Friday 26th August 2005

8pm update: Tories gain North Wilts seat from LibDems by single vote - Guardian/PA

Blogs

Leadership Blog: David Davis plays down Clarke threat

Leadership Blog - Party democrats face "chaos" threats as ballot papers are despatched on leadership process

Conservative News & Commentary

David Cameron now denies plans to quit Tiger Tiger pub chain - Guardian

"[David Cameron's] speeches, said to be drafted by the Tory MP and Blair apologist Michael Gove, have been laboriously modelled on the Prime Minister’s early efforts. They are so close in style as to be almost identical: the same piety of tone, staccato delivery and mania for verbless sentences..."

...Peter Oborne: Why David Cameron has decided to copy Tony Blair - Spectator

Tory association chairmen may reject proposed changes to leadership election - Guardian

Guardian leader: Tories should embrace structural reform that will deliver a less white, less male party

'Young' Rifkind claims a dozen parliamentary supporters - Telegraph

"If Ken won, we would all be enormously entertained. He would knock spots off both Mr Blair and Gordon Brown in the House of Commons. He might, for a time, engage with the public better than any Tory leader since Margaret Thatcher. But his arrogance and closed-mindedness would show through in the end. Whatever he thinks, one more heave is not enough..."

...Mary Ann Sieghart: The Tories will be better off without Ken Clarke - Times

"Big challenges are what Clarke does. He came into politics, old friends remember, because he loved a brawl and he'd cross the road for a fight. That is more or less what he did as education secretary, then health secretary, and finally as home secretary, a career strewn with the bloodied casualties of doctors, ambulance drivers, teachers and police, victims of his penchant for doing over public servants.  Only the thickest-skinned pro-European one-nation Tory and protege of the late Sir Edward Heath could prosper under Margaret Thatcher and emerge from the wreckage of Black Wednesday as one of the Conservatives' most successful chancellors..."

...Profile of Kenneth Clarke - Guardian

Obituary of Maurice Cowling - Telegraph

Bill Deedes: Tories should learn from Australia's private health insurance system - Telegraph

Other Commentary

Clinton W Taylor: The unpunished Moqtada Al-Sadr’s influence has undermined the Iraq mission - National Review Online

Other News

Adam Smith Institute calls for deregulation of inappropriately politicised railways - ePolitix.com

Poorly communicating MPs must learn to speak 'fluent human' warns Andrew Marr - Times

238,000 immigration-fuelled population increase puts England over 50 million threshold - Telegraph

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