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"The idea of progression in prison is seductive but unachievable. Too many prisons are struggling to get men out of their cells for even an hour a day, there is little or no opportunity for education or work, the food is stodgy and there’s too little of it, contact with family is intermittent, and violence prevalent. How such a prison could possibly encourage people to go to non-existent work to earn early release is just pie in the sky." Frances Crook finds that David Gauke’s sentencing review tackles prison overcrowding but fails to challenge the system’s core flaws or offer a true path forward.

Lewis Baston says the Liberal Democrat by-election win in Sutton on Thursday underlines the trouble  that London’s Tories are in.

"The region that was the birthplace of rail has fallen behind Europe and the world when it comes to high quality rail network that meets the needs of the current age." Rob Naybour argues that it’s high time the cities and towns of the North of England were better connected.

Christopher Kaczor on the importance of the philosopher Alasdair MacIntryre, who died last week: "MacIntyre emphasised that the study of ethics cannot be separated from history, for it is an understanding of historically situated practices within communities that is needed to make sense of moral judgments. 'We should, as far as it is possible, allow the history of philosophy to break down our present day conceptions, so that our too narrow views of what can and cannot be thought, said, and done are discarded in the face of the record of what has been thought, said, and done,' he wrote in A Short History of Ethics."

Sean Wilentz takes us back to the winter of 1965/6 and the making of Bob Dylan's album Blonde on Blonde.

"From the opening it has precision, style and wit, as well as a dash and sparkle that is all its own, and it doesn’t matter if future readers know nothing about his relatively fleeting fame, because this book’s not about a famous person – it’s about someone who wants to be famous." Lissa Evans recommends Emlyn Williams’ autobiography George.

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"It needs to restore its reputation for economic credibility, which means that it cannot deny the damage done by Brexit – and support measures to mitigate that damage by moving closer to the EU.  It should be willing to be very critical of Donald Trump.  And it needs to wholeheartedly make the case against Reform and Farage not on tactical grounds - 'vote Reform, get Labour' - but because it is a very bad idea to get Reform at all." David Gauke charts a path to recovery for the Conservatives, but doubts they will take it.

Simon Fletcher fears Keir Starmer's rightward shift is laying the ground for Nigel Farage: "It is the Government’s current direction that is the problem, not its rapidity. Further and faster down the wrong path is the height of political wrong-headedness. The repeated lesson of Labour governments - and indeed left of centre governments around the world - is that voters expect them to improve their living standards and when they do not, they withdraw their support."

James Hawes argues that we should not be surprised that AfD polls so well in eastern Germany. For reasons rooted in history, voters there have chosen authoritarian parties ever since they got the vote.

"As a chartered psychologist, I decided to read Spare to learn more about a topic that deeply interests me; the adverse childhood experiences of children from materially privileged homes. This topic is thoroughly addressed within the text. However, I didn’t predict that I would be left with such an aching sadness for Harry, his brother and his mother and to some extent his father; normal, flawed human beings trapped and tormented within a crumbling, cruelly dysfunctional gilded cage." Pam Jarvis reads Prince Harry's book.

Simon Matthews watches Ridley Scott's The Duellists from 1977.

"The helmet was made of iron covered with silver and gilt, consistent with early Imperial Roman cavalry helmet types found on the Continent. Over 1000 coins in the same pit provide a mid-1st century date, suggesting that the helmet was buried at the same time as the coins in the entranceway. The reason why the helmet was buried within a British shrine remains uncertain – it may have belonged to a Briton serving in the Roman army, or was possibly a diplomatic gift." The Hallaton Fieldwork Group on the discovery of an Iron Age shrine outside this Leicestershire village.

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"There is a strand of conservatism that is protectionist and isolationist but for any admirer of Ronald Reagan or Margaret Thatcher to go along with these policies is extraordinary. Trump represents a repudiation of their values on free trade and internationalism." David Gauke explains why Conservatives should have no truck with Trump.

Wera Hobhouse says it's time we had an open and honest conversation about legalising euthanasia.

Despite the fact that governments have spent the last 40 years giving capitalism's loudest voices mostly what they want, such as lower top tax rates and weaker trades unions, in the last 10 years GDP per hour worked has grown by less than one per cent a year. Read Chris Dillow on Labour and the Conservatives' shared belief in "the Scooby-Doo theory of capitalism".

At least 2000 babies were born to Black GIs stationed in Britain during the second world war and a home was created for some of them: Holnicote House in Somerset. Those who grew up there are now telling their stories, reports Steve Rose.

"As a statistician with 20 years of experience in the field of ecology, I recently faced a challenging moment. In August, some colleagues in Canada published a response to a paper that I co-wrote a decade ago, showing that the method my co-authors and I proposed back then is fundamentally flawed." Oliver Gimenez reflects on having a paper of his shown to be wrong.

"Tom Baker was in his fifth full year as the Doctor and was the well-recognised face of the series across the UK. Cleese was also a household name, but for comedy. He had started to build his comedy reputation in the late 1960s and solidified this with his work on the first three series of Monty Python’s Flying Circus between 1969 and 1973 before ascending to comedy royalty with Fawlty Towers, which he created with his then-wife Connie Booth." Oliver J. Wake on the coming together of two giants of Seventies television.

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"It’s sometimes proposed that councils should raise more of their own taxes – but this could lead to richer areas raising more money per head. Our proposal avoids this and improves on councils’ heavy reliance on council tax and business rates." Kevin Muldoon-Smith and Mark Sandford propose four reforms to prevent English councils going bankrupt.

David Gauke sets out the moral and patriotic reasons why no Conservative should hope that Donald Trump wins the US Presidential election.

"Mansplaining describes the specific moment when a man assumes ignorance of a topic by a woman who is actually at least as knowledgeable, if not more knowledgeable, about the topic. In Solnit's words, 'men explain things to me, and other women, whether or not they know what they’re talking about'." As a female historian, Charlotte Lydia Riley is familiar with mansplaining.

Kenan Malik pays tribute to E.P. Thompson on the centenary of his birth: "For Thompson, the working class 'made itself as much as it was made'. This idea of agency, of people, even in the most inauspicious circumstances, possessing the capacity to act on the world was central to his life work."

Gareth Edwards remembers Barry John: "Lots of people ask me to compare Barry with the other great outside-half I played with for Wales, Phil Bennett. Phil had to have the ball in his hands before he decided what he was going to do, whereas Barry’s computer-like brain was always scanning and summing up his options before he got hold of the ball. Barry didn’t have the shuddering sidestep of Cliff Morgan, Dai Watkins or Phil, but he was lithe and much quicker than people gave him credit for, and he could simply glide past people. On top of that, he was a fantastic kicker and was never afraid to try things on the international stage that were out of the ordinary."

"The majority of the action underground is split between two locations. The cannibals’ lair, which it’s implied is further down the line, was in fact shot in Shoreditch at the Bishopsgate Goods Marshalling Yard. However, with the area around that now taken up by the Powerleague football pitches, and access not possible, I opted to visit the other unusual location: the now closed Aldwych tube station." Adam Scovell goes in search of the locations used for the 1972 film Death Line. "Mind the doors!"

Boris Johnson's 2019 purge will haunt the Tories for years to come

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If Rishi Sunak was meant to offer a fresh start, then his first cabinet was deeply disappointing. There was little sign of a cabinet of all the talents, made possible by the soothing of old enmities, beyond the return of Michael Gove.

In fact it's hard not to be depressed at many of the names he brought back or kept on yesterday: Gavin Williamson, Suella Braverman, Dominic Raab, Thérèse Coffey.

If you try to come up with a list of four more encouraging names, you are likely to come up with something like: David Gauke, Dominic Grieve, Justine Greening, Rory Stewart.

Trouble is, none of that four is still in the Commons. All were among the 21 Conservative MPs who lost the whip in September 2019 for, in effect, voting against a no-deal Brexit.

Gauke  and Grieve stood as Independents in the general election later that year, while the other two did not defend their seats under any label.

It's clear that Boris Johnson's 2019 purge will continue to hurt his party for years to come, and not just because it cannot spare people of that talent.

If the Conservative Party is to have a future that does not involve a permanent shift to being the English Nationalist Party, then at some point the moderates are going to have to fight back.

And if they are going to do so, those moderates and the party as a whole will need a leader - a Tory version of Neil Kinnock, if you will.

It's possible to imagine that such a figure can be found among the four names I chose. It's much harder to imagine he or she is to be found in Sunak's new cabinet.

The uselessness of Boris Johnson's cabinet is a feature not a bug

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Ed Davey says Gavin Williamson is the worst education secretary in living memory. He's right, of course.

But then Williamson is not alone in not deserving a place around the cabinet table.

Priti Patel resigned as secretary of state for international development when it emerged she had been holding meetings with Israeli officials without informing anyone in London. Yet somehow today she is home secretary.

Jacob Rees-Mogg is such a liability that he had to be hidden from voters during the last general election, but he is still leader of the House of Commons.

But maybe their presence should not be such a surprise.

Many Conservatives with principles - David Gauke, Rory Stewart, Nicholas Soames - were effectively sacked from the Commons by Boris Johnson in September 2019. 

They were not the sort of people he wanted to surround himself with. Better to have malleable mediocrities who will do whatever they are told.

Better still to have people no other Conservative prime minister would dream of appointing to the cabinet. They will know that they owe their careers to Johnson and that any successful rebellion against him would inevitably lead to the end of those careers.

It's probably all in Machiavelli: surround yourself with people who should never have been put in a position of power and you will be much more secure.