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"Tony Blair once observed that the first step from opposition to government is an honest analysis of why you are in opposition. Kemi Badenoch and the people around her don't seem to have done that - or if they have, they’ve come up with the wrong answer." Andrew Cooper goes to the Conservative Party conference.

Samantha Asumadu reports that Times Higher Education has given no coverage to the allegations against James Orr, the  Cambridge academic and former Reform UK policy chief whose foundation receives Hungary-linked funding. By coincidence, THE signed a partnership with Viktor Orbán’s government.

Achim Hildebrandt et al. examine David Goodhart's claim that a split between Somewheres and Anywheres lies at the heart of many contemporary political conflicts. They find little evidence to support it.

"Creepy. That’s the word for the rising right-wing interest in family policy, exemplified by a recent administration proposal to pay $9,000 each year per child for women to stay at home with their children. The money would come from, and deplete, an existing federal programme that helps working parents pay for childcare." Mitchell Zimmerman says the Trump-Vance family policy reeks of white supremacy and misogyny.

"With their bold transpositions of anachronistic elements, both works can be seen as unconscious, pre-bellum statements against the soon to emerge behemoth of post modernity which would come to be an all-encompassing cultural filter." Corse Present considers Geoffrey Hill's Mercian Hymns and David Rudkin's Penda's Fen.

Geoff Lemon says cricket won't stop taking about the 2018 sandpaper scandal until the Australian authorities give a full account of what happened.

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"How did a former lawyer-turned theologian become Reform UK’s lead ideologue and political heavyweight on so many issues? To understand that, you have to follow a covert combination of faith and finance, of evangelical doom-mongering and disruptive tech and media, from the two real kingmakers in right-wing British and American politics – the deeply religious and deeply wealthy owners of GB News and Palantir: Sir Paul Marshall and Peter Thiel." Peter Jukes and Nafeez Ahmed map the strange rise of James Orr.

Elaine Craig has researched family carers' attitude to the use of restraint in mental hospitals: "A mother discovered her son was restrained 33 times in six weeks. Another was told her distressed daughter is 'aggressive' as six staff pin her to the floor and inject her with medication. Through tears, families describe images they cannot forget: bruises, broken bones, loved ones left sitting in urine-soaked clothes, isolated and afraid."

"Students in England’s least deprived areas are three times as likely to enter GCSE PE and drama as those in the most deprived areas. There are also large disadvantage gaps in music, food preparation and nutrition, design and technology and the separate sciences, with the pattern continuing into A-level subjects such as geography." Jabed Ahmed reports.

Garrett M. Graff on the 17 minutes before America changed: "The earliest moments of the 9/11 attacks did not unfold in the way you’ve been taught to think of them: a plane striking a tower, a city looking up in horror, a nation gripped by panic. Instead, for the briefest of windows, the unfolding drama of September 11, 2001, wasn’t yet a calamity but merely a strange accident."

Greg Cwik celebrates the "gleeful terror" of Tim Curry's Pennywise.

"Several residents had paid the considerable sum of three guineas for the privilege of accompanying the celebrity aeronaut on his ascent. As Coxwell now battled to complete his preparations, some of these passengers decided to vent their disapproval at the delay by climbing into the basket and staging a protest. According to Coxwell, one passenger, using 'gestures and foul language', even proceeded to incite the crowd still further by telling them that the aeronaut was refusing to continue with the display." Margaret Brecknell discovers Leicester's balloon riot of 1864.