ToryDiary: Three ways to burst the Nick Clegg bubble
Seats and candidates: David Cameron won't keep Brown in power. Will you, Mr Clegg?
Walaa Idris on Platform: Immigration is good - but only when it is controlled and the immigrants fully assimilate
Seats and candidates: Help raise £1,000 for Jesse Norman's bid to be elected Conservative MP for Hereford and South Herefordshire
LeftWatch: Labour have given up on winning; it's all about a marriage with the Liberal Democrats now
Local government: The battle for Dudley and Doncaster's elected Mayor obstructed from carrying out his mandate
Jonathan Isaby on CentreRight: Are the DUP confused about their policy on the European Union - or just misleading us?
WATCH: Tony Blair spotted backing David Cameron at Ladbrokes
Tories in the lead in four of the latest polls - and neck-and-neck with the Lib Dems in a fifth - Yesterday evening's ToryDiary
Conservative leader is seen as much less honest than the Lib Dem leader - Guardian
"The surge in support for Nick Clegg’s Lib Dems shows no sign of dying down, according to five opinion polls released yesterday that show the party in second place. Labour is in third place in all the polls, apart from a ComRes poll where it is neck-and-neck with the Lib Dems. Due to the vagaries of the first-past-the-post system, all polls suggest that Labour would still be the largest party after the election despite coming third in the popular vote, meaning Gordon Brown would try to cling to power by forging a Lib-Lab coalition." - City AM
Is Lib Dem leader Nick Clegg an Obama-style hero for our times, a Churchillian leader or a popular rebel in the mould of Che Guevara? - Oliver Burkeman in The Guardian
Cameron warns of back door election for Brown if people vote for Clegg
"David Cameron changed his campaign plans yesterday to warn that Nick Clegg would mire the country in the “old politics” of a hung Parliament. Mr Cameron tried to seize back the mantle of change from his Liberal Democrat counterpart, insisting that only the Tories could “blow apart the old way of doing things”." - Times
"David Cameron reacted to the shock surge in Lib Dem support by broadcasting a message to the British people warning that only a convincing Conservative victory on May 6 would deliver decisive leadership. And he warned that a significant vote for Nick Clegg’s party meant a serious risk of leaving Gordon Brown in Downing Street for years ahead." - Express
Flight ban forces Cameron to miss launch of Scottish manifesto - Express
Clegg to focus on banks"Mr Clegg is to use his daily news conference to say his party would "break up the banks, to protect people's everyday savings from ever being used again to fuel the casino culture of the global financial industry"." - BBC
Will agreement to election dates finish Britain's two-party system?"Though it is too early to say for certain, it may well be that historians will look back on 90 minutes of prime-time TV last week and conclude that they changed British politics for good - triggering a tsunami which wiped out the system of two-party politics. In its place, we may be looking forward to a revolution in the form of an experiment in European-style consensus government." - Peter Oborne in the Daily Mail
The Financial Times lists the coalition options for the Liberal Democrats in the event of a hung parliament.
"The Lib Dems have a secret weapon for the negotiations. Miriam González Durántez, the wonderfully independent Mrs Clegg, used to work for Chris Patten. Her colleagues were Ed Llewellyn, who is now Mr Cameron’s chief of staff, and Peter Power, Lord Mandelson’s press secretary. The high-powered international lawyer has refused to be an appendage to her husband on the campaign trail. But if the election results in a hung Parliament she could be best placed to strike a deal on May 7." - Rachel Sylvester in The Times
The Financial Times looks at the top LibDem target seat of Guildford.
IFS study casts doubt on importance of marriage for children's welfare - FT
Lib Dem Karen Chilvers apologises over sick joke about Samantha Cameron's baby - Telegraph
And finally... The invisibility of the Tory women "Only seven people in the 552-strong polling sample named Theresa Villiers, the shadow transport secretary. Only one respondent named Caroline Spelman, the shadow communities secretary and former party chairman – matching the sole respondent mistakenly suggesting Sarah Palin, the former US vice-presidential candidate. The three shadow cabinet women peers – Sayeeda Warsi, Pauline Neville-Jones and Joyce Anelay – were not mentioned at all." - FT
Over the last couple of weeks, ConservativeHome readers have raised more than £4,500 for Conservative candidates seeking to gain seats from the Liberal Democrats - in Cheltenham, Southport, Sutton & Cheam and North Devon.
The latest candidate for whom we are seeking to raise £1,000 is Jesse Norman, who is fighting Hereford and South Herefordshire, a seat which has been in Lib Dem hands since 1997.
The notional Lib Dem majority he has to overturn is 1,089, which will be defended by a new Lib Dem candidate as the sitting MP is retiring. It is twentieth on the Conservative target list and is a seat we must win if we are to win the election nationally.
Jesse was select at an Open Primary in December 2006 and has been working tirelessly in the seat for the last three and a half years. He has been leading the fight against Post Office closures across Herefordshire and set up this innovative website to assist those fighting school closures in the area.
Please give whatever you can to Jesse's campaign. Click here.
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