ToryDiary's Vote Conservative series: George Osborne's corporate tax ambitions
Rupert Matthews on Platform: CRB checks are dangerous and put children at risk
LeftWatch: Labour considers paying for people to inform on benefit cheats
Last night's Seats and candidates: Joanne Cash resigns as Tory candidate for Westminster North
Melanchthon on CentreRight assesses the health of the Tory campaign: "We've lost the automatic high ground on the spending thing, we're going to need a bit of a relaunch - obviously we'll need to go back to talking about the economy, but we can't hope for the same routing of Labour on the issue that we were getting before. Instead, we'll need to lean more on other issues - our splendid schools reform package; an appropriately re-pitched adaptationist green agenda; our excellent Europe reform policy; and we may need to supplement these with some kind of vision of Britain's future place in the world (on which I'll say more another time)."
"70% believe that society is now broken, echoing a Conservative campaign theme of the past two years, while 68% say people who play by the rules get a raw deal and 82% think it is time for a change." - Times
The Tories are ahead by 10% in voting intentions -ToryDiary
"Britain’s political class is used to an adversarial system, not a deal-making one. It would therefore ask a lot of British MPs to expect them to acquire new skills in the midst of a fiscal crisis." - FT leader
Tory plan to cut and simplify corporation tax allowance will see key allowances scrapped"The Conservatives are planning to slash billions from business allowances and incentives in order to fund promised cuts in corporation tax. Research and development, film production tax credits and the Enterprise Investment Allowance are likely to be included in the cull. An uplift in the 18pc rate of capital gains tax for business assets held for less than 10 years is also being considered, while the universal £50,000 annual investment allowance could be singled out because of its annual £1.5bn cost." - Telegraph
Business leaders abandon Brown"Of 38 replies received from the 62 senior executives who signed a letter in 2005 backing Tony Blair as Prime Minister, less than half said they were backing Gordon Brown. Twenty of the respondents refused to say whether they would continue to back Labour and all but one declined to declare themselves for the Conservatives. The letter was one of two written by business leaders to the Financial Times before the last election. The second, from another 67 executives, backed the Conservatives and an analysis by Bloomberg shows the majority of them remain committed Tories." - Telegraph
David Cameron promises two-year lobbying ban and pension penalties for former ministers - Guardian
"Tory leader David Cameron proposes a clampdown on political lobbying firms, calling them 'the next big scandal waiting to happen'. Does he mean outfits like Huntsworth, which describes itself as 'a world class communications group with public relations as its core'? Its chief executive is Lord Chadlington, aka Peter Gummer, 67, president of Cameron's constituency party. He helped bankroll Dave's leadership campaign." - Daily Mail
Cameron shames Brown into axing his 'three cheating MPs' - Express
"Putting the expenses story in the headlines, layered with personal abuse against the prime minister, risks reviving the public’s “plague on all your houses” view of the parties." - Gary Gibbon, Channel 4 News
> Watch key segments of Cameron's 'fixing broken politics' speech
Extra £500,000 of donations fund Tory frontbenchers' research capacity- The Herald
"A venture capitalist who helped to buy a company supplying military equipment is funding the office of Liam Fox, the Shadow Defence Secretary, with a donation of £50,000." - Times
Tory pledge to maintain independent war capability"A Conservative government would maintain Britain’s capability to wage war unilaterally in spite of the “unavoidable” pressures on the defence budget, Liam Fox, shadow defence secretary, said on Monday. While accepting the strategic defence review after the election would have to be “ruthless and unsentimental”, Mr Fox rejected the assumption that Britain would always need to operate with allies in war – a conclusion of last week’s government defence study." - FT< /p>
> Yesterday's ToryDiary reviewed the main ten points of Liam Fox's speech
Newsnight's Liz MacKean reports from Sweden on the independent school system which the Conservatives hope to introduce in England if they win the next election - BBC
Harriet Harman wants to ban the 'sexist' term chairman - Daily Mail
MPs are to vote on Gordon Brown's plan for a referendum on changing Britain's "first past the post" voting system - BBC
"As many as 40 Labour MPs are understood to oppose strongly Mr Brown's belief that first-past-the-post should be replaced by the alternative vote (AV), under which candidates are ranked in order of preference." - Independent
Tim Montgomerie on CentreRight: The green police are coming
WATCH: A one minute video summarising Labour's "achievements"
Paul Goodman MP on CentreRight: The Tories' electoral mountain may not be so steep after all
Parliament: The amendment that would Save General Election Night has been tabled in the Commons
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