In 2024, Labour won seats it hardly ever wins, and some of its new MPs may not expect to be back after the next election. So what should you do if you think you’ll only get one term? In this episode, Richard tells the story of one such MP from the class of 1945: Tom Skeffington-Lodge. He was a High Church Christian socialist from a wealthy Yorkshire family, and he unexpectedly took Bedford in Labour’s landslide victory. He used his five years in the Commons to take up causes nobody else would: dirty cafés, mock-Tudor pub carriages on the railways, imported marble headstones, and American content filling British magazines. He even fought to keep the university seats, the only Labour MP to do so. But none of it saved him; he lost his seat in 1950 and never made it back into Parliament. What lessons should today’s Labour MPs take from his example?

In this podcast, the following books are mentioned:

'The Great Gatsby', available at: https://uk.bookshop.org/a/16406/9780198864400

'Congress Overwhelmed: The Decline in Congressional Capacity and Prospects for Reform'

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Since Attlee & Churchill is a podcast about post-war British politics - since Attlee & Churchill - and is hosted by Lee David Evans, an historian of the Conservative Party, and Richard Johnson, an historian of the Labour Party.

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