid of dead Arab bodies. Purportedly a caricature of Menachem Begin, then prime minister of Israel, the drawing was, in fact, a perfectly realistic, unequivocal depiction of a kike as classically represented in the Nazi press. The cartoon was what turned me around. Barely ten minutes out of Jerusalem, I told the driver to take me back to the King David Hotel. — Philip Roth

My good friends, for the second time in our history, a British Prime Minister has returned from Germany bringing peace with honor. I believe it is peace for our time ... Go home and get a nice quiet sleep. — Neville Chamberlain

Gamal Abdal Nasser, the nationalist leader of Egypt, was described by British Prime Minister Anthony Eden as an Egyptian Hitler. Then it carried on like that. Saddam Hussein became Hitler when he was no longer a friend of the West. Then Milosevic became Hitler. — Tariq Ali

[Congress] is not the British Parliament, and I hope it never will become the British Parliament ... Are we going to bring the president in here and have a question period like the prime minister has in Great Britain? — Trent Lott

Today a Scot is leading a British army in France [Field Marshall Douglas Haig], another is commanding the British Grand Fleet at sea [Admiral David Beatty], while a third directs the Imperial General Staff at home [Sir William Roberton]. The Lord Chancellor is a Scot [Viscount Finlay]; so are the Chancellor of the Exchequer and the Foreign Secretary [Bonar Law and Arthur Balfour]. The Prime Minister is a Welshman [David Lloyd George], and the First Lord of the Admiralty is an Irishman [Lord Carson]. Yet no one has ever brought in a bill to give home rule to England! — John Hay Beith

British prime minister William Gladstone summed up the West's opinion of "the Turk": Let me endeavor very briefly to sketch, in the rudest outline, what the Turkish race was and what it is. It is not a question of Mahometanism simply, but of Mahometanism compounded with the peculiar character of a race. They are not the mild Mahometans of India, nor the chivalrous Saladins of Syria, nor the cultured Moors of Spain. They were, upon the whole, from the black day when they first entered Europe, the one great anti-human specimen of humanity. Wherever they went, a broad line of blood marked the track behind them; and, as far as their dominion reached, civilisation disappeared from view. — Eric Bogosian