Who was your country’s most forgettable ruler/politician?
September 10, 2025
Who was the most insignificant ruler/politician from your country?
20 comments
I don’t know. Can’t remember.
But King William III probably because nobody remembers him, and people that remember the name mostly confuse him with Stadtholder William III who also became King of England.
In the Third Republic, easily Pedro Santana Lopes. He became PM after Durão Barroso fucked off to Brussels to become EU commission president.
Ruled for a few months and had a chaotic government (to the point his ministers found out what ministry they had been assigned to *during* the signing ceremony). Eventually the president got tired of him and dissolved the assembly.
15 years later, he tried forming his own party and it flopped. He’s now a mayor/semi-God in the town of Figueira da Foz.
The most forgettable prime minister is probably Ola Ullsten.
He was prime minister between 1978 and 1979 largely due to parliamentary differences – no other PM candidate could gather enough support and he was the compromise candidate. This resulted in a single party government where the 4th largest party in parliament ruled alone – with only 11% of the vote share, this was an exceptionally weak government.
Elections were held in 1979, and he left the PM position shortly thereafter.
Lauri Ingman. Although he served as prime minister in two different coalitions in different, and difficult, times barely anyone in Finland even knows his name.
In addition to serving as a prime minister he was also a professor of theology, archbishop, minister of education, speaker of parliament and a profilic writer.
A few years ago, the Labour Party had a leadership election, this is going back a few leadership elections (the one where Ed Miliband ultimately won). One of the candidates, Andy Burnham, was basically ignored by the national media as even running despite polling no worse than most other candidates. He’s since gone on to be thought of as one of the party’s potential future leaders.
Liz Truss (49 day PM) will be a great pub quiz question in a few years.
But John Major was PM for most of the 1990s and is almost as forgettable.
[Giovanni Goria](https://it.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Giovanni_Goria).
An average MP who became “prime minister” without having any power inside his party just because the real powerful people wanted someone younger than the rest. Not a bad person, but came and went without any reason whatsoever.
Its the current PM Rober Fico. He is in charge for 14 years and did nothing. Most useless politician ever.
Probably Kurt-Georg Kiesinger, even though he was a NSDAP member. Ludwig Erhard could also be such a case, though his policies as minister of economics heavily shaped post-war West Germany.
Temporary prime ministers are very forgettable, but other than that, nobody from the last 50 years. They are all spicy and unforgettable.
In recent history probably Hartwig Löger who was interim head of government for 7 days in 2019. I did have to look up his first name for this comment at least, and while the time frame when this happened was a turbulent episode in Austrian politics, his main claim to fame is the shortness of his term. That said, given the nature of the question there are probably people that I forgot about.
Under the assumption that I’d have already forgotten about the most forgettable leader of the UK, I looked back through the list of Prime Ministers to find the first one I wasn’t at all familiar with, and the answer was the splendidly named Archibald Primrose, who was Prime Minister for a year or so in the mid 1800s.
I suspect that for future generations the answer may be Rishi Sunak. His achievements could be listed on a very small postcard, and the screw ups of his immediate predecessors tend to overshadow his own mistakes.
In recent history President Giscard.
A centrist that got eclipsed by his successor for better or worse.
There have been some very forgettable Prime Ministers, especially in the 18th and 19th centuries. Viscount Goderich (who was briefly PM for a few months in the 1820s) is my go-to mediocrity.
People tend to forget that Axel Pehrsson-Bramstorp of the Farmers League actually was PM for about three months in 1936.
The Social Democratic minority government lost a vote in parliament and resigned in June. Some think that it was a strategy to go into the election in September as a opposition party.
As Pehrsson-Bramstorp and the Farmers League only were in power until the September election, during the summer months when parliament wasn’t in session, they didn’t accomplish anything.
The current leadership isnt very inspiring. Our current prime minister didnt belong a party, so he was a sitting duck from the begining. Our king doing his best but he is a bit silly.
Best President ever, because he made not even a single bad decision.
He made no other kind of decisions, either, because his whole term was ca. eight hours. 🙂
For presidents it must be Lauri Kristian Relander. He was the second president and the most important thing he did was to officially visit a couple of countries. He was so uninteresting that he lost his party’s internal candidate selection in the following election.
In very recent history, Michel Barnier. He was appointed as Prime Minister 3 months after the election on September 5th 2024 and resignation of the previous government, and was overthrown by a motion of no-confidence 3 months later.
But otherwise the role of President of the Republic was quite insignificant during the Third (1870-1940) and Fourth Republic (1946-1958), so we do not even bother to know the name of the presidents. Some had some pretty funny story though:
* Paul Deschanel resigned after 7 months and a famous incident. He fell down from a train during a trip and was found in pyjamas.
* Félix Faure who died while having good time with his mistress, which obviously led to a lot of jokes.
When we list all the noteworthy post-war PMs, we tend to ignore most of the 60s. De Quay, Marijnen, Cals, Zijlstra, Biesheuvel. The only one in that era who’s remembered was Piet de Jong, but only because he was very long-lived, not because of policies. These PMs – all different flavours of Christian Democracy from parties that eventually formed the CDA – didn’t do much noteworthy.
20 comments
I don’t know. Can’t remember.
But King William III probably because nobody remembers him, and people that remember the name mostly confuse him with Stadtholder William III who also became King of England.
In the Third Republic, easily Pedro Santana Lopes. He became PM after Durão Barroso fucked off to Brussels to become EU commission president.
Ruled for a few months and had a chaotic government (to the point his ministers found out what ministry they had been assigned to *during* the signing ceremony). Eventually the president got tired of him and dissolved the assembly.
15 years later, he tried forming his own party and it flopped. He’s now a mayor/semi-God in the town of Figueira da Foz.
The most forgettable prime minister is probably Ola Ullsten.
He was prime minister between 1978 and 1979 largely due to parliamentary differences – no other PM candidate could gather enough support and he was the compromise candidate. This resulted in a single party government where the 4th largest party in parliament ruled alone – with only 11% of the vote share, this was an exceptionally weak government.
Elections were held in 1979, and he left the PM position shortly thereafter.
Lauri Ingman. Although he served as prime minister in two different coalitions in different, and difficult, times barely anyone in Finland even knows his name.
In addition to serving as a prime minister he was also a professor of theology, archbishop, minister of education, speaker of parliament and a profilic writer.
A few years ago, the Labour Party had a leadership election, this is going back a few leadership elections (the one where Ed Miliband ultimately won). One of the candidates, Andy Burnham, was basically ignored by the national media as even running despite polling no worse than most other candidates. He’s since gone on to be thought of as one of the party’s potential future leaders.
Liz Truss (49 day PM) will be a great pub quiz question in a few years.
But John Major was PM for most of the 1990s and is almost as forgettable.
[Giovanni Goria](https://it.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Giovanni_Goria).
An average MP who became “prime minister” without having any power inside his party just because the real powerful people wanted someone younger than the rest. Not a bad person, but came and went without any reason whatsoever.
Its the current PM Rober Fico. He is in charge for 14 years and did nothing. Most useless politician ever.
Probably Kurt-Georg Kiesinger, even though he was a NSDAP member. Ludwig Erhard could also be such a case, though his policies as minister of economics heavily shaped post-war West Germany.
Temporary prime ministers are very forgettable, but other than that, nobody from the last 50 years. They are all spicy and unforgettable.
In recent history probably Hartwig Löger who was interim head of government for 7 days in 2019. I did have to look up his first name for this comment at least, and while the time frame when this happened was a turbulent episode in Austrian politics, his main claim to fame is the shortness of his term. That said, given the nature of the question there are probably people that I forgot about.
Under the assumption that I’d have already forgotten about the most forgettable leader of the UK, I looked back through the list of Prime Ministers to find the first one I wasn’t at all familiar with, and the answer was the splendidly named Archibald Primrose, who was Prime Minister for a year or so in the mid 1800s.
I suspect that for future generations the answer may be Rishi Sunak. His achievements could be listed on a very small postcard, and the screw ups of his immediate predecessors tend to overshadow his own mistakes.
In recent history President Giscard.
A centrist that got eclipsed by his successor for better or worse.
There have been some very forgettable Prime Ministers, especially in the 18th and 19th centuries. Viscount Goderich (who was briefly PM for a few months in the 1820s) is my go-to mediocrity.
People tend to forget that Axel Pehrsson-Bramstorp of the Farmers League actually was PM for about three months in 1936.
The Social Democratic minority government lost a vote in parliament and resigned in June. Some think that it was a strategy to go into the election in September as a opposition party.
As Pehrsson-Bramstorp and the Farmers League only were in power until the September election, during the summer months when parliament wasn’t in session, they didn’t accomplish anything.
The current leadership isnt very inspiring. Our current prime minister didnt belong a party, so he was a sitting duck from the begining. Our king doing his best but he is a bit silly.
[Acting President](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Acting_President_of_Poland) [Bogdan Borusewicz](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bogdan_Borusewicz).
Best President ever, because he made not even a single bad decision.
He made no other kind of decisions, either, because his whole term was ca. eight hours. 🙂
For presidents it must be Lauri Kristian Relander. He was the second president and the most important thing he did was to officially visit a couple of countries. He was so uninteresting that he lost his party’s internal candidate selection in the following election.
In very recent history, Michel Barnier. He was appointed as Prime Minister 3 months after the election on September 5th 2024 and resignation of the previous government, and was overthrown by a motion of no-confidence 3 months later.
But otherwise the role of President of the Republic was quite insignificant during the Third (1870-1940) and Fourth Republic (1946-1958), so we do not even bother to know the name of the presidents. Some had some pretty funny story though:
* Paul Deschanel resigned after 7 months and a famous incident. He fell down from a train during a trip and was found in pyjamas.
* Félix Faure who died while having good time with his mistress, which obviously led to a lot of jokes.
When we list all the noteworthy post-war PMs, we tend to ignore most of the 60s. De Quay, Marijnen, Cals, Zijlstra, Biesheuvel. The only one in that era who’s remembered was Piet de Jong, but only because he was very long-lived, not because of policies. These PMs – all different flavours of Christian Democracy from parties that eventually formed the CDA – didn’t do much noteworthy.