about such a move and talked about defecting to the Labour Party if that happened. Masterman's good political relationship with the Manchester Liberals resulted in their inviting him to contest one of their constituencies, which he accepted. The Manchester Liberals won five seats at the 1923 general election, including Rusholme, where Masterman stood. Following his election victory in 1923, Masterman revealed to his wife Lucy that he "thought we were never going to (win) again". In August 1924, he led the opposition to a treaty, negotiated by the Labour government, which guaranteed a loan to the Soviet government. During the 1924 election campaign, Masterman publicly blamed Prime Minister Ramsay MacDonald for the collapse of Liberal-Labour co-operation. At the General election of 1924, Masterman was heavily defeated in Manchester Rusholme by the Unionist candidate Frank Boyd Merriman. The same fate befell almost all the Liberal members of parliament in England. In 1925, he became the Parliamentary Correspondent for The Nation. Having initially expressed concerns about Lloyd George's return to the Liberal Party, he had acknowledged that it was again easier to get the party to adopt measures of social reform: "When Lloyd George came back to the party, ideas came back to the party". Lloyd George sponsored a number of reviews into areas of Liberal Party policy, and Masterman participated in those reviews, notably as part of the body that produced the policy document Coal and Power. He was also on the committee that ultimately produced Britain's Industrial Future, known as The Yellow Book. Masterman‘s health declined rapidly, hastened by drug and alcohol abuse. He died in November 1927 at Bowden House, Harrow, leaving an estate valued at only £452. His address at death was stated as 46, Gillingham Street, Eccleston Square, Westminster. He was buried in St Giles' Church, Camberwell, where a memorial tablet in the church commemorates him, stating that he had lived there for ten years. There is another for his wife. Assessments Religion was central to Masterman’s career, and he worked to revive the Gladstonian alliance between Liberalism and Nonconformity. He frequently used the language of prophecy—for which he had been inspired by Thomas Carlyle and other seers. Masterman had a long-standing influence as a champion of radical change. On one hand, he ridiculed anachronistic attachments to outmoded Victorian ideals and institutions. However, his own rhetoric was deeply rooted in high Victorian idealism. He proposed a wide-ranging