7.45pm ToryDiary: ICM puts Tories just 5% ahead
11am Events: We've started our 2008 listings, is your event there?
10.30am PlayPolitical: Boris Johnson talks to the London Jewish Forum
ToryDiary: Tories 12% ahead in YouGov survey
Roger Helmer MEP on the Platform: British government still backs Mad Mullahs over PMOI
"The British government has bowed to pressure from Iran's Ahmadinejad régime, and has proscribed the most prominent and effective opposition-in-exile to the Iranian government, the People's Mujahideen of Iran (PMOI), arguing that it is a terrorist organisation. Worse, it has persisted in its proscription despite adverse rulings in the British courts, and in the European Court of Justice"
Christmas cheer
"Gordon Brown's personal approval rating has slumped to an all-time low as a Daily Telegraph opinion poll today shows that Labour would lose 100 MPs if an election was held now. The YouGov poll indicates that the Conservatives go into the new year with a 12-point lead over Labour. In an election, the poll result would lead to David Cameron winning a "workable majority" in the Commons." - Telegraph
Non-story of the day
"A Conservative candidate in a target seat is under fire after using a
breast cancer charity to attract local voters to an unrelated survey
for party policies. Caroline Nokes, prospective MP for Romsey and
Southampton North, carried out the survey with the permission of Breast
Cancer Care." - Guardian / C4
Troubled group win welfare-to-work contract
"The Conservatives on Thursday raised doubts over the government’s award of welfare-to-work contracts to a troubled company whose shares were suspended in October. The questions came as ministers unveiled the latest stage of a welfare-to-work drive that will, for the first time, offer a choice of provider to people on incapacity benefit." - FT
Foreign criminals won't be deported after all
"Thousands of foreign drug dealers, sex offenders and burglars will be allowed to stay in Britain every year despite Gordon Brown’s pledge to deport them... The Conservatives claimed that this meant at least 4,000 foreign criminals convicted every year of offences such as theft, burglary, benefit fraud and drug dealing will be released at the end of their sentence." - Telegraph
Advice for Clegg
"The impression that Clegg is an atheist is likely to endure, and one wonders if it will do him any harm. It might be a problem for him on Christmas Day if the media take it into their heads to establish whether or not he accompanies his Catholic wife to church." - Alexander Chancellor in the Guardian
"Nick Clegg should ask himself one simple question about everything he does and says: am I sharpening up the Liberal Democrats’ identity in the minds of voters? The great danger for all third parties is that they are ignored for most of the time." - Peter Riddell in the Times
"At the next election, a measure of success for Nick Clegg, the new Lib Dem leader, will be to retain the party's 63 MPs. That may be setting the bar very low, but Clegg knows that even such a low aspiration is going to be difficult to achieve." - Iain Dale in the Telegraph
Congratulations Steve
"They're the Tory power couple behind Cameron's throne and now they have a successor. Congratulations to Cameron's chief spin-doctor Steve Hilton and former aide to Michael Howard, Rachel Whetstone, who had a baby boy yesterday." - Telegraph Spy
Omagh acquittal
"If there is the remotest consolation in this saga it is that it is so firmly of the past, not the future. The Omagh assault was meant to be the “Real” IRA's call to arms, a warped protest against the mainstream IRA's willingness to enter the political process. It was intended to rally all dissident republicans to the hardliners' cause. It failed miserably." - Times leader
"But it was not enough to persuade anyone who might have known who the real bombers were to come and take the stand. Political solidarity would have put that out of the question. Without human witness, the prosecution may always have been doomed to failure." - Mick Fealty in the Guardian
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