A great post by Hopi Sen on how the real model for Cameron's Tories is not Blair's New Labour, but the Bush-Rove Republicans.

Nick Robinson has noted in his blog how quickly David Cameron has backed away from blaming Gordon Brown for the problems at Northern Rock.

This is a dreadfully late link, but still.

Iain Dale told us on his blog that the David Cameron 'sunshine' quote is not new for the Tories. Indeed, it featured on a poster in their 1929 General Election campaign.

What he did not tell us is that in that General Election, the Conservatives lost more than 150 seats.

Let's hope it's an omen. (but that the following Labour government does not suffer the same fate as Ramsey McDonald's!)

Congratulations to Clive Davis for a fine example of the Tories working hard to attract people to politics by rational and mature debate.

The Liberal Democrats seem to me to have been pretty quiet on the issue of reform to party funding - happy to try to exploit the 'loans for peerages' issue, but less forthcoming about reforms. Perhaps understandably, given their little local difficulty with the Michael Brown donation.

But perhaps the other reason for quiet is because they stand to lose a significant source of funding from a cap on donations.

Iain Dale has picked up on a story in the Times which purports to prove that the Government is targeting hospital closures on Tory and Lib Dem seats.

Remember the David Cameron who was going to give us a new form of politics? One that was about policies and got rid of the personal attacks.

So it must have been someone else who was interviewed by the Telegraph on Sunday.

It's time we reminded more people that if David Cameron were to win, the country really WOULD be being run by a Spin Doctor, as Nick Cohen reminded us in yesterday's Observer:-

As if country hasn't suffered enough, we now face a clear and present danger that the first former head of PR for a TV company to become Prime Minister will soon be in Downing Street.

The only thing that can stop him succeeding seems to be the public twigging that the former PR man is a former PR man and not believing a word he says. The former PR man needs to counter the accusation he is all spin and no substance and his smart PR move will be to deny he is nothing more than a former PR man.

His spin doctors - the former PR man now has men to do his PR for him - tell my colleagues that today in Bournemouth he will stress his commitment to developing serious policy ideas.

I am lifting out and posting a comment I attached to another thread (to be fair, slightly off topic) which I hoped would promote a debate.

The essence of my question is, what would an 'ethical foreign policy' look like in the case of Darfur? How would an 'ethical foreign policy' have dealt with Iraq, not just at the time of the war, but at the continuing situation regarding sanctions, Saddam and containment?

It's time that those of us who blog about Labour used the internet to highlight the Tory hypocrisy on party funding.

Our own self-inflicted wounds on this topic may stop the national party from attacking as much as they could - but there is no need for this to stop individual activists from going on the offensive.

LabourHome is one of a number of initiatives to try to improve the use of blogging and the internet to strengthen Labour campaigning. In this area, as in many other areas of campaigning, we are running behind the US.

ConservativeHome has done us a considerable favour by posting this story and in particular the link to the PDF of a presentation about the Tax Payer's Alliance poll.

Compass has issued a statement criticising the Government for not calling for an immediate ceasefire between Israel and Hezbollah.

Such a call is an understandable response to the continued media coverage and particularly to incidents like the reported attack on UN observers yesterday. But it is not enough.