Matt Kilcoyne: The Conservative manifesto. Wooing Labour heartlands with socialist policy is a doomed strategy.

The first piece of a series this week about what the Conservative Manifesto should look like.

Progressive Conservative reformers 4) Disraeli – and his first and only full term of government

When he declared that “the first consideration of a minister should be the health of the people”, he was beginning to map out an election-winning mass appeal. 

Progressive Conservative reformers 2) The domestic policy Neville Chamberlain

“The work done in partnership with Baldwin, and by Chamberlain alone after 1937, gave Britain some of the best welfare services in the world.”

Rachel Wolf: In defence of Cameron

My local secondary schools were no-go areas and no one from my primary school went to one. That won’t be my children’s experience, and he can take a lot of credit.

Henry Newman: Cummings understands the need to drastically reform Whitehall

It’s not an optional extra – it’s crucial to delivering an effective Brexit and making the most of the opportunities outside the EU.

Michael Gove: I have shown in government that I deliver. And as Prime Minister, I will deliver Brexit – and stop Corbyn.

My experience – mastering those detailed briefs, winning support, driving through reform – leaves me in the best position to achieve Brexit.

New measures to support disabled people. Rudd’s speech on reform – full text.

“So I will be reviewing our goal to get one million more disabled people in work by 2027. We can do more, and I want to set a new and more ambitious goal.”

Robert Halfon: Why our secondary school exams really do a need a radical vocational overhaul

All I am trying to do is give impetus to a national conversation about how our education system should prepare our young people for the future.

Rachel Wolf: On policy, it’s not the Independent Group that’s driven to the margins. It’s the Conservative Right.

The new group’s platform is not very inspiring. But its biggest problem is it they won’t be very different from the Conservatives’.

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.

Universal Credit. Noble aim, thorny problems – and Rudd’s decision. If the scheme is to work properly, it must be paid for.

If you appoint Duncan Smith to the post she now holds, as Cameron did in 2010, it follows that you must fund his plan fully.

Sir David Cameron-Hume. In time, why not?

He may eventually be able to construct a case for return which, while tortuous, would not be beyond the reach of his powers of persuasion.

Alex Morton: This week, Hammond’s Budget. Next year, the Spending Review. It must focus on gaining more growth.

The Treasury should not simply accept the growth figures given by the OBR, but seek to raise them.

James Frayne: The new polling which suggests that NHS spending is not enough

Over the last couple of years in groups I’ve run, people have become simultaneously more obsessed about the service and more concerned about waste.

The Treasury donkey

The irony is that Hammond is appallingly placed to persuade voters that No Deal really does carry risks.