The verdict is in, and the portrait-hangers of Westminster will not enjoy it. Asked who was Britain's greatest Prime Minister, the crowd has not reached for the bulldog in the bunker. It has put Margaret Thatcher on top. Churchill, the man every school and every summit-going statesman has taught us to bow to, has been shoved down the ranking. Who gave the textbook authors the right to settle this for us?

The establishment's usual script is tidy. According to Wikipedia's entry on Churchill, he led the country from 1940 to 1945 and again from 1951 to 1955, is generally viewed as a victorious wartime leader, and won the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1953. The same entry notes he is criticised for comments on race and for some wartime decisions such as area bombing. Historians rank him among the greatest, yet they have never agreed on a single winner.

The other great claim on the throne is quieter and arguably more radical. Clement Attlee led the first Labour majority government after the landslide of 1945. His government nationalised public utilities and major industries, passed the National Insurance Act 1946 and formed the National Health Service in 1948. That is a revolution done by ballot, and the crowd has noticed: Attlee is the runner-up.

Now the numbers from the opinion market on Morfi, where people back their views with money. Thatcher leads at 55% consensus. Attlee follows at 26%. Also on the ballot: 2 other sides. That consensus is the crowd's conviction, not a headcount, and it comes from 12 unique traders who have put $85,160 behind their opinions. Trading opened less than a day ago, so this is a first shout from the street, not a final settlement.

Where the crowd stands
  • Margaret Thatcher55%
  • Clement Attlee26%
  • Winston Churchill11%
  • Tony Blair8%

My take, and it is opinion: the lesson is not that Thatcher was right. The lesson is that the crowd refuses to be told. For decades the polite class has handed us a podium with a wartime hero in the middle and a pat on the head for everyone else. The people looked at a decade that reshaped the economy and at a welfare state built from rubble, and they picked the two who broke the old order. Whatever you think of Thatcher's Britain, she and Attlee both tore up the comfortable consensus. Churchill's defenders should ask why a Nobel and a victory parade no longer guarantee the crown.

What to watch next is whether Attlee's welfare-state camp rallies and closes the gap, and whether the wartime faithful and the Blair believers storm back as more traders arrive. A lead after one day is a rumour, not a dynasty. Think the crowd has it wrong? Join the market on Morfi, put your money where your manifesto is, and make the establishment read the result.

Consensus over time
0%25%50%75%100%23 Oct, 04:1223 Oct, 04:43
  • Margaret Thatcher 54.6%
  • Clement Attlee 26.4%
  • Winston Churchill 10.9%
  • Tony Blair 8.1%