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Friday 8th May 2009Britain's leading conservative blog Today's top ConservativeHome features ToryDiary: Just when Brown thought it couldn't get worse... In less than a month we will no longer have to listen to Christopher Beazley and Caroline Jackson Star Chamber: Save £200m by cutting the cost of Westminster politics Andrew Mitchell MP on Platform: We must tackle the root causes of the pirate menace in Somalia More overviews of forthcoming local election contests WATCH: Joanna Lumley ambushes Immigration Minister Phil Woolas over rejected Gurkha test cases Highlights from ConservativeHome yesterday... ToryDiary: Major to Brown: Any comparison with my government flatters you Could Cameronism be better than Thatcherism? Local Government: More Councils quit LGA and Cornish manifesto launched Today's other newslinks The Telegraph's exclusive on MPs' expenses "The Prime Minister is revealed to have paid his brother for “cleaning services” at his private flat in Westminster. Jack Straw, the Justice Secretary, admitted that he had over-claimed for both his council tax and mortgage bills. The disclosures show the scale of ministers’ claims and the extent to which politicians have exploited the expenses system to subsidise their lifestyles." - Telegraph The Telegraph's Ben Brogan explains why his newspaper is exposing the MPs who have been "having a laugh" at taxpayers' expense David Cameron will force Commons vote on BBC licence fee increase "David Cameron will force a Commons vote to STOP an inflation-busting hike in the BBC licence fee, it emerged last night. The Tory leader will urge MPs to kick out plans to raise the fee by two per cent to £142.50." - The Sun Dominic Grieve: On the spot fines have caused 'pay as you go' hooligans - Telegraph Nadine Dorries: It is "madness" to close schools because of swine flu - Telegraph Dorries to sue McBride "Three key figures at the centre of the email smears about Tory MPs will be sued, it emerged last night. Conservative Nadine Dorries is poised to issue writs against Gordon Brown's former spin doctor Damian McBride, Labour activist Derek Draper and Cabinet Secretary Gus O'Donnell." - Daily Mail Jeff Randall: David Cameron needs to be less personal "For once, Gordon Brown got it right. Don't laugh, he really did. At this week's Prime Minister's Questions, the Weary One scolded his Conservative tormentors for playing the man (him) instead of the ball (government policy). This, you might think, was a bit rich coming from a leader whose unmuzzled pitbull mistook the dissemination of defamatory tales about Tory rivals for a public-relations strategy. Nevertheless, the descent of Wednesday's PMQs into an exposition of Mr Brown's personal inadequacies (an unmissable target) served only to deflect attention from the United Kingdom's dire straits." - Jeff Randall in The Telegraph The PoliticsHome panel of Westminster insiders also sense that Cameron might be getting too personal in his attacks: "A minority of the panel (thirty nine per cent) reckon that the Tory leader is right to attack the Prime Minister on a personal level. That view is taken by a majority of the right-leaning panellists. The majority of the panel (fifty nine per cent) think that David Cameron should tone it down a bit and concentrate more on policy. That is the shared opinion of a majority of left-leaning, Lib Dem and non-aligned panellists." Fox is right... three nuclear submarines may be enough "Nuclear weapons reinforce international caution, but our strategic deterrent need not operate in its old Cold War posture. The Shadow Defence Secretary, Liam Fox, speaking at the weekend, suggested that Trident's replacement might be three submarines, not four. This is a sensible judgment of strategic risk: there is scarcely a case for continuous deterrence any longer, rather the capability to deploy an undetectable deterrent when necessary." - Allan Mallinson in The Times David Cameron is the first post-Thatcherite Tory leader "David Cameron, the current Conservative leader, is in one sense the first post-Thatcherite holder of that office; only now have the clefts in the party left by her ousting healed. Mr Cameron is a different sort of Tory: less of an economic determinist than Mrs Thatcher, more socially liberal, more in the party’s “one nation” tradition. But he has assimilated at least one major lesson of her often misremembered career. She was a revolutionary but also an incrementalist, whose biggest upheavals were mostly not announced in her manifestos." - The Economist Phil Woolas and Joanna Lumley "Joanna Lumley says the immigration minister has "reassured" her over Gurkhas' rights to settle in the UK, in an unscheduled and dramatic meeting." - BBC Former Labour General Secretary, now cleared, says he was abandoned by Team Brown- Guardian Senior politicians are drawing up cross-party plans to fight the British National party - FT