7.45pm ToryDiary: Boris and Cameron rush to congratulate Freddie, Strauss and England's victorious Ashes team
7.15pm ToryDiary: Lansley wants to make the NHS so good that nobody wants private medical insurance
7.15pm Mark Wallace makes his CentreRight debut with a call for all those concerned about Africa to embrace euroscepticism
10.30am ToryDiary: Tories 12% ahead in second weekend poll
10am Ridley Grove on CentreRight: The British taxpayer is spending 60pc more on the EU
ToryDiary: Lord Forsyth urges Cameron to hold referendum on Scottish independence at earliest opportunity
Jeremy Thomass on Platform: Unilateral intervention has brought little save conflict and chaos to those countries subjected to it
Mark Wallace on Local government: Islington Council's Dead Wall and Council Chief Execs expenses revealed
Also on Local government: Should a Chief Executive of Liverpool Council really be spending three nights at The Dorchester Hotel in London for a Human Resources awards ceremony? (Liverpool didn't even win.)
WATCH: David Lidington MP says Lockerbie controversy won't go away until Prime Minister answers questions
Tories 17% ahead in ComRes poll
Report in Independent on Sunday | Yesterday evening's ToryDiary
Chris Grayling: The poor suffer most from crime
"We’ll expose figures from the small print of official statistics that show how our poorest communities are in the front line when it comes to crime. How crime is rising by as much as 15% a year in some of our most deprived areas. How the Government’s failure to get to grips with drug-fuelled crime is as big a reason for the rise in burglaries and robberies in those areas as the recession. And how new data shows that the unemployed are particularly vulnerable – twice as likely to be victims of violent crime or burglary as those in work." – Chris Grayling in the News of the World
Liam Fox has told US generals that a Conservative government would be "much more sympathetic" than Gordon Brown to requests for more soldiers in Afghanistan – The Shadow Defence Secretary was interviewed by The Observer
"A devastating official report suppressed by ministers has revealed that soldiers’ lives are being put at risk by “endemic” failures at the Ministry of Defence"
Liam Fox calls for the report to be published in full: “Labour has created a defence black hole which is not only impacting on current operations in Afghanistan but threatens to provide an ongoing defence crisis for years to come. On top of this, this government of fear and smear refuses to publish an important and distinguished piece of work, simply because it points out the serial incompetence of Labour on defence. This report must be published in full.” – Quoted in The Sunday Times
Bernard Gray's report of Ministry of Defence procurement attacks "endemic" failures – BBC
Tories will introduce a Hunt Regulatory Authority to police the behaviour of legalised fox hunts – Independent on Sunday
Exit from EPP reported to be damaging Chris Patten's chance of becoming EU 'foreign minister' – Sunday Telegraph
Gove insists he is happy with Tory foreign policy in interview with John Rentoul
"What about Cameron's description of himself as "a liberal conservative, not a neo-conservative"? Gove, who is happy to be called a neo-con, replies: "Of course, people said, 'Ah, that's very different from –'. Actually, everything David has said or done on foreign policy, I have thought, 'Yes, absolutely'. He's given the strongest possible support for our mission in Afghanistan; he's stressed that it needs to be better resourced and with better clarity about what our troops are doing; he's emphasised the fact that Afghanistan is not a discrete conflict but part of a broader struggle against Islamist fundamentalism; and the case he's made has been impeccable." – Independent on Sunday
Tories warned over financial cost of Swedish-model schools plan – Observer
Crossrail delays feared as Conservatives probe funding crisis – Observer
Britain's payments to the European Union will soar by almost 60% next year – Sunday Telegraph
The EU is hardly value for money – Sunday Telegraph leader
David Cameron will scrap handouts to well-off families – News of the World
John Rentoul: David Cameron needs a mandate for tax rises
"The reality is that cutting public spending is very, very difficult. I do not believe that anything like the 10 per cent real-terms cuts in non-health spending implied by the current government's plans will be achieved, whoever wins the election. That means that taxes will have to rise. Cameron, for all his "bravery" in promising spending cuts, hasn't even got to that bit of the manifesto. He will need a mandate to take the tough decisions to avoid his government being broken. He has hardly begun to ask for it." – John Rentoul in The Independent on Sunday
Former Cameron aide says inheritance tax cut as top priority would be morally wrong and unaffordable – Observer
Portillo condemns release of Lockerbie bomber
"In the name of fighting terror, the government has asked the British people to agree to restrictions on our liberties and invasions of our privacy. It has urged us to understand the bitter toll of young lives lost fighting in Iraq and Afghanistan. Yet now we are meant to accept that one of the worst terrorists in history should go home after serving only eight years, simply because he is unwell." – Michael Portillo in The Sunday Times
Expenses row sparks a surge in MP divorces – Mail on Sunday
Darling promises 'to talk sense into Brown' over public finances – Mail on Sunday
Brown should take more holidays – at least the prime minister's stand-ins have taken the fight to the Tories – Rafael Behr in The Observer
Please use this thread to highlight other interesting news and commentary and visit PoliticsHome.com for breaking political news and views throughout the day.
Please use the thread below to provide links to news topics likely to be of interest to ConservativeHome readers and to comment on political topics that haven’t been given their own blog. Read our comments policy.
Share this article: