Monday 26th February 2007

9.30pm Seats and candidate update: Warwickshire North shortlist

9.15pm Seats and candidate update: Neil Parish MEP selected for Tiverton and Honiton

4:00pm BritainAndAmerica update: Power not only corrupts, it also tends to isolate

3:30pm ToryDiary update: National Convention elections 2007

Dave Bartlett has just made the 1000th comment on our most recent version of the frontpage newslinks, highlighting the Times' poll of Labour MPs. Please continue to use the comments section throughout the day to inform readers of interesting news and commentary elsewhere.

1pm update: Bolton News video interview with David Cameron, covering the famous gun-gesture picture, his personal qualities, and immigration.

Conservative Party: £720,000 has been spent on 'rebranding' HM Revenue and Customs.

12:30pm ToryDiary update: Party received £5.29m from October to December

BLOGS

ToryDiary: Tories promise 10,000 strong border police as alternative to ID cards and Frank Field steps up attack on Brown

CF Diary: John Moorcraft asks if it is time to bring back the FCS

Books: Damian Collins reviews a book by pollster Frank Luntz

100policies: Russell King advocates matching the school year with the business year

MARRIAGE FOCUS IS RIGHT, AND GOOD POLITICS

"The state has no interest in insisting that those whom God has joined together should never be split asunder. But the state should aim to secure a happy upbringing for children. David Cameron understands all this. Like the young Tony Blair, he has the capacity to speak to his own generation but also to admiring older voters. His beliefs on the family are sincere. He is a long way from turning them into reality. But in the interim, it is extremely good politics." - Bruce Anderson in the Independent

"What he is doing, a number of senior Tories have told me, is splitting the difference between the ultra-modernisers in his team, represented chiefly by the party chairman, Francis Maude, and policy supremo Oliver Letwin, who are positively phobic about any reference to marriage as a good thing, and his more acute advisers, who realise that public opinion has moved on since the 1990s." - Janet Daley in the Telegraph

NAVY COULD BE NO BETTER THAN THAT OF BELGIUM

"Ministers will today be challenged to justify their handling of the Royal Navy amid growing doubts about Britain's future as a major maritime power. The Conservatives are planning to use a parliamentary debate to raise questions about Labour's commitment to the navy as critical spending decisions approach." - Scotsman

REID CHALLENGES CAMERON ON PRISON REFORM

"To call for action on prison reform and then to vote against such measures would be the worst kind of hypocrisy. I have said in the past that Mr Cameron and his Conservative Party have a record of talking one way and voting another. I would be delighted to be proved wrong in this week's vote. If not, people will see that they are engaging in meaningless posturing." - John Reid in the Telegraph

REES-MOGG'S RESPONSE TO PORTILLO

"We live in an age when modernists regard religion with something approaching panic. It is like the Devil’s attitude to Holy Water. There was a comic example of Christianophobia in The Sunday Times yesterday. Michael Portillo, who used himself to be seen in Brompton Oratory, was hyperventilating at the idea of David Cameron going to church." - William Rees-Mogg in the Times

>>> Yesterday's ToryDiary on Portillo's article

GET TOUGH ON GUN CRIME, NOT JUST ITS CAUSES

"We have become used to mentioning teenage gun crime and fatherless families in the same sentence. But a great many teenage thugs have fathers, mothers, brothers and sisters. And they are thugs because of them, not despite them. Nightmare families are major sponsors of gang-related crime on countless sink estates around the country." - Telegraph leader

BROWN TO CHAMPION ECONOMY

"Gordon Brown will come out fighting today after a bruising week in which he appeared to be trailing badly behind David Cameron in the popularity stakes. With only three weeks to go before the chancellor's 11th Budget on March 21, Mr Brown will trumpet Britain's resilience in the face of global pressures and will predict strong and balanced growth and a fall in inflation during the next 12 months." - The Herald

OTHER NEWS

Obituary of Conservative peer and businessman, Earl Jellicoe - Guardian

"The hoodie who pretended to shoot Tory leader David Cameron appears in court today on drug charges. Police raided his mum Helen Sandford’s four-bedroom home on Saturday morning and arrested him." - The Sun

Is the Thatcher statue tall enough? - Lucy Mangan in the Guardian

"Sir David Frost is an endless font of amusing anecdotes. One, involving the late Sir Denis Thatcher, is too good not to share..." - Telegraph Spy

Please use this post to highlight other interesting news and commentary...