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Most US politicians with ambitions to shake up the status quo say they want more openness in government – though many of them go off the idea after they acquire power. Donald Trump, however, is not interested in either open government or the usual nods to transparency that presidential candidates offer. But as he is discovering, secrecy in politics attracts suspicion, writes Ben Worthy.

The story of Brexit has been that of a would-be secretive government forced to become more open about its intentions, writes Ben Worthy. Pressure from select committees, the media and freedom of information requests – compounded by a stream of leaks – means we now know what kind of Brexit we will have. But he warns that Theresa May’s instincts are still to hide the UK’s ‘negotiating hand’. She will soon come to realise this is going to be impossible.

Following David Cameron’s announcement that he will resign following the EU referendum, Ben Worthy assesses the experiences of Prime Ministers who have taken over mid-term, and considers what can be taken from this as we look forward to the upcoming Tory leadership battle.

Last weekend, rumors were once again abound of plots to remove David Cameron as leader. Ben Worthy assesses the Prime Minister’s position in light of the latest threat, and writes that although it appears probable he will survive attempts to topple him in the short-term, the plots, rumours and rebellion will continue.

Will the Prime Minister’s decision to call an early election work in her favour? Ben Worthy looks at the data from previous ‘takeover’ prime ministers. He concludes that an election victory will free Theresa May from the short fate of other takeovers but won’t, in itself, help her secure a long or more stable premiership.

With the upcoming mayoral elections, our attention turns to mayors and their powers. Ben Worthy and Mark Bennister reflect on the terms of Ken Livingstone and Boris Johnson. They draw on their new paper to explain what it is that we can learn from how the two first elected mayors of London ran the city.

There are more or less two routes to becoming Prime Minister. You can either win a General Election or win a party leadership election to become head of the largest party when a Prime Minister leaves. Having just achieved the second route, Theresa May has become our ‘takeover’ leader. Here, Ben Worthy discusses the history of this route to power, its successes and – more often than not – its failures.

In the aftermath of the referendum, the UK seems to be suffering from individual and collective leadership failure, write Mark Bennister and Ben Worthy. The use of fear tactics instead of thought-through strategies and of quick fixes instead of long-term visions are some of the reasons behind this failure.

In July 2015 the government appointed a new independent commission to look into how the law on freedom of information (FOI) is working. Having received 30,000 pieces of evidence, the commission has also managed to unite the Guardian and the Daily Mail against it while Labour has responded with its own alternative review. Here, Ben Worthy, Peter John, and Matia Vannoni explain how their field experiment provides evidence that FOI requests work, and that they are twice as likely to get a response than informal requests.

Donald Trump is the new President of the United States. But should the 45th president expect to gain another four years in the White House? Looking at presidential elections over the past six decades, Ben Worthy argues that incumbency is a distinct advantage to presidential candidates, meaning that presidents are more likely to stay in the White House than to go.

How can we measure leadership? What makes a leader succeed or fail? Here Mark Bennister and Ben Worthy examine the idea of ‘leadership capital’ and offer a way to understand why some leaders ‘spend’ their ‘capital’ successfully and others squander or waste it.

The Culture Secretary Maria Miller has resigned following a controversy over her expenses. She is the latest in a series of politicians to brought to heel over expenses since 2009, when the original scandal was triggered by the Daily Telegraph’s investigations into exactly what MPs were claiming for. Ben Worthy argues that the Miller imbroglio illustrates that the system is currently beset by a difficult combination of complexity and political interference, and that an independent and simple alternative remains a distant prospect.

Despite initial opposition, Freedom of Information is one of the more successful government policies of the last decade. Now, many believe that it is time for the Act to be extended to private companies doing work for public bodies. Ben Worthy argues that while this is not proving to be easy, many Open Data initiatives are already allowing the public greater ability to hold contractors to account.