Conservatism must be about both statistics and people, competence and compassion
Cameron is right to personalise his message – but he should combine it with mastery of the numbers.
Doctors’ contracts and an “NHS crisis”
Jeremy Hunt is trying to untangle the mess Labour made of doctors’ contracts, but time is not on his side.
Boon or bubble: What do the numbers tell us about Help to Buy?
A large chunk of the policy’s budget is going on the South East, and those who already own houses.
The Conservatives’ real class problem
It isn’t social class, but political class. And by the way, the grip of Eton and the public schools on the Tories is getting weaker, not stronger.
May and Grayling, the dynamic duo, have an increasingly strong message on crime
The Tory stronghold of the Coalition Government is catching criminals – but is also revolutionising their rehabilitation
The surreptitious growth of the payroll vote
Roughly half of all Conservative MPs are now part of it.
Think Big, Britain
I’ve long hoped that the next Tory manifesto would offer an agenda for ensuring Britain can compete in what Digby Jones has rightly called the ‘Asian century’.
Why Adam Afriyie should withdraw his amendment to the Wharton bill today
There’s no majority in the Commons for a pre-2017 referendum. All the Afriyie amendment can help achieve is to delay and thus endanger the bill.
Loss of ship-building is a harsh blow to Portsmouth
Conservatives will have to work hard to prevent Hammond’s announcement becoming a gift to UKIP
A third of Tory members back Afriyie’s EU referendum plan
And over half want a vote before David Cameron’s preferred date of 2017
Andrew Gimson’s PMQs sketch: Cameron and Miliband are trapped in a demeaning cycle of abusive behaviour
The dialogue in a Punch and Judy show is more sophisticated. This double act could do with some light and shade.
The best way to help poorer workers is to cut their tax bill
There’s a case for tax incentives for firms to encourage them to pay the Living Wage. But that’s no substitute for focusing tax reductions on the worse-off.
Comments Policy (revisited)
If Party loyalists are unwilling to argue back against, say, UKIP supporters, then that is telling Number 10 and CCHQ something that they need to know.
The Johnson manifesto
Jo’s, that is – not Boris’s. The Head of the Policy Unit will have a big hand in the plan for the 2015 election to be confirmed today.
Under one in five Conservative members back John Major’s energy windfall tax
And there’s even less joy for Ed Miliband over his proposed price freeze