Trouble at the top of the UK government spells trouble for science too

It has started to become a cliché on these pages to talk of UK science’s need for stability to thrive. What the government has delivered in recent years has been anything but, however.

Liz Truss’s short-lived premiership is now doomed to be immortalised as a pub quiz question after lasting just 45 days – the briefest term of any prime minister. (Trivia fans might be interested to learn that you’d need to go back to 1827 to find the previous holder of this record, George Canning, who died in office after 119 days.) Her chaotic time in office is now certain to be followed by further upheaval as government offices are once more reshuffled.