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

Have I missed any important story?
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