Saturday 19th June 2010

7.45pm ToryDiary: No honeymoon in opinion polls for Conservatives

3.45pm ToryDiary: Chris Huhne leaves his wife for another woman

Noon Tim Montgomerie on CentreRight: HMV Scotland withdraws Anyone But England posters after "racism" complaint

10am WATCH: US video mocks BP in a video portraying a coffee spill at BP HQ

ToryDiary: Cameron and Clegg will jointly sell 'toughest budget for thirty years'

Mark Field MP on CentreRight: George Osborne's frenetic start

Hasan Afzal on Platform: The ‘Inspired by Muhammad’ campaign has left this Muslim deeply uninspired

ThinkTankCentral: 'Coalition capital gains policy will reduce revenue by £2.5 billion'

Parliament: Conservatives retreat from Michael Howard's 'prison works' policy

Local government: Southampton library workers strike after council uses volunteers to avoid compulsory redundancies

Ming Campbell ready to lead LibDem rebellion against higher tuition fees

"The former party leader, who has already announced his intention to rebel against a deal preventing Lib Dems from voting against tuition fee hikes, said he expects a number of colleagues to follow his example. Sir Menzies, who is also chancellor of St Andrews University, said fellow Lib Dem MPs agreed he would "lose all credibility" by going against pre-election pledges to oppose any increases." - Telegraph

Matthew Parris: Britain has deeper reasons than the current crisis to shrink the state

"Mr Osborne surely knows, and millions more of us suspect, that Europe’s and Britain’s present problems and sluggish future prospects cannot all be traced to the international banking crisis and the recession that followed it. The mature Western economies face deeper challenges, at whatever stage of the market cycle. The burgeoning economies of Asia and the developing world, whose initial growth helped to prop us all up, are also competitors. Less burdened by the costs and regulatory restraints of an advanced welfare state, they are more energetic, lighter on their feet. Recession or no recession, we have to shape up in response: lower taxes, lower employment costs and a hungrier and more flexible labour market." - Matthew Parris in The Times (£)

Why, with public spending cuts, is MORE being lavished on foreign aid which perpetuates war, tyranny and mass murder? - Melanie Phillips in the Daily Mail

Leaked memo shows how coalition government ministers discussed raiding free meals budget

"Ministers considered taking millions from a budget that gives free school meals to the country's poorest children, to pay parents to set up their own schools. It was reported by Channel Four news tonight that a memo written by one of Gove's leading officials last week recommended that £35m be taken from funds for free school meals and redirected into the policy of free schools. Gove appears to endorse the idea in the memo, which was leaked to Channel Four." - Guardian

Lord Young ready to free police and firefighters from health and safety rules - Times (£)

Cameron holds 'warm' talks with Sarkozy at No 10 - BBC

> Yesterday's ToryDiary: No European flag on display for Sarkozy's London visit

The euro's inevitable failure will be horrendous for all of us - Charles Moore in The Telegraph

Lord Ashcroft is interviewed in The Telegraph

In one extract he discusses his view of William Hague and how he was left unprotected by CCHQ earlier in the year;

"When I ask what he thinks David Cameron thinks of him, he declines to comment – apart from saying that “my relationship with Cameron is not born out of the same friendship as with William [Hague].” He is unstinting in his praise for the latter. “He’s one of the few real statesmen that we have in the nation and completely loyal.” When I suggest that the rest of the Tories did not show him the loyalty he showed them in March during his drubbing over taxes, he says reflectively: “They didn’t. Every time I got into trouble the view was more 'protect the leader’. The whole time I was right up on the front line 'on special ops’. So when I got wounded the view was to protect the leader, and you get the 'Michael, hope you get back to the lines all right we’ve got lots more special ops for you.’”".

More in The Telegraph.

Tory MP David Ruffley escapes serious injury after mystery fall under train, suspected to be suicide

"A Conservative MP has survived falling under a train at Victoria station in Central London after he landed on the tracks in mysterious circumstances. David Ruffley, 48, who was Shadow Minister for Police Reform before the general election but is now on the backbenches, avoided serious injury as the train passed over him. He also missed the live rail. He is believed to have left the platform as a Gatwick Express train approached at about 5pm on Thursday." - Times (£)

"A source added: "It was not believed to be an accident. Witnesses said he deliberately tried to jump in front of the train. At this stage it appears to have been a half-hearted attempt to kill himself." Mr Ruffley has been a Tory MP for Bury St Edmunds, Suffolk, since 1997. He was shadow minister for Policing until last month's General Election - but he was left without a ministerial portfolio." - The Sun

Ed Balls promises diversity fund for would-be ethnic minority MPs - Guardian

Central government directly employs 640,000 staff and another 20,000 consultants and temporary staff - The new figures released by George Osborne are reported in The Independent

Polly Toynbee defends public sector pay

"Both Incomes Data Services and the Institute for Fiscal Studies say public-sector pay more or less level-pegs. But the Taxpayers' Alliance trick, adopted uncritically by the coalition, averages all public pay and all private pay, ignoring the difference in job mix. The private sector has five times more manual workers and 5% professionals while the public sector has 24.5% professionals, with most manual jobs outsourced. As hundreds of thousands of public jobs are cut, let's see how fairly the budget treats their pay." - Polly Toynbee in The Guardian

> ThinkTankCentral: Ten facts about the rich public sector and the poor private sector

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