Lewis Baston: The Thorpe farce shows that both cock-up and conspiracy drive history

If the establishment had really been as efficiently conspiratorial as it was supposed to be, there would have been no need for his amateurish plot.

Lewis Baston: The Conservative local election landslide of 1968

How a unique combination of Heath and Powell saw the Tories swept to power from Sheffield to Lambeth.

Lewis Baston: How Torrington launched the tradition of Liberal by-election shocks

Looking back, 55 years of Liberal and Liberal Democrat by-election success looks less important than UKIP’s two-year surge.

Lewis Baston: How the fight for women’s votes began long before the Suffragettes

The Tories often appear to have been more worried about enfranchising working-class men than ladies of property.

Lewis Baston: How the Tories delivered true equal votes for women in 1928

Clearing up the last few pieces of formal political inequality has taken a century, but every step was taken under a Conservative or Coalition government.

Lewis Baston: The lessons of the 1987 Conservative landslide

It seems strange to think of Thatcher’s last triumph as the twilight of a Tory century, but that is how it now appears to electoral history.

Lewis Baston: Poulson, sleaze, expenses. A history of recent Parliamentary scandals.

In the best of all worlds, standards would be upheld voluntarily. But in the world we have, we seem to need rules – and sometimes to extend them.

Lewis Baston: Forty years ago, another Tory conference. It saw that famous Hague speech. And the arrival of Reg Prentice…

The former Labour MP’s defection, and the later split within that party, has not yet found in a parallel in our own turbulent times.

Lewis Baston: Disraeli’s “leap in the dark” towards modern democracy. 150 years on from the 1867 Reform Act.

Two cheers for a measure that, though mostly about managing, dividing and taming popular opinion, remains a reforming landmark.

Lewis Baston: Election gambles that worked. And those that failed – like May’s this year.

And those that never were, such as 1978, 1991 and 2007. Prime Ministers tend to make the opposite error to that of their predecessors.

Lewis Baston: The election suggests that the tectonic plates of British politics are shifting

The shock over the overall result has distracted us from how remarkable some of each party’s gains really were.

Lewis Baston: The awe-inspiring, smashing, astonishing, record-breaking Conservative and National landslide of 1931

The governments of the 1930s illustrate how little a huge majority is worth if it isn’t married to a strong and imaginative policy programme.

Lewis Baston: Those predicting Conservative hegemony should remember 1992

John Major secured more votes than any other Prime Minister in unpromising circumstances – but ‘stretching the elastic of democracy’ would cost the Party dearly.

Lewis Baston: Why bids to reform the House of Lords fail

Even more than party disagreements over what should replace it, the idea of a very powerful second chamber is out of constitutional fashion.

Lewis Baston: We can learn from how papers covered the rise of Hitler

Reading back, it highlights how supposedly level-headed ‘realists’ were so slow to recognise the true nature of the National Socialist regime.