Nicholas Boys Smith: New homes and places can and should be beautiful

Yesterday’s announcement of Government’s design guidance is a very welcome step in the right direction.

Gary Porter: Reflections on four years as the voice of local government

When we work with central government, we improve lives and achieve the best results for our communities.

Johnson’s shuffle. If one asks for decisiveness – for an end to drift – don’t complain when it’s delivered.

We have the Government that we should have had then, ready to counter the charge that Vote Leave scurried away from Brexit, rather than manning up to deliver it.

Jane Duncan: Two years from the tragedy at Grenfell Tower, can we promise it won’t happen again?

Without strong baseline regulations there is no clarity for industry or robust protection for the public. Fire safety must be a given, not a lottery.

Johnson’s bandwagon rolls on, Davidson declares for the Home Secretary – and Gove deploys weapons of mass distraction

Also: don’t cut members out of the contest. And the right exam question for candidates is: who can best win a general election?

Mordaunt leads the pack in our latest Cabinet League Table

Truss and Davidson take the other podium spots, challenging the assumptions held in some quarters about the Tory grassroots.

Boys Smith takes over from Scruton, chairing the Building Better, Building Beautiful Commission

Brokenshire feels the dismissal of Scruton “could have been handled differently”. But the work to ensure new homes are attractive will continue.

Steve Norris: Commonhold? Here’s a better idea – and one that doesn’t force management on occupiers

A Code of Practice, if given legal backing, should ensure that freeholders act as long-term responsible stewards of properties.

Scruton – and the gulf between Conservatives in Parliament and conservatives outside it

The row over his sacking is a sign of a Party pulled in different directions by the way politics works – and by culture wars. Now a new competitor is knocking at the door.

Scruton may have been ousted, but Tory councillors can still champion the cause of beauty

Proper visual preference surveys would help ensure attractive, new buildings – which people actually like.

Potemkin legislation

There is a mismatch between Government announcements and Commons realities. It cannot attempt reforms without risking them being amended out of recognition.

Screwing Scruton

His sacking is more evidence, were it needed, of the tensions that tear at the Tory coalition – and threaten to render it unsustainable.

Nuclear powers, spiralling tension – and Kashmir’s fallout in urban Britain

Brokenshire must keep an eye on the potential knock-on from the latest flare-up over terror, reprisals, a captured pilot and the disputed territory.

Will Tanner: Nansledan offers an answer to Britain’s housing crisis

By engaging properly with the local community, the developer has won local consent for four times as many homes as originally proposed.

The defectors are wrong. The Conservatives aren’t shifting to the right. They are mired in the mixed middle.

No less than the ERG, the group of three sees everything through the prism of Brexit – which, let it not be forgotten, they voted to support themselves.