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From The Telegraph:

Grassroots Tories fear election defeat

For the first time since Mr Cameron took over as Tory leader, a majority of Conservative activists believe that he will not be the next Prime Minister, according to the survey.

The Electoral Commission has published its proposals for reducing the number of British MEPs from 78 to 72. The cut is driven by the expansion of the EU, with the number of MEPs countries have being reduced so that the total size of the European Parliament doesn’t swell to ridiculous proportions.

Their proposals don’t automatically become law, but it’s extremely likely that they will. So here’s how things are likely to be looking at the next European elections: East Midlands, London, North West, South West, West Midlands and Scotland each lose one MEP.

Full details on the Electoral Commission’s website.

My keyboard brings cheery news for Conservative MP Alan Duncan. He can now vary his day calling for the expulsion of Michael Howard and other Conservatives by also calling for Labour to drum this candidate out of their party, along with this one, this one, Alan Milburn MP and Julie Morgan MP.

Their sin? They’ve all used that “straight choice” phrase which Mr Duncan claims is homphobic.

You can also have a pop at the SNP for using the phrase too – must all be a bunch of homophobes too, right? Though in …

Conservative MP Alan Duncan says he doesn’t like it when people say an election is a “straight choice” as the only people who would say that are nasty horrible homophobic people.

So he must been busy calling for expulsion from his party of a past general election candidate and also a past leader, both of whom have also used the dreaded “s” word. After all, Mr Duncan wouldn’t be making up spurious attacks or turning a blind eye to homphobia in his own party would he?

He’d better add to the list of people he wants expelled then the Welsh Conservative Nick Bourne …

I’m sure Alan Duncan wouldn’t want to come over as hypocritical fool who throws around false accusations of homphobia just to suit his own political ends, so he’d better get a move on with calling for Michael Howard to be drummed out of the Conservative Party.

Why? Well you see, Mr Duncan doesn’t like it when an election is described as a “straight choice” between two different parties; he thinks its evidence of homophobic bigotry.

But what did Michael Howard say about the Leicester South by-election?

Go on.

I think you can guess?

Yes you can.

And yes you were right.

Howard said the Conservative …

Mark Bowen was the (unsuccessful) Conservative candidate in Feltham and Heston at the 2005 general election.

In February 2005 he gave a speech to the local Conservative Party AGM. No surprises there. And he said the contest in the seat was between himself and Labour. No surprises that he should that either. But I think you might be able to guess what’s coming…

Oh yes, this is what Mark Bowen said in his speech (taken from the official local Conservative Party website):

I  had thought that this coming election would be a straight choice between the man in Feltham North and

…

The BBC has the story about the latest twist in the Tory in-fighting involving Ali Miraj. I guess he didn’t like David Cameron being against rain.

You may have seen some of the news coverage about the latest infighting in the Tories following the attack on David Cameron by Ali Miraj, their 2005 general election candidate in Watford.

But if you went looking on the internet to find out more about him this morning, you’d find that his website, www.alimiraj.com is “temporarily closed”. Good thing then that at least one of his previous blog postings on the subject of how the Tories behave is still avaiable elsewhere, courtesy of Pickled Politics.

UPDATE: There a good piece about Ali Miraj over on Eaten by Missionaries, …