Downing Street Downfalls: The Misadventures of Britain’s Prime Minister Since Thatcher by Mark Garnett

Downing Street Downfalls: The Misadventures of Britain’s Prime Minister Since Thatcher

Mark Garnett

Agenda, 2025, £20

It’s not a novelty for British prime ministers to leave No. 10 without having lost an election: Churchill, Eden, Macmillan and Wilson all did so. What is new, says Mark Garnett, is for them to be bundled out of power when they are still in good health.

He dates this trend to the fall of Thatcher in 1990, and it’s tempting to put its acceleration in the years since then down to Brexit. As Garnett says:

The 2016 referendum, and its consequences, accounted directly for Cameron and May; and while Johnson and Truss found means of self-sabotage, arguably neither would have earned the chance to showcase their ineptitude for leadership without Brexit.

But he sees other forces at work. The social upheavals of the Sixties led to a decline in class consciousness and in strong identification with a particular party among voters. In this new world, the popularity and perceived strengths of party leaders became increasingly important, as seen from the fact that Margaret Thatcher is the last party leader to have won an election while being less popular than her main opponent. 

This trend has encouraged a presidential style among prime ministers – a style that the public and press seem to have come to expect. When John Major tried to undo some of the changes of Thatcher’s Boadicea years and restore the importance of the cabinet, it was widely seen as a sign of weakness.

It’s no wonder, then, that politicians, journalists and voters alike now look to a change in prime minister to improve things when a government is in the doldrums. Keir Starmer had better watch out.

Garnett writes with wit and an eye for a good anecdote. David Cameron’s courtship of the Liberal Democrats after the 2010 election "made Casanova sound like a tongue-tied ingénue". At her post-election party conference, Theresa May received "the kind of sympathetic audience response that, in bygone days, had greeted the arrival of the condemned at Tyburn Tree". The claim that Liz Truss and Kwasi Kwarteng crashed the economy was inaccurate, "but it was certainly not from want of trying".

Downing Street Downfalls is an agreeable companion to contemporary political history and, when it turns to the last ten years, a reminder that there’s nothing quite as strange as the recent past.

This review appears in issue 432 of Liberator magazine.

Liz Truss's drive for Stilton exports to Japan proved a flop

Reader's voice: Shall I say it?

Liberal England replies: Go on then.

Reader: That. Is. A. Disgrace.

Liberal England: Thank you.

Liz Truss flew to Tokyo to sign Britain’s first post-Brexit trade deal five years ago this week. She took with her a small jar of Stilton cheese.

The deal was largely a rollover of the one the European Union already had with Japan, but Truss had fought for better access for Stilton and cheddar.

And, as a token of her appreciation of the liberalising of the Japanese market, she presented the Japanese foreign secretary Motegi Toshimitsu with the Silton as they signed the deal on 22 October 2020.

But, says Graham Lanktree on Politico, there has been no Stilton boom in Japan. He quotes George Hyde, the Food and Drink Federation’s head of trade:

 "The story for cheese exports, unfortunately, shows a clear decline in recent years. UK cheese sales to Japan peaked at £2.2 million in 2019, but have fallen every year since, and were down two-thirds in 2024 despite tariff advantages."

 So she won't be offered the Freedom of Melton Mowbray any time soon.

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"Since the Truss debacle, the UK has had to pay a substantial premium over other G7 countries to borrow in the bond markets. In other words, it has to pay a higher rate of interest on its gilts than it normally would. A similar message is being sent by the stock market where, since Brexit, UK shares have traded at a huge discount to European and US shares." Simon Nixon says Rachel Reeves' misfortune is to be the teller of hard truths in a country only interested in easy answers.

Emily Kenway asks why carers are so often made to feel invisible: "To be an unpaid carer is to be deemed not credible, according to Mary, Ada and several other carers in this study. Mary feels this is especially apparent higher up the professional ladder. The community-based staff listen to her, perhaps because they see what she does for her son on a daily basis. But of consultants and doctors, she said: 'I’m lucky if they’ll even look at me.'"

"The big problem with the DfE’s campaign to improve attendance is that no-one – really, no-one: not a single person – truly believes that attendance at school is the most important factor determining an individual’s attainment or lifetime earnings. Class, status, income, connections, quality of educational provision, home circumstances, breadth and depth of experience… there are a hundred and one reasons why private schools can achieve good academic outcomes without being bound to the 190 day school year which everyone else has to operate." John Cosgrove on government's repeated attempts to improve school attendance.

Ben Cornwell reports that two of the UK’s biggest outdoor media owners have blocked a youth-led anti-junk food advertising campaign, despite its full regulatory approval and recent national acclaim.

Adam Mars-Jones surveys the writing career of Alan Garner: "Even when Garner started writing, it was hard to keep modernity at bay. It must have been unusual as late as 1960 for a dairy farmer like Gowther Mossock to get about in a horse and cart."

"You climb the stairs at Old Street station, hauling a cumbersome cricket bag into the east London sunshine. The hipsters and creatives barely give you a cursory glance, presumably unaware of what lies a five-minute walk away. Take the left bend on Old Street, veer down City Road, past some corner shops and the Bunhill Fields burial grounds where William Blake now rests, and there, through a black iron gate, you find an oasis." Daniel Gallan takes us to the ground of the Honourable Artillery Company Cricket Club.

Starmer's coming U-turn on PIPs reminds us of the virtues of a parliamentary system

If Keir Starmer backs down on his planned cuts to Personal Independence Payments, he will be attacked for being weak and making a U-turn, but really it will be a sign that our political system works.

He has put forward a policy that does not command a majority in the House of Commons, so he has found that he can't get it through. This ought to happen more often.

If the Conservatives were better at politics, they would have announced they would vote for the cuts, deepening the split in the Labour Party if Starmer went ahead with them.

But Kemi Badenoch made her party's support conditional upon things Starmer was never going to agree to, so it looks as though he will back down.

Watching developments in the United States, where there appears to be no check on what a rogue president can do, has made me appreciate the virtues of a parliamentary system.

Boris Johnson was bundled out of power by a Commons with a safe Conservative majority when his behaviour became unconscionable, and then the ludicrous Liz Truss followed him after only 49 days later.

We Liberals are happiest when we point out the faults of the British parliament, but we ought to remember its virtues too. 

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Emma Burnell reviews Get In by Patrick Maguire and Gabriel Pogrund, and ponders the limitations of the Morgan McSweeney approach to politics: "All too often the project behind Starmer - and McSweeney in particular - seem not to see this. That poor culture and poor behaviour are poor in and of themselves – not excusable when it’s 'one of us' exhibiting it."

"Johnson and Truss at least had the grubby excuse that sucking up to MAGA Americans might be in their own financial interest - for the US market for disgraced former British PMs can be a lucrative one, there being no shortage of wealthy fools there happy to be taken for a ride. Jenrick did not even have that excuse. Nor, of course, does Kemi Badenoch, the party’s actual current leader." Alex Massie is merciless in his dissection of the rotting of the Conservative mind.

The government's agenda for local government is all about size and centralisation, but Jessica Studdert sees a "new local" emerging that involves power, prevention and place.

Daniel Jones and Martin Durham on the role of women in the British Union of Fascists: "If fascist policies were often reactionary or ambiguous, they were not always so. Like almost every other political force in the thirties, the BUF wanted to win newly enfranchised women as supporters and voters, and felt it necessary to put forward policies that would alleviate and improve the conditions of women’s lives."

Rafael Behr argues that Bridget Jones 4: Mad About the Boy is an allegory of the current political crisis. Hear him: "Her heartbreak is a parable of political bereavement, describing liberal angst at the sudden unravelling of institutional and legal norms underpinning European security. (Plus sex and jokes.)"

Ampleforth Abbey has become the latest site to join the Dark Skies Friendly Community scheme run by the North York Moors National Park, reports Yorkshire Bylines.

Sorry Liz Truss: Barking dogs don't keep drones away from prisons

Remember this? Sadly the claim that barking dogs deter drones seem no to be true, as we still have a problem with drugs, phones and other illicit good being smuggled into prisons that way,

From the Leicester Mercury:

A drug dealing gang used drones to smuggle around £1 million worth of contraband into prisons. Among the group's targets was HMP Gartree in Leicestershire.

The group was led by 47-year-old Lucy Adcock who organised 22 drops in a month across six UK prisons. HMP Gartree, in Market Harborough, was among the mum's targets before she was eventually apprehended, reports Wales Online. ...

Adcock's other targets including the troubled Welsh prison HMP Parc in Bridgend. It was in April last year when prison staff discovered a dropped package containing illicit items valued at £50,000 on the prison market, including Class A and B drugs and mobile phones.

Turns out it wasn't just the dogs who were barking.

Rishi Sunak's speech today: "Do you think that's wise, sir?"

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In his speech today, Rishi Sunak said the next five years will be some of the most difficult and dangerous in the UK's history.

If Sergeant Wilson were here to advise him, I feel sure he would have said: "Do you think that's wise, sir?"

Because the British people seem to have decided that, not only do they not much like Sunak, but that he's not much good at his job either.

I base this, not just on his individual poll ratings, but on the fact that you never here anyone expressing enthusiasm for him. His own party members chose Liz Truss when allowed a choice between them.

So why should the voters turn to Sunak if they agree we are approaching dangerous times? That belief is more likely to make them turn so someone else to govern them.

And a final point on today's speech: a party that is serious about the nation's defence does not put Grant Shapps in charge of it.

Lord Bonkers' Diary: Mountains of unsold Stilton

There are those who claim that Lord Bonkers has built up large stocks of Stilton to enable him to withstand a strike by the miners, but I'm sure that's not true. Lord B. does indeed like his Stilton gamey, but that is a taste that export markets have yet to acquire.

Friday

You may have noticed – if you’ve had the window wound down you can hardly have failed to – the mountains of unsold Stilton beside the Great North Road in the Far East of Rutland. 

They have accumulated because Liz Truss failed to negotiate a trade deal with Canada that would allow exports to continue after Brexit; their size is a testament to how much the brave Mounties and lusty lumberjacks once enjoyed their Stilton sandwiches. We have tried promoting them as a venue for winter sports with, if I am honest, limited success. 

I can say now that I had my doubts about La Truss from the start. It took me hours to convince her that, however hard she wished and however sparkly her wand, she would never be a real princess. The very next day, in a fit of pique, she strode to the Conference rostrum to demand the instant abolition of the Royal Family.

Lord Bonkers was Liberal MP for Rutland South West, 1906-10.

Earlier this week...

• The former headquarters of the Association of Liberal Councillors
• “Ed doesn’t approve of thinking"
• The Cricklewood Crinkles and the Wolverhampton Wotsits
• The noted woman crime novelist Dame Agatha Mousetrap

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Helen Salisbury says it’s time to push back against the destruction of general practice in the NHS: "The down-skilling of general practice is often euphemistically referred to as a 'diversification of the workforce', but it’s hard not to see it as a deliberate attempt to deprive patients of expert medical care. The motives may relate to cost, despite it being well documented that high quality general practice with built-in continuity saves money in the long run (as well as lives). Or perhaps it’s about control, as GPs are notoriously independent and averse to obeying orders."

"Far from seeming out of place at the CPAC exhibition hall last month, Truss appeared at home in the company of America’s Trump-inspired populist right." Sam Blewett follows Liz Truss's journey from Downing Street to 'deep state' conspiracy theorist.

"The deliberate displacement of an entire people much surely amount to ethnic cleansing and arguably also constitutes either a war crime or a crime against humanity. What I know is that so much human suffering has been caused in the last year while the rest of the world has been largely silent." Andrew Page asks if anyone cares about Nagorno-Karabakh.

Jo Johnson argues that tomorrow's classical music audience is out there and doesn't want gimmicks: "Most first-timers would not be encouraged to attend by changes to the auditorium experience. Ideas such as using phones and social media during the performance, allowing people to take photos and video, and the freedom to talk and move around, would actually make many people less likely to attend."

Rachel Pronger on the paradoxes of Powell and Pressburger’s women: "The idea that a human might find themselves humbled by an encounter with something greater than themselves, with magic, faith, love or nature, is arguably the defining motif of the filmmakers’ work."

"The chairman of the Nuneaton and District Trades Council denounced ice cream van jingles as ‘death chimes’ because of the number of children apparently killed when running behind the vans. He had also received the usual complaints from nightshift workers." Owen Davies investigates the folklore of ice cream vans.

CPAC: Liz Truss among the Nazis

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NBC News reports on CPAC (Conservative Political Action Conference), the US event addressed by Liz Truss last week:

At the Young Republican mixer Friday evening, a group of Nazis who openly identified as national socialists mingled with mainstream conservative personalities, including some from Turning Point USA, and discussed so-called “race science” and antisemitic conspiracy theories.

One member of the group, Greg Conte, who attended the deadly 2017 Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, said that his group showed up to talk to the media. He said that the group was prepared to be ejected if CPAC organizers were tipped off, but that never happened.

Another, Ryan Sanchez, who was previously part of the Nazi 'Rise Above Movement,' took photos and videos of himself at the conference with an official badge and touted associations with Fuentes.

Other attendees in Sanchez’s company openly used the N-word.

Something to remember if Truss turns up at the Cenotaph in November.

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Peter Geoghegan reminds us that, easy though it is to laugh at Liz Truss's PopCons, small groups backed by shady money have already reshaped our world.

Medical Xpress reports research that suggests the effects of being in the care system as a child last more than one generation: "This pioneering research paints a complicated picture of the vulnerability, disadvantage and resilience of care leavers. It highlights the persistence and inter-generational nature of the adversity they experience and demonstrates how disadvantage can be moderated through the provision of long-term care and support."

"The most worrying question is whether some apps could actually perpetuate harm and exacerbate the symptoms of the patients they’re meant to be helping." As experts worry over privacy issues, ineffectiveness and even harm, says David Cox, the UK is looking at whether the plethora of digital mental health tools need regulating

"Not only was my reaction not unique, it was almost universal. Fans and even fellow Grammy artists cried; that’s how much Joni Mitchell means to the droves of us who grew up with her supreme artistry as the virtual and sometimes literal soundtrack to our lives." Amy Rogers on a lifetime with Joni Mitchell's music.

"Giamatti makes this one of the best films of the last ten years. With the tiniest screwing-up of his odd eyes - or his nerdy running style, with the knees raised too high – he makes you laugh without saying a word. And, when he does say something, he can inject humour or sadness with the tiniest inflection." Harry Mount enjoyed The Holdovers.

Chris Dyson visits some favourite York pubs.

Liz Truss beware: She wouldn't be the first MP laid low by a turnip

The Turnip Taliban are back, says the Independent.

James Bagge, one of the Conservatives who resigned from the party in protest at Liz Truss's selection as candidate for South West Norfolk in 2009 amid complaints she had been "foisted" on them by Tory HQ, is to stand against her at the general election.

He told the newspaper: "A turnip has deeper roots than a lettuce."

I had more sympathy for the Turnip Taliban than was the fashionable at the time, but that's not what's important here. 

Because Liz Truss would not be the first politician laid low by a turnip.

Hurry over to the Northern Echo for the details:

The story of Sir William Payne Gallwey’s fatal brush with a brassica has recently been posted on The Victorian Commons blog, which is part of the History of Parliament project, and we are hugely indebted to David Walsh of east Cleveland for bringing this amazing story to our attention.

Sir William had stood down as Thirsk’s MP after 28 years in 1880 due his declining health, but he died on December 19, 1881, after a very unfortunate encounter with a root vegetable.

"On Thursday, Sir William was out shooting in the parish of Bagby and in crossing a turnip field he fell with his body onto a turnip, sustaining severe internal injuries,” said The Northern Echo the following day.

"All that medical aid could do was done, but with Sir William’s failing health, he gradually sank and died about ten o’clock on Monday morning."

A man slain by a turnip in an open field? It sounds like a lost M.R. James story,

At least he had a lovely funeral:

“The body was borne from the mansion through the park to the church on a hand bier, carried by workmen employed on the estate,” said the Darlington & Stockton Times. “At half past 10, the funeral cortege started from the principal entrance of the hall, preceded by the schoolchildren singing suitable hymns.”

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"Give or take the odd percentage point, and Sir John tries to persuade the media not to sensationalise small, meaningless poll movements, Labour has a solid lead of around 20 per cent over their Tory rivals. ... Parties in Downing Street during lockdown and the disastrous 49-day Truss premiership helped make up a lot of minds and the electorate don’t show any signs of forgetting or forgiving." John Curtice sees no signs of a Conservative revival in time for the next election.

John Jewell looks at three key moments in the phone-hacking scandal and at what happens next.

Mark Gatiss on the enduring appeal of the BBC’s Christmas ghost stories: "James’s stories do lend themselves very well to television shorts. They’re very clever short stories and, with the exception of ‘Casting the Runes’, they’re not epic. They’re very contained, which is very handy as you can achieve a lot with them on a small budget."

"For someone essentially leading the tempo and measuring impact of 50 other musicians, he made it look like he was doing all the work, sweating like he was carrying a grand piano single-handed up a flight of stairs. You looked at him more than you listened to the music." John Podhoretz on Maestro - and Leonard Bernstein.

The Gentle Author looks again at old photographs of London: "The slow exposures of these photographs included fine detail of inanimate objects, just as they also tended to exclude people who were at work and on the move but, in spite of this, the more I examine these pictures the more inhabited they become."

"The 'hobby horse' as we know it today is a children’s toy, a stick with a wooden horse’s head held between the legs and 'ridden” — but, in common with many activities and rituals we now relegate to children, hobby horses were once part of adult festivities. They were also particularly associated with Christmas time, and took a wider variety of forms than we see today. Francis Young argues that 'animal guising' customs offer important insights into British festive culture.

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"Neil Oliver and his pals see themselves as radical, romantic revolutionaries, but they are really nothing more than a dismal combination of David Icke and Liz Truss. They have nothing useful to say. Please don’t indulge them." Chris Deerin on the online stars of the conspirasphere.

Andrew Rawnsley says Theresa May's memoirs leave no stone unturned, except when it comes to her own failings.

"Our national record on infrastructure and amenities since 2010 has been consistently awful. After getting back onto a growth path from 2011 onwards we could’ve taken advantage of rock bottom interest rates to borrow and invest in public sector infrastructure but we chose not to. Treasury officials would’ve known there was a window of opportunity, but decided to sit on their hands." It's not just our schools that are crumbling, reveals Matthew Pennell.

Sam Freedman offers lessons from the slow-motion collapse of our criminal justice system.

James B. Meigs argues that government underestimates the sense and resilience of the general public when faced with a disaster: "Disaster literature bulges with examples - from Hurricane Katrina, to the 2011 Japan tsunami, to the current coronavirus pandemic - in which officials suppressed information, or passed along misinformation, out of concern over an unruly populace."

"For my money, the best thing about the movie is the women. They’re memorable, multifaceted, and utterly mesmerising." Shadows and Satin celebrates the Ealing Studios drama It Always Rains on Sunday.

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"Liz Truss almost wrecked the British economy in her 49 days as prime minister, and is now working on a book, Ten Years to Save the West, to be published in April next year. Margaret Thatcher was initially reluctant to join the international speaker circuit following her 10 revolutionary years in power. But the shortest-serving politician in British history recently pocketed some £90,000 for a five-day trip to Taiwan during which she delivered a speech about the importance of standing up to Chinese aggression." Adrian Wooldridge says we are living in an age of political shamelessness.

Ruth Bright argues that the NHS "must address misogyny and listen to women. In the obstetric context, at minimum women’s dignity, continence and future birth chances are at stake. At most their very lives and even the lives of their babies are on the line."

"Good Ofsted scores are not fairly spread but are far more likely for suburban, girls-only, selective schools with no long-term poor pupils, for example. Perhaps 70 per cent of the variation in Ofsted grades can be explained by these factors." Stephen Gorard is sceptical about the value of these grades.

Roy Eidelson is interviewed by Democracy Now! about the American Psychological Association’s complicity in post-9/11 torture programmes and the struggle to reform the psychology. 

"Videotaped drama is a form of television that (soaps apart) we don’t see anymore. Once, of course, it was the dominant way of programme-making and remained so for decades." Archive Television Musings on what technical change meant for actors and viewers.

Now! Then! A Yorkshire Almanac for 2023 looks at the invention of the legend of John Bartendale, the York man who survived hanging.

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"The self-styled free market task force seems to be yet another dark money outfit in British politics – led by senior figures from US and UK free market think tanks who have been funded by fossil fuels, the Koch Brothers, climate change deniers, the tobacco industry and much more." Peter Geoghegan looks behind the scenes of Liz Truss's new 'growth commission'.

Anny Shaw and Hannah McGivern find that funding cuts and a weak economy have sent Britain’s visual arts into crisis.

"For six decades, To Kill a Mockingbird has been taught with the comfort (and power) of white students (and their mostly white teachers) in mind. Ensuring this comfort has led millions to an absurd reading of a seminal work of literature." Andrew Simmons on teaching America's 'national novel'.

"While his florid, stentorian contributions to Dadaist 60s trad-jazz mutilators the Bonzo Dog Doo-Dah Band influenced everyone from the Beatles to Monty Python, a peripatetic path through the 70s saw him appear as the Master of Ceremonies on Mike Oldfield’s Tubular Bells and as a regular lyricist for Steve Winwood, before his 1978 solo LP, the grandiloquent, gothic spoken-word masterpiece Sir Henry at Rawlinson End." Andrew Male has helped rescue Viv Stanshall's unfinished work.

Alex Grant says Northampton needs to grow up and become a city. On a personal note, it took me some years of exploration to realise what a historic place it is.

Rose Staveley-Wadham on baseball's fascinating history in Britain. By 1938 the game had taken such a hold that the British team beat the American one at the inaugural Amateur World Series tournament.

Lord Bonkers' Diary: The Archbishop of York, two page boys and the gospel choir

Australian tours of England really did use to begin with a one-day fixture at Arundel against the Duke of Norfolk's XI. And 1953 was an Ashes summer, so this exchange could well have happened just as Lord Bonkers reports it.

Saturday

To Westminster Abbey for the Coronation of Charles III and to swear my allegiance (provided he keeps his hands off the Ancient Liberties of Rutland, of course). I also swore at his mother’s Coronation, but only because the Duke of Norfolk trod on my heel after I offered some pithy observations on the XI he had selected to play the Australians in their tour opener at Arundel that year. 

The Duke was a left-footer. I don’t mean he was a Roman Catholic (though he was, as are many of my friends - including the Pope, incidentally): I mean that he trod on me with his left foot. 

A woman called Mad-Aunt appears as a warrior princess – I don’t recall any such character in 1953, though the first Lady Bonkers did hurry from rehearsing Brünnhilde at Covent Garden to join me at George V’s Coronation. I am relieved this time that no one has given Liz Truss a sword: she would surely have taken out the Archbishop of York, two page boys and the gospel choir.

Lord Bonkers was Liberal MP for Rutland South West 1906-10.

Earlier this week...

• We no longer teach even the half Opik
• Much fun may be had from a pig sty
• Who’ll look silly then?
• My tenants arrive at the Hall to collect their Good Morning leaflets
• A chain of beacons would bring news of Liberal triumphs

Why the Tories should be wary of consulting their grassroots

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Tomorrow the Conservative Democratic Organisation (CDO) is gathering in Bournemouth. 

This new party group was set up after the party's MPs decided they could no longer stomach supporting Boris Johnson as leader and prime minister. 

A report in the Guardian says its organisers deny it's a 'Johnson revivalist group', but that report also says almost every speaker at the event is a noted Johnson supporter.

The CDO website gives the group's aim:

Our mission is to strengthen party democracy by ensuring the Conservative Party is representative of the membership and fairly represents their views.

And says its vision is to:

Re-enfranchise Conservative Party members to be the masters of their own democratic destiny.

If I wanted the Conservatives to stay in power, I would be worried about this.

And not just because the Conservative membership are the people who elected Iain Duncan Smith as the party's leader and Liz Truss as the nation's prime minster.

I would be worried because even consulting the party's councillors was enough to finish Margaret Thatcher.

Her original proposal was to phase in the Poll Tax over 10 years. I saw what happened at my first full council meeting here in Harborough when we agreed our response to the government consultation.

As I later recalled on the Guardian website:

Conservative members didn't want it phased in over 10 years: they wanted it at once. You could see the pound signs in their eyes as they calculated how much they and their neighbours would save.

So, like Tory-run councils across the country, we told Whitehall we wanted the Poll Tax brought in at once.

Which it was. With hilarious consequences.

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Neal Lawson believes there’s no point Labour winning the next election unless it acts to dismantle our toxic electoral system.

"Truss was the product, not the source, of her party’s problems. She embodied a Conservatism that embraced creative destruction, that was dismissive of caution and contemptuous of institutions, that prized ideology over experience and regarded opposing voices as heresies to be burned out; a Conservatism that had ceded power to irresponsible think-tanks, contrarian newspaper columnists and a dwindling party membership that nobody has elected." Robert Saunders shows that the forces that gave it Liz Truss still dominate the Conservative Party.

Sebastian Stroud says that botany degrees are disappearing from British universities just when the world needs botanists most.

John le Carré's Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy, which adapted for the BBC in 1979, is a perfect snapshot of a declining Britain managing its post-imperial malaise in a changing world, argues Eliot Wilson.

"Kay’s great-grandfather, Captain Harker, in whose house Kay lives, lost some treasure - 'church ornaments, images, lamps, candlesticks, reliquaries, chalices and crosses of gold, silver and precious stones' - entrusted to his care by the archbishop of a South American port during the revolutions and uprisings of 1811. The loss haunted the captain until his death, a haunting that also ruined the happiness of his wife and son. Now others more avaricious than Kay are on the treasure's trail. Can he find it before they do? It is only at the end that you realize the book is about the restoration of more than one kind of treasure." Mathew Lyons on The Midnight Folk, John Masefield's prequel to The Box of Delights

Eleanor Parker finds that genteel Buckinghamshire is really wild border country.

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"Its lasting value is in its revelation that the institutions of the Conservative Party and the British government are so decrepit that they can be hacked by someone like Liz Truss, as if they were merely Oxford student societies writ large." Lewis Baston reads Harry Cole and James Heale's biography of Liz Truss.

"A memory of Churchill only as an icon of anti-appeasement is a caricature, even if it was a caricature the man himself was complicit in creating. It reduces a man of many parts, and of many bargains, into a lovable bulldog." We need to save Churchill from his present-day admirers, argues Patrick Porter.

Nigel Warburton on why we need libraries: "Community libraries ... are, among other things, a democratic resource providing free access to information for all, including guided access to the internet for those who might otherwise be excluded."

Geoff Barton says we should listen to young people's views on education.

Richard Lester’s 1974 film Juggernaut trembled on the edge of being a political allegory for Britain in that decade, finds Simon Matthews: "There was something deeply ironic about Richard Lester – one of the key ringmasters of Swinging London – portraying the state of the nation in the 1970s. Doubly so, given the cast includes David Hemmings, he of Blow-Up and much else, expended here halfway through the film. How times change."

John Thomas takes us through this year's work on the remarkable Roman villa found beneath the fields of Rutland.