Wednesday 31st August 2005

4pm update: Peter Bottomley, Jacqui Lait and Andrew Pelling come out for Sir Malcolm Rifkind - Leadership Blog

4pm update: Tories and UKIP outspent Labour in 2004's European Elections - ePolitix.com

2.30pm update: Rifkind urges Ken Clarke to come clean over Europe - The Scotsman

ENGULFED: NEW ORLEANS TORN APART BY KATRINA, AMERICA'S 'GREATEST NATURAL DISASTER' - Independent

Blogs

'Platform' is a new place for guest authors to discuss important ideas.  To launch 'Platform', Simon Chapman, a regular commentator on conservativehome's leadership blog, has written a short essay on 'Rights, Freedoms, Entitlements and Obligations'.

Leadership Blog: The Return of The Big Beast

Leadership Blog: Six senior voluntary party representatives protest at centralisation of leadership election

Conservative News & Commentary

I'm the man to lead the Tories, says Ken Clarke - Daily Mail

Clarke emphasises broad appeal as he bids for leadership - Times

Cameron urged to step aside as Ken Clarke sets out his stall - The Herald

Senior representatives of the voluntary party write letter to The Telegraph opposing rollback of party democracy - news story and letter

Other Commentary

Guardian Leader: "As the political engines rev up once more after the summer break, it is an observable fact that Mr Clarke's pro-European views are no longer the explosively divisive issue that they once were. The main reason for this is the continuing transformation in European politics brought about by the rejection of the European constitutional treaty by the French and the Dutch voters."

Daniel Finkelstein: Tony Blair must go to America and collect his Congressional Gold Medal: "He must go because the American people need to know how much we value their friendship. He must go because the tide of anti-American feeling in this country needs to be confronted. He must go because he should be proud, not ashamed, that he said yes when our allies came to call and asked whether, after all the support they have given us, we might reciprocate. He must go because the commitment to spread democracy around the world is a brave and noble one. He must go as a bold statement to the enemies of liberty everywhere that those who defend freedom are bound together and are resolute." - Times

Pete du Pont: On Tax Reform, Flatter-y Will Get You Everywhere - Wall Street Journal

Jonah Goldberg: Hollywood's silence in the war on terror is deafening - Townhall.com

Other News

Right-wing hawk, Binyamin Netanyahu, promises to knock Sharon off perch - Times

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Tuesday 30th August 2005

8pm update: KEN CLARKE WILL DECLARE CANDIDACY TOMORROW - BBCi

7pm update: If the Conservative Right doesn't unite behind a single candidate (and soon) Ken Clarke could win - Watlington on the SAU blog

7pm update: Tory MEP warned Peter Mandelson about likelihood of 'bra wars' three months ago - conservatives.com

Blogs

Leadership Blog: Ken Clarke set to play the Iraq card

Leadership Blog: Dr Cooper's letter to The Scotsman makes an excellent case for rank-and-file party democracy

Conservative News & Commentary

Ken Clarke has earned £1m from tobacco interests - Times

Ken Clarke to highlight his opposition to Iraq war in his third leadership bid - Independent - and to target the fifty new Tory MPs - Times

Geofffrey Wheatcroft in the Guardian: The Tories must distance themselves from Tony Blair... on just about everything: "Even if he was wrong about everything else, Ken Clarke was right about Iraq. He warned about the likely disastrous consequences with a prescience which is now painful to read.  Polls show what everyday observation anyway suggests, that more Tories were opposed to the war than Labour voters. Not only are very many ordinary Tories not in the least proud of Blair, they don't think he has any idea what he is doing, in Iraq or in the "war on terror" at home. Why can't they have a leader who represents them?"

Rifkind is the 'one nation' candidate - Telegraph

BBC rejects Tory complaints that November 2004 Newsnight interview with Michael Howard was unfair - Guardian

Missed from yesterday

Bruce Anderson in The Independent (subscription required): David Cameron is the only serious candidate to be Tory leader: "David Cameron is young and untried. He is also able, decisive and likeable. He is cut from big timber. The alternative candidates, Ken Clarke and David Davis, would pull the party back to the past. In recent years, two vital words have vanished from the Tory vocabulary, and only David Cameron could restore them: hope and future. As Margaret Thatcher would have said, there is no alternative."

Other Commentary

Nina Shea & John F. Cullinan, writing for National Review Online, ask if religious freedom is at risk in Iraq: "Religious minorities as well as women will suffer under Iraq's proposed constitutional architecture. The provisions... further reinforce the second-class status of Iraq's already beleaguered Christian community, now roughly three percent of the overall population and rapidly shrinking."

Dennis Prager: One question for the opponents of the war: 'Do you believe we are fighting evil people in Iraq?' - Townhall.com

Other News

Ariel Sharon declares Benjamin Netanyahu as "not fit to lead a government" - Independent

Channel 4 may buy Sky News coverage - Guardian

LibDem MP Evan Harris seeks abortion law reform - Telegraph

Defending life at all of its stages - Letter to The Telegraph

"Artificial wombs, to bring a foetus of a human being to full term outside a woman’s body, could become a reality within 20 years, scientists have predicted." - Times

The government wants to create a new offence of deliberate possession of violent and abusive pornography - ePolitix.com

Arthur Chrenkoff's 'Latest Good News from Iraq' - Wall Street Journal

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Monday 29th August 2005

12.30pm update: Christopher Hitchens: A War To Be Proud Of - Commentators Blog

Blogs

Leadership Blog: More Labour votes for Ken

Leadership Blog: Sir Malcolm's 'real choice' is a false choice

Conservative News & Commentary

Labour MPs say they fear Ken Clarke most - Telegraph

Ruth Wishart: Ken Clarke wins my vote as optimist of the year - The Herald

"Ideas are the decisive force in all politics, whether they are bad ideas or good ones. The New Deal idea made Franklin Roosevelt. The half-baked racial Darwinism of Hitler took him to power, though it was intellectually contemptible.  There are even more ideas in the present Conservative leadership contest than may appear, but they desperately need better definition..."

...William Rees-Mogg: Ideas are the decisive force in politics - Times

Danny Kruger: Who would Maurice Cowling want as Tory leader? - Telegraph

Other Commentary

Melanie Phillips: Labour's stupid drinking policy - Daily Mail

George Trefgarne: The flat tax is marching across Europe - Telegraph

National Review leader: Iraq has been given a chance of a better future... "eventually, it will be up to them to make of it — their country, their politics, their constitution — what they will"

Other News

POLL: 58% want more abortion restrictions but 87% support assisted suicide - Telegraph

John Sentamu, new archbishop, says Church of England is infected with institutional racism - Telegraph

Telegraph responds: "A useful litmus test can be applied to distinguish vibrant, fast-growing denominations from struggling or moribund ones. Those that are obsessed with accusing themselves of racism tend to be in a worse state of health than those that - while vigorously opposing racial prejudice, as the Gospel demands - have resisted the breast-beating and grievance-mongering of secular multiculturalists."

American think tank organises National Conservative Coming Out Day - Townhall.com

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Sunday 28th August 2005

7.45pm update: Liam Fox attacks soap opera politics - Leadership Blog

THE IRAQI CONSTITUTION

"On behalf of the American people, I congratulate the people of Iraq on completing the next step in their transition from dictatorship to democracy. And I want to remind the American people, as the democracy unfolds in Iraq, not only will it help make America more secure, but it will affect the broader Middle East. Democracies don't war with their neighbors; democracies don't become safe haven for terrorists who want to destroy innocent life. We have hard work ahead of us, but we're on the -- we're making good progress toward making sure this world of ours is more peaceful for generations to come."

- George W Bush responding to the  completion of Iraq's first constitution

Blogs

Commentators Blog: Daniel Hannan: We must quit the EU

Leadership Blog: Portillo and Yeo get the Clarke bandwagon rolling...

Conservative News & Commentary

Tim Yeo pulls out of leadership race and endorses Ken Clarke - BBCi

"Clarke's words were anything but a step down from his long-held Europhile views. Everybody knows that, had he been Prime Minister at the time, he would have shoe-horned Great Britain into the single currency by now and signed up enthusiastically to the European Constitution, which even the French and Dutch have rejected. Clarke's constant refrain until last week was that Britain had done neither because Prime Minister Tony Blair had failed to show sufficient euro-enthusiasm and leadership..."

...Allister Heath: Ken Clarke's opportune conversion - Scotland on Sunday

Michael Portillo: Clarke is the Tories' "least worst choice" - S Times

Quentin Letts: "Not even the hamfisted roughness of Conway and his sidekick can lose David Davis the Tory leadership" - Observer

David Davis has a new libertarian guru, Randy Barnett - Observer

Interviewing David Cameron, Melissa Kite finds a "new man" who "is surprisingly warm towards David Davis" - S Telegraph

Other Commentary

"The blunt truth is that the euro zone's poor economic performance and high unemployment are likely to be with us for the foreseeable future while the Brussels bureaucracy is forever trapped in its own regulatory mindset. As a result it is only realistic to conclude that there is little hope for the EU. It stands condemned to permanent decline, making it time for Great Britain to start thinking of forging a new, looser relationship with its European neighbours, most of whom seem resigned to accepting decline..."

...The Business Leader: An EU beyond reform

Daniel Hannan MEP: The EU can work for Britain - if we quit - S Telegraph

The euro is increasingly unloved in Italy - S Telegraph

S Telegraph leader: The US-led occupation has made democracy possible where the only other options are tyranny and civil war

Andrew Sullivan: Iraq still offers a tantalising prospect of success - S Times

Christopher Hitchens: The case for overthrowing Saddam was unimpeachable - Weekly Standard

Other News

Tessa Jowell admits that Labour mishandled introduction of 24-hour licensing - Independent on Sunday

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