Our end-of-term report looks back at the first three months of 2012. Alex Stevenson talks over the state of the coalition, the travails of the opposition and the woes of the country with politics.co.uk's editor Ian Dunt.

British political culture isn't very nice. It's a deeply entrenched problem - and yet the Politics.co.uk team was able to solve it in just 18 minutes...

In the next ten years or so, our politicians will make a series of crunch decisions that will determine the nature of the UK's energy mix for much of the next century.

The next few years are going to pose a tough test for all the mainstream political parties. If they don't respond to the growing demand for change from the English, the issue could help Ukip on their rise and rise.

Politics.co.uk has been on the crowded streets of London this week, talking to those gathered to see off Britain's first female prime minister on the occasion of her funeral in St Paul's Cathedral.

George Osborne's fourth Budget as chancellor delivered a series of policies which are going to help ordinary people: fuel duty, beer duty, help for first-time buyers and the 'employment allowance'. It was also underpinned by a catastrophic set of figures from the Office for Budget Responsibility which show just how dire are the straits the economy now finds itself in. To pick over the bones of the Red Book we've gathered a panel of MPs: Conservative MP Richard Graham, Labour MP Andy Love and Liberal Democrat MP John Thurso debate the problems at the heart of Britain's economy in conversation with politics.co.uk's Alex Stevenson.

The question of accountability is at the heart of this week's rather delayed podcast on the NHS. Delayed, oddly, because this journalist's wife just happened to go into labour. Having reported on the Francis report, which has put the future of Stafford hospital into doubt, I found myself in one of those moments in life when you find yourself utterly reliant on the NHS.

This month politics.co.uk has been working on an unusual project: a bid to find the MP most effective at breaking free of the party political straitjacket suffocating those at Westminster. We've been talking to the winners about what it means to be an independent-minded MP in the 21st century – and getting to some pretty radical conclusions along the way.

After David Cameron's humiliating Commons defeat over boundary changes, Tory backbenchers are seething with anger at their coalition partners. The Liberal Democrats remain defiant, but their actions are straining the government's stability. Will this government really last until 2015?

Few can doubt this was a speech which has changed the game. But the prime minister's confrontation of what has been a growing headache for several years may not be quite the panacea his party faithful hope for. Yes, he has united the Conservatives for the 2015 general election. What about what might come after, though? Will his eurosceptic backbenchers be able to accept whatever he can achieve from European leaders and Brussels bureaucrats?

Quentin Letts, the Mail's theatre critic and political sketchwriter, and Glenda Jackson MP, parliament's only Oscar-winning former actress, explore the parallels between the worlds of politics and the theatre. Which politicians would make good actors? Why do the public not trust politicians – or, for that matter, actors? And does the same noble cause underpin both of them – the search for truth?