6.45pm Gazette: Tim Chatwin to leave 10 Downing Street
4pm David T Breaker on Comment explains why he opposes wealth taxes: "We must note that taxes that have a narrow base will always face upwards pressure but taxes with broad bases will face downwards pressures"
12.30pm ToryDiary: The wrong and right kinds of Tory modernisation
11.30am ConHomeUSA: A massive 74% of Americans don't want Sarah Palin to run for the White House and today's other American political news
Bernard Jenkin MP on Comment rejects Paul Goodman's arguments for trimming Britain's defence budget: It is far cheaper to be ready to deter wars than to have to fight them
Ben Howlett on Comment: This government's planning policies will help young people get a step up on the property ladder
Ryan Shorthouse on ThinkTankCentral: High-quality early years education is critical
The Yellow Pages Test: Glyn Gaskarth on the local government blog says councils should actively encourage alternative suppliers to pitch to provide services
Gove's big speech warns of educational underclass
The main Times leader praises Hague's role in Libya campaign
"A united campaign by the UK, France and the US saved lives and preserved the political space within which Arabs are advancing liberty. Mr Hague has been crucial to it. He helped to secure an unambiguous legal basis for intervention, expressed in UN Security Council Resolution 1973, and worked for the solidarity of the Western alliance. Alongside this diplomatic strategy, he successfully managed the tasks of providing military and economic aid to the rebels and explaining the absence of a military option in Syria.
Mr Hague has long been popular within his party owing to the force of his oratory. In this crisis, he has also shown impressive substance and pursued highly effective diplomacy." – Times leader (£)
"It's very striking how much people on the streets of Libya and Tunisia talk about other countries. How interested they are in what's going on there. It's clear that the events over the last few weeks in Tripoli were heavily influenced by what they saw going on in Damascus. I think it is creating a real sense of Arab sentiment and unity which is very rare and very welcome." – Rory Stewart in the Huffington Post
Two-faced David Cameron's thanks war heroes, then sacks them in their hundreds – Mirror
“The tough measures we have taken will bring the budget largely into balance for the first time in a generation,” Mr Fox said on Thursday. “The extra money we have allocated for the equipment budget from 2015 will allow our defence capability to grow in the second half of the decade.” – Quoted in the FT (£)
Ministers plan emergency law to relocate and restrict terror suspects
"Ministers have revealed draft emergency measures to relocate terror suspects months after pledging to scrap a similar power known as control orders. Ministers have published a draft bill to use relocation or other restrictions in exceptional circumstances. The power to move a suspect to a new home was ditched folllowing a review by the coalition government." – BBC
"The plans are attracting criticism from some of the government's own backers. The Tory MP David Davis said: "This seems to be at least as ill thought out as control orders, if not more so." Davis said the point of internal relocation orders had been preventative, and so introducing them after the fact would be ineffective. "It must be preventative. How can they be preventative if they can only be passed after the event?"" – Guardian
"The Coalition’s controversial planning changes could lead to more than 1,000 extra “major developments” being approved every year, Whitehall documents suggest." – Telegraph
Greg Clark, the planning minister, defended the proposals in The Telegraph. “The presumption in favour of sustainable development means very simply that in writing their plans councils should ensure that proposals that don’t present problems should be approved promptly. We cannot afford to turn our back on the need to reform the planning system, to help deliver the sustainable growth this country desperately needs. The consequences would be to deny our young people the chance of owning a home and condemn many others to overcrowding and poverty driven by soaring rents and house prices. Our reforms will put power back into the hands of local people to decide the areas they wish to see developed and those to be protected, unlocking our slow planning system and encouraging growth by making planning work for communities, not against them.”
Government's planning reforms are "wrong-headed" – Geoffrey Lean in The Telegraph continues that newspaper's campaign against its "dangerous planning reforms".
David Cameron 'won't back abortion advice change' – BBC
"The Government has not handled this well. The Department of Health signalled at the weekend that it was sympathetic to the amendment, only for Downing Street to say otherwise. David Cameron has now let it be known that while he supports the idea of more counselling, he will not vote for the amendment because it excludes abortion providers." – Telegraph leader
> Yesterday's ToryDiary: 92% of MPs support the principle behind the Dorries/Field campaign for independent abortion counselling
More than 80% of knife offenders avoid jail, bringing into question Tory pledges on gang crime – Times (£)
"Despite David Cameron’s vow to get tough on armed thugs, most are given community punishments or cautions… Court statistics show that 1,024 of them – 20 per cent – were given an immediate jail term, the lowest proportion since 2008." – Daily Mail | Sun
Only three per cent of benefits fraudsters go to jail… and they pay back an average of just £200 each – Daily Mail
Plans for a new high-speed rail link rest on mistaken assumptions about Britain’s economic geography – The Economist rejects the Coalition's HS2 plans
Coalition agrees more aggressive campaign against 'catastrophic' Scottish independence – Guardian
Murdo Fraser MSP promises to kill independence if he becomes Scottish Tory leader: "If Alex Salmond really believed in his own message, he would put his money where his mouth is and have a single-question referendum. No second question. No Salmond cop-out. Separation, yes or no. Then we can move on. We can be positive about Scotland and positive about the United Kingdom. We can kill independence, and break the SNP." Quoted in The Scotsman.
Hospitals will be forced to treat wealthy foreigners to raise cash, rather than treat poor patients, says BMA's Hamish Meldrum – Guardian
Hugo Rifkind: The Tories are at their most effective when they're the 'nasty party'
"Mrs May coined the phrase in her conference speech in 2002. This was 17 years after Margaret Thatcher broke the miners. Ten years after Peter Lilley was cheered in Brighton for his catchy little ditty about single mums getting pregnant to jump housing queues. More than two decades, for God’s sake, after Norman Tebbit had suggested that people out of work should get on their bikes." – Hugo Rifkind in The Times (£)
"Labour MPs will have to sign contracts committing them to more constituency work as part of Ed Miliband’s effort to reconnect the party with voters." – Times (£)
The agency workers directive from Brussels will load costs on to hard-pressed employers – Telegraph leader
And finally… Lord Astor's wife is new face of Dove deodorant – Daily Mail
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