ToryDiary: Two-must learn lessons for David Cameron
Philip Booth on Platform: Phillip Blond has many sound and original policies. Unfortunately the original ones are not sound and the sound ones are not original.
LeftWatch highlights THREE areas of Labour failure from this morning's newspapers: More poverty, less policing, less manufacturing.
Local government: Eight councils named as providing poor care for the elderly and Labour council candidate ditched for calling The Queen a "parasite"
Ruth Lea on CentreRight: President Sarkozy’s blood-curdling rhetoric should worry us all
Also on CentreRight, Melanchthon thinks about "Localism in planning"
WATCH: Channel 4 says Tories have abandoned plan to build 5,000 extra prisons places
'Brown lifted the curtain on a remorseless Labour election focus on Cameron’s upbringing'
"Many Tory strategists believed that last year’s Crewe and Nantwich by-election had put paid to Labour’s attempts at class warfare backfired when despite portraying the Conservative candidate as a “toff” there was a drantic swing to the Tories. But Labour election planners still feel that at a time when money is tight voters will not be able to associate themselves with a Tory front bench that has independently wealthy central figures like Mr Cameron and George Osborne." - Telegraph
Gordon Brown unleashes "class war" attack on David Cameron - Express
Next week's pre-Budget report will be stuffed with measures to present the Tories as friends of the rich - Benedict Brogan in The Telegraph
The Daily Mail has warned David Cameron to adopt a more hard-headed approach to climate change "In the past, David Cameron has gone out of his way to pander to the green lobby, putting a windmill on his roof and staging an almost pantomime photo shoot with huskies on a Norwegian glacier (the effect of both was somewhat undermined by Mr Cameron cycling to work - followed by his chauffeured car carrying his shoes and papers). We can only hope that if he does form the next Government, Mr Cameron will ditch the husky hugging for a hardheaded analysis of the costs and benefits of drastic cuts in carbon emissions." - Daily Mail leader
Timn Yeo attacks David Davis on climate change, as having "no authority on the subject" - Independent
In the New Statesman Gaby Hinsliff identifies the kind of greenery that wins over Tory voters: "The Greens beat Ukip in Witney at the last election, but the vibe here is less about abandoning the 4x4, more about composting and eating local."
Ken Clarke warns George Osborne against "adventurous" statement of spending cuts - Times
Britain's fiscal deficit is twice as large, as a percentage of GDP, than the crisis of the mid-1970s - Times leader
Steve Bundred of the Audit Commission looks at the potential for education spending cuts - FT
60% of the next Parliamentary Conservative party could be NEW MPs
"As many as 32 Tory MPs have announced their departures, and this could easily rise above 40. This means that even if the Tories win an overall majority of one, more than half their MPs will be new to Parliament. A landslide means that the proportion could rise to more than three fifths." - Peter Riddell in The Times
> Robert Key and Sir Patrick Cormack have both announced their retirements this week
Home information packs have cost sellers more than half a billion pounds since their introduction two years ago
"Grant Shapps, the shadow housing minister, said: "By imposing a £657.6 million burden on the housing market during the longest and deepest recession in living memory, Labour's short-sighted bureaucratic policy is milking the industry dry." - Telegraph
Financial Times accuses the Conservatives of cash-for-access donor clubs"Tory donors are being offered access to David Cameron’s inner circle of advisers in return for a minimum £25,000 annual gift to the party, leaked documents have revealed... The big donors are also offered private briefings from a quartet of powerful, hard-to-access advisers to Mr Cameron. These are Steve Hilton, the party’s highly influential head of strategy; Andy Coulson, the former tabloid editor turned head of communications; James O’Shaughnessy, head of the Conservative Research Department; and Stephen Gilbert, who runs the Tories’ target seats campaign." - FT
"Millionaire Tory leader David Cameron claims 40p for chocolate bar on expenses" - Mirror
Repay expenses or we dock pay and pensions, Speaker warns MPs - Times
"Tory MP Sir Peter Viggers, who tried to claim £1,600 for a duck house, is reported to be refusing to repay £40,000. Labour ex-minister Frank Field says he will not give back almost £7,000 for "housekeeping costs" deemed excessive by Sir Thomas. Bernard Jenkin, Tory MP for North Essex, is contesting a demand for £63,250 claimed to rent a second home from his sister-in-law." - The Sun
Labour's not calling general election in 2007 was error, says Jack Straw "Gordon Brown's election campaign manager Jack Straw today acknowledges that the party threw away a tactical advantage in the autumn of 2007 when it decided not to hold a general election." - Guardian | Telegraph
How the new UKIP leader's honeymoon ended as soon it had begun - Andy McSmith in The Independent
TaxPayers' Alliance research reveals 90% of government work is completed by Britain's 1,152 quangos - Daily Mail
Parliament: A hung Parliament is certain after the next General Election...
WATCH: David Cameron urges YOU to sign up to MyConservatives.com
ToryDiary: Patrick Mercer MP questions Obama's "deeply undesirable" timetable for withdrawal from Afghanistan
LeftWatch: Brown urged to apologise for saying Spain is member of G20
Seats and candidates: Robert Key MP to retire
Mark Wallace on CentreRight: "Alistair Darling is reduced to begging the new Single Market Commissioner Michel Barnier in the pages of The Times not to wreck the City with overly aggressive regulation."
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