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.

Ed Davey speaks up for the BBC: Why won't Keir Starmer?

The BBC is under attack as never before. Donald Trump and his cronies have it squarely in their sights – and there are no prizes for guessing why. The BBC is the world’s number one source of trusted news, so of course snake-oil salesmen such as Trump see it as their enemy. 

If your power is built on conspiracy theories and distortions of the truth, the last thing you want is respected, independent journalists exposing that and holding you to account.

Ed Davey speaks up for the BBC in a Guardian article today. Later on he says that Robbie Gibb, a former director of communications for Theresa May who was appointed to the BBC board by Boris Johnson, must have no role in the appointment of the new director general.

Well said, Ed.

Meanwhile, the silence from Keir Starmer is deafening.

Ed Davey: Brexit has been a disaster and Starmer must find the courage to change course

Ed Davey has a comment piece on the Guardian website this afternoon, which will presumably be in tomorrow's paper:

Brexit isn’t working, and the British people know it. Poll after poll, including that unveiled this weekend by More In Common for the Sunday Times, shows that people are feeling the terrible damage caused by the deal forced upon us by Boris Johnson, Kemi Badenoch and the rest of the Conservative party, and want something different. The latest shows less than a third of Britons would vote to leave the EU if a referendum were repeated. 

There’s no doubt that fundamental change is needed. There’s no doubt the public will is there to make it happen. The question is: will Keir Starmer seize the moment and deliver it?

This is just the line he should be taking. The sad thing is that Starmer does not appear to be one for seizing moments.

Johnson's name is still poison, and it's good politics to associate Badenoch with the Brexit disaster. But what really did the damage was Theresa May's insistence on leaving the Single Market, which she justified with the mindless slogan "Brexit means Brexit".

That speech was written for her by Nick Timothy - it's arguable that no one alive has done as much to damage Britain. How did the Conservatives reward him? By selecting him as their candidate for a seat that, even in the rout of last year's general election, they could not lose.

The Joy of Six 1325

Amanda Litman argues that it's time for the ageing leadership of the US Democrats to stand down: "While their wisdom and experience have value, and while some can certainly still hold their own, the septuagenarian and octogenarian class of Democratic leaders - predominantly older white men—are by and large ill-equipped for this crisis we have found ourselves in."

How do radical ideas go mainstream? Alice Evans studies the women's magazines of the 1970s to help her understand the rise of feminism.

How well did Queen Elizabeth II get along with her prime ministers? Rebecca Cope has the answers: "It would be easy to think that as a Labour Party leader from a northern middle-class background, Harold Wilson would not have gotten on well with the Queen, but quite the opposite was true. A regular at Balmoral, he was frequently asked on picnics with the wider family, and reportedly enjoyed the informality of the occasion, mucking in to help clear up after the Duke of Edinburgh’s famous barbeques."

Ellie Robson on the philosopher Mary Midgley: "In the 1950s, the philosopher Mary Midgley did something that, according to philosophical orthodoxy, she wasn’t supposed to do. In a BBC radio script for the Third Programme (the precursor of BBC Radio 3), she dared to point out that almost all the canonical figures in philosophy’s history had been unmarried men."

Writing in Country Life of all places, Lewis Winks demolishes the case against allowing wild camping on Dartmoor.

Michael Wood goes to the movies and thinks about Brady Corbet’s films: "How brutal or damaging does your childhood have to be to make you a great dictator or a memorable pop star? Are the connecting words ‘because of’ or ‘in spite of’? Or is there no causality here at all, just a sort of baffling coexistence? Are the films in love with an ugly idea of chance? This possibility seems especially relevant to The Brutalist."

Party like it's 2005: Ed Davey announces new decapitation strategy

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Liberal Democrat leader targets senior Tory seats at UK general election

runs the headline on the Financial Times interview with Ed Davey today.

Older Lib Dems will immediately be put in mind of the 2005 general election, when the party boasted of its 'decapitation strategy'. The seats held by a number of leading Conservatives had been chosen as targets and we expected to deal a mortal blow to the Her Majesty's Opposition on the night.

In the event, David Davis, Oliver Letwin, Theresa May and the rest survived. It was our Labour targets (Cambridge, Hornsey and Wood Green, Manchester Withington) that fell to us at that election.

Our only leading Tory scalp in 2005 was a long-forgotten figure called Tim Collins. It was he who had briefed the press back in 1993 that John Major's 'Back to Basics' speech was about personal morality. and thus done much to ensure that the Tories became figures of ridicule for the rest of Major's time in power as one juicy scandal followed another.

Collins lost to another Tim: Tim Farron.

As to Ed Davey's interview, the big news is that he is happy to discuss Europe:

He said his party would be pushing for a new trade deal with the EU to replace the “appalling” one signed by Johnson when he was prime minister. He added his party’s long-term policy was to rejoin the single market. 

“If you don’t put a better trading relationship with Europe in as part of that mix, you’re not going to get the economy sparking again,” he said, though he noted his EU counterparts had been clear that for now “the single market ain’t on the table”.

And, something that is hard to reconcile with his bullish talk of Lib Dem prospects earlier in the interview, he thinks there is a good chance of a hung parliament.

The Joy of Six 1164

"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.

Geoffrey Wheatcroft: The Tories are suffering from 'long Boris'

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Geoffrey Wheatcroft writes in today's Guardian:

For a century and a half the Tories had a plausible claim to be “the natural party of government”. Today, they barely look capable of governing at all. Forty years ago Thatcher brimmed with ideas, some of them right and some of them demonstrably wrong, but the Tories now have no idea at all. They have run out of time, run out of excuses - and maybe run out of purpose.

Well, that's encouraging.

Wheatcroft locates the reason for this malaise in the party's recent history:

If the fall of Thatcher, or the way it was done, poisoned the party for years, the recent poison was inflicted by the cynicism behind the rise of Johnson. As Dominic Lawson, an intelligent Brexiter, has said, "Boris Johnson was never in favour of Brexit, until he found it necessary to further his ambition to become Conservative leader."

Since the Tories knew that, their relationship with him was always transactional. He was useful for a time, but he was dumped as soon as he became more liability than asset. And yet the Tories are suffering from 'long Boris', a grievous affliction that could still prove terminal.

More good news. And as he goes on to say, the continuing civil wars in their party have left the Tories with one of the most unimpressive cabinets in history.

I am less convinced by another chapter of his history:

In 2002 Theresa May told the party conference they were in danger of becoming “the nasty party”, but this was a misunderstanding. They have always been that, and as Lee “fuck off back to France” Anderson shows, they still are. 

But nobody ever voted for the Tories because they were "nice". Their success was founded not on amiability but on competence, and that’s what has been destroyed by the farcical recent turbulence, with five prime ministers in the past seven years.

But a lot of people who vote Conservative like to see themselves as nice. Thatcher's nastiness was accompanied by a promise of national renewal, but today's Tory nastiness is nastiness for its own sake. It's now as much part of their identity as self-pity or a belief in conspiracy theories.

That's putting off habitual Tory voters - the sort we might call Amersham Woman following canvassers' reports from the Chesham and Amersham by-election.

We can though rejoice when Wheatcroft writes:

After a torrent of scandals and a string of byelection defeats, this August finds polls in which the Tories are looking at a wipeout in next year’s election. Eighteen years ago I published a book called The Strange Death of Tory England, and was later mocked in the rightwing press when the Tories staged a revival. But maybe that title was only premature.

Gavin Williamson emerges as new contender to be the first minister to leave Sunak's cabinet

Those with money on Suella Braverman will have been brought up short by this story in the Guardian:

Gavin Williamson is facing a complaint that he sent "vile" and "threatening" messages to former chief whip Wendy Morton, raising questions over Rishi Sunak’s decision to reappoint the twice-sacked Tory.

Morton is believed to have made a formal complaint to the Conservative party over claims of Williamson’s behaviour to her in the final days of Liz Truss’s government. 

A source told Tortoise Media that Morton had passed on "vile and threatening messages" she had received during the time she was chief whip, which she considered had a misogynistic undertone.

Serious punters will be aware that Williamson has form.

Williamson has been sacked twice. Theresa May forced him to step down as defence secretary after an inquiry into a leak from the national security council, raising security fears, and Boris Johnson ousted him from cabinet over his handling of the exam fiasco when he was education secretary.

The Guardian, however, quotes him as saying he "strongly refutes [sic] these allegations".

Williamson was brought back by Boris Johnson and then Sunak as a reward for helping with their successful leadership campaigns.

Read more on Tortoise Media (scroll down to find this story).

Photo by GaborfromHungary at Morguefile.com

Send for Theresa May! Boris Johnson should resign as prime minister too

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Boris Johnson is to resign as leader of the Conservative Party but envisages staying on as caretaker prime minister while a new Tory leader is chosen.

This cannot be allowed to happen.

All the flaws that have led to this move are also reasons why he is not fit to be caretaker PM either.

Plus if you leave him at No. 10 with nothing to lose there's a danger that he'll pocket the silver and declare war on some random nation.

The Tories need to find a caretaker PM who will enjoy not only the confidence of their MPs but also of the country.

I offer them an obvious candidate: Theresa May.

John Bodkin Adams: The Harold Shipman of the 1950s

With the Conservative candidate in the Wakefield by-election having drawn an analogy between the party's previous MP for the seat and Dr Harold Shipman, my mind has returned to the bad doctor's equivalent from the 1950s, Dr John Bodkin Adams.

Though he was acquitted of murder at the Old Bailey, the number of Eastbourne widows who changed their wills in Bodkin Adams' favour, only to expire after his next visit, leaves little doubt about what was really going on.

In fact the video above suggests the evidence from the police investigation of him reveals that he may be Britain's worst ever serial killer.

Bodkin Adams has appeared on this blog three times.

First, I revealed that the chaplain of All Saints Hospital, Eastbourne, at the time of Bodkin Adams' arrest was the Revd Hubert Brasier, better known today as the father of Theresa May.

Talking of the Conservative Party, Bodkin Adams was the doctor of Harold Macmillan's brother-in-law the Duke of Devonshire and was attending him as he died. 

This video, as many modern accounts do, ties that in with the fact that one of Macmillan's children was fathered by the Tory peer Bob Boothby, and tries to tie that into the story as a reason for the Establishment engineering an acquittal.

I've seen this theory elsewhere, but never much evidence to suggest it's true.

Besides, Labour has its connections with this story too. The doctor called as his main expert witness onr John B. Harman. He was the president of the Medical Defence Union and the father of Harriet Harman.

Revelaing that face was my second mention of Bodkin Adams here. The third was to reveal that the man who put the police on to him was the variety star Leslie Henson, because he had suspicions about the death of an old friend.

Leslie Henson was the father of the actor Nicky Henson and the grandfather of Countryfile's Adam Henson.

Whether any of them have worked with Timothy West, I don't know, but you can find him playing Bodkin Adams in a dramatised version of the affair on YouTube. And there's an enjoyable review by Craig Brown of a book on the case.

Who said "You can't make an omelette without breaking eggs"?

No, it wasn't Stalin. It was Joseph Chamberlain, the hero of Theresa May's right-hand man while she was prime minister, Nick Timothy.

In his speech to the annual dinner of the Royal Colonial Institute, "The true conception of empire", in London on 31 March 1897, Chamberlain said:

You cannot have omelettes without breaking eggs, you cannot destroy the practices of barbarism, of slavery, of superstition, which for centuries have desolated the interior of Africa, without the use of force; but if you will fairly contrast the gain to humanity with the price which we are bound to pay for it, I think you may well rejoice in the result of such expeditions as those which may have, and indeed have, cost valuable lives, but as to which we may rest assured that for one life lost a hundred will be gained, and the cause of civilisation and the prosperity of the people will in the long run be eminently advanced.

I wondered if I was being unfair to Chamberlain, but you will see that he was happy to contemplate taking human life for the greater good.

The Royal Colonial Institute, incidentally, was renamed The Royal Empire Society in 1928 and The Royal Commonwealth Society in 1958.

GUEST POST Carry On up the Brexit

Stuart Whomsley on the psychodrama that was Brexit.

Ten years ago, Europe was not an issue for the vast majority of the people of the UK. The right wing created this psychodrama, created this problem, this crisis that was never there and now see themselves as the ones who have heroically solved it.  This represents a fine piece of manipulation.

However, we can start to consider this issue with the role of New Labour. I remember when Blair was still PM, my saying that though I thought it was the case that the UK needed migrants and they add to our society, the way Blair had overseen such a rapid arrival rate of migrants would stir up racism, as the UK was still a racist society. 

I was told at the time that the UK was not a racist society any more and there was nothing to worry about. Probably by the same people who were saying we were now a meritocracy, class conflict was over and everyone was becoming middle class.   

But migration was the impetuous to turn a fringe issue, our relationship with Europe into what it became.  It allowed Farage to sculpt UKIP into the cloaked racist anti migrant party that it became. And to turn it into the threat that it became to the Conservative party leading to Cameron putting the offer of a referendum in their manifesto, never thinking that he would win so well. 

Unfortunately the Sun did more than blow the bloody doors off Milliband's chances of winning in 2015 with its sandwich eating shot, so that Cameron won outright. Without the restraint of being in Coalition, no Clegg to hold him back, he was forced to hold the referendum as promised.  Well complacent Cameron feeling he was Mr Lucky messed up at that referendum, as we all know.

Johnson actually a pro-European saw that his only route to the job he so craved was to support Leave and to make sure Leave won. His charisma and affable clown persona helped push Leave over the line. Cameron at this point instead of showing character and fulfilling his responsibility and getting a deal and taking it through parliament instead went off in a huff to Chillax. 

May as the new PM immediately showed one of her flaws of character, that of not being able to work well with others, and decided to go it alone instead of taking a cross party approach to build a consensus Brexit. In a failure of self-confidence and judgement, thinking she did not have enough of a majority to get what she wanted through, when it would have turned out that she did, went to the polls.

At the polls she did so badly that now she was in the position where she did indeed not have the majority needed to get what she wanted through. She lost her majority by rather than playing safe and having a neutral manifesto that would focus on getting Brexit done instead put forward a reckless radical vote losing manifesto. Yet May still managed to put together a very shaky Brexit deal to put to a vote.

The sensible thing for pro-European MPs to have done at that time would have been to have cashed out on the May deal. But they did not.  For some it was the hope that kills you, the hope of a People’s vote that stopped them taking the option of the May deal. On the Labour side who knows what machinations were going on with the objective of bringing down Corbyn being prioritised over the European issue.

So in came the Johnson premiership on the mantra that he would get Brexit done and that as this was now the democratic will of the people, to do anything else would be an attack on democracy, an attack on The People.  How far we have come in ten years from our relationship with Europe being a marginal issue to it having been such a central and divisive one.

Brexit is now done, well sort of.  With vast amounts of money spent, with our national political life having been directed towards this issue above all others for four years, until the pandemic arrived, and with the union of the four nations put at risk, with a deal that does in fact look worse than the one we were in whilst part of the EU, the questions we now ask are:

• Was it worth it?
• What psychodrama will the UK head into next?

You can follow Stuart Whomsley on Twitter.

A psychologist explains how politicians evade questions

The psychologist Professor Peter Bull talks about his research into the way politicians answer questions - or fail to answer them.

In my day job, I wrote a media release that led to widespread coverage of Professor Bull's research last year.

Here is an example from the Sun:

Theresa May has answered barely a quarter of questions put to her - making her the most evasive Tory PM in 40 years. 

Boffins at the University of York studied the way Mrs May dealt with broadcast interviews and compared it with the responses of David Cameron, John Major and Margaret Thatcher. 

They found that in the course of two interviews after she became Prime Minister in 2016 and four during the course of the 2017 general election, Mrs May only answered 27 per cent of the questions put to her. 

In contrast, Mr Cameron answered 34 per cent of questions in the 2015 general election, while both Mr Major in the 1992 election and Margaret Thatcher in 1987 answered 39 per cent of questions they were asked.

Nice use of 'boffins' there.

Six of the Best 887

"Last year, 1584 children were unnecessarily dragged through the courts for possession of cannabis, with four out of five being found guilty, resulting in criminal records that will haunt them for their whole lives." Norman Lamb makes the case for a legal, regulated cannabis market.

David Herdson asks why the European Research Group waved through Theresa May's withdrawal agreement at Christmas 2017.

John Bull on the Harrow and Wealdstone railway disaster of 1952, which led to the development of the modern paramedic.

"The quickest way to an audience’s heart is to kill off one or both of your character’s parents." Manvir Singh looks at the extraordinary appeal of literary orphans.

Jennie Rigg has been to see Alice Cooper.

"These years, late in the century's first decade, may have been the apogee of Trescothick's career. If his health had allowed it, he would still have been young enough and good enough to play for England, but he was forced by circumstances to tread the county game's boards instead." Brian Carpenter celebrates the career of Marcus Trescothick.

Why did Theresa May want to be PM in the first place?

On the day parliament was supposed to vote on her deal to leave the EU, here Theresa May gives her reasons for remaining in the European Union shortly before the 2016 referendum. pic.twitter.com/6i0njr79CS

— Paul McNamara (@PGMcNamara) December 11, 2018

I surprised myself by being forgiving when Margaret Thatcher died and Tony Blair resigned, but I find it hard to say anything obliging about Theresa May.

She came to power speaking of burning injustices, yet we never heard them mentioned again or saw any action to right them.

At the Home Office and then Number 10, her reign was characterised by measures that made life harder for people who had settled in Britain from abroad. So much so that it is hard to resist the conclusion that she is personally racist.

And then there is Brexit.

May kept her head down during the referendum campaign, but before then was a sensible for for Remain.

Yet when she came to power she adopted the most hardline pro-Leave position possible. There was no attempt to unite a nation split almost down the middle. Notoriously, those who like to think of themselves as citizens of the world, were dismissed as citizens of nowhere.

At the same time, she painted herself into a corner with red lines that ensured that any deal she signed up to was bound to be narrow and harmful to Britain.

And all these attempts to appeal to the pro-Leave right failed, as they were always bound to. They take any concessions as a sign of weakness and harden their demands.

The overwhelming feeling I am left with by Theresa May's career is one of puzzlement. Why did she want to be prime minister? What did she imagine she was going to achieve?

Her claim today that "I was driven to make the United Kingdom a country that works not just for a privileged few but for everyone" is impossible to reconcile with the evidence.

And her quoting of Sir Nicholas Winton was toe-curlingly embarrassing given her record on refugees.

So my puzzlement remains. Why did she want to be prime minister in the first place?

Dolchstoßlegende: Brexit and the stab-in-the-back myth

On Twitter today my friend Herbert Eppel taught me a new German word: Dolchstoßlegende.
Wikipedia explains:

The stab-in-the-back myth (German: Dolchstoßlegende ... literally "dagger stab myth") was the notion, widely believed and promulgated in right-wing circles in Germany after 1918, that the German Army did not lose World War I on the battlefield but was instead betrayed by the civilians on the home front, especially the republicans who overthrew the Hohenzollern monarchy in the German Revolution of 1918–19. 

Advocates denounced the German government leaders who signed the Armistice on November 11, 1918, as the "November Criminals" (German: November­verbrecher). 

When the Nazi Party came to power in 1933, they made the legend an integral part of their official history of the 1920s, portraying the Weimar Republic as the work of the "November criminals" who stabbed the nation in the back to seize power while betraying it.

Herbert suggested Dolchstoßlegende as a candidate for his growing list of German words used in English. And I think I know why.

If Brexit does take place it will be either under the terms of the deal negotiated by Theresa May, which offers a vastly inferior arrangement that we have enjoyed for decades, or there will be no deal and a consequent disaster.

Either way, the reality will be nothing like the golden age that the Brexiters have imagined - a blend of the new Jerusalem and Fifties Britain.

Who will they blame? Not themselves, that's for sure.

Instead it will all be the fault of the liberals, the Remoaners, Theresa May, the House of Lords, Jeremy Corbyn, the BBC, the Irish, the abolition of National Service, immigration, trendy teaching methods, decimal currency, the decline of proper wet fish shops, unelected Eurocrats, elected Eurocrats and Gary Lineker.

It sounds funny, but it won't be.

Six of the Best 858

"If Theresa May were the head of a newly liberated African colony in the 1950s, British conservatives would have been pointing, half-ruefully, half-gleefully, in her direction and saying “See? Told you so - they just weren’t ready to rule themselves." Fintan O'Toole casts a cold eye on events at Westminster.

Lewis Goodall weighs Theresa May's performance: "She has reacted not with humility or contrition or openness, but with a tone so lecturing and hubristic that many MPs have thought her deeply arrogant."

Mark Mazower reviews two books on the Armenian genocide.

Marcus Binney makes the case for saving Richmond House on Whitehall.

"As if the new competition wasn’t divisive enough, the head of Sky Cricket has said in an interview that he hopes to get Michael McIntyre as a commentator for Sky’s coverage of The Hundred. McIntyre is like Marmite, in that most people hate him and the rest of the population is wrong." Being Outside Cricket offers 100 reasons why The Hundred won't work.

Naomi Daw on Eric Ravilious in Sussex.

How new prime ministers emerge

There is talk tonight of a cabinet coup against Theresa May next week.

Who will take over as caretaker prime minister? This video may give a clue to the sort of person who may emerge.

Forget Brexit: What about the threat to Uppingham's only bank?

The group Uppingham First has lived up to its name in a letter to Theresa May.

It hasn't quite demanded she "puts Brexit on the sidelines to intervene before the last bricks and mortar bank in the town closes on April 26," as the Leicester Mercury says. But it has come close to it.

The paper quotes from the group's letter:

"This is a critical blow to the town’s economy, given that our post office building is already a busy place, does not have mobility impaired access and the nearest Barclays branch is a substantial car or bus journey away. 

"A financial transaction centre of some kind will, however, be vital to the town’s economy and future way of life. 

"We recognise and understand your preoccupation with Brexit and its implications for the country. However, the issue of vanishing small town banks is equally urgent."

It's all a bit Ealing Comedy, but the decline of banks in small towns is a problem.

There is, incidentally, still a branch of the Bank of Rutland in the village at the gates of Bonkers Hall, but I am not sure I can recommend using its cashpoint,

When the Conservatives insisted on Churchill's demotion before they would join a wartime coalition

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Yesterday we were debating Theresa May's habit of scraping the mould of the top of a jar of jam and then using it.

Today it is "Winston Churchill: Hero or villain?"

For what it is worth, I suspect May is right. We are too squeamish about food these days.

And Churchill? He was in many ways a flawed character, but I am glad he was there in 1940. Without him, it is unlikely that Nazism would have been destroyed.

Churchill, of course, was a Liberal for a while and at the forefront of the Asquith government's social reforms.

Those Conservatives who have been claiming a monopoly on him today should remember what happened in 1915, when Churchill was First Lord of the Admiralty and Asquith wanted a coalition government to prosecute the war:

A new coalition was needed to bolster confidence. But the Conservatives were deeply hostile to Churchill and demanded his resignation. Backed into a corner, Asquith had no choice but to agree, and on the 15 November the resignation was confirmed. 

Demoted to the ceremonial position of Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster, the hurt and demoralised Winston resigned from the government altogether and left for the Western Front.

Talking of Conservatives who do not understand Churchill, here is Richard Evans' magisterial demolition of Boris Johnson's biography of the great man.