The Iron Lady launched an era of selfishness, greed and fraud which her successors have fostered with care

The Conservatives have a 15-point poll lead, but we still have little idea what they would do in government

William Hague has seen his popularity among Conservative Party activists take a plunge after suggestions that he was unwilling to give up his lucrative outside interests despite pleas from his leader for greater commitment among the Shadow Cabinet.

Pressure grows on Speaker as new proposal undermines promise to MPs

The new Mayor of London was meant to be David Cameron's man in City Hall. But the axing of Tim Parker shows that he is determined to be his own person – whatever Central Office thinks

Policy Exchange – widely regarded as David Cameron's favourite think-tank – was founded in 2001 to keep the modernising flame burning in Conservative ranks after the right-winger Iain Duncan Smith was elected leader.

Boris Johnson faced embarrassment when a key aide resigned after calling for black critics of the Mayor of London to return to the Caribbean

Jack Straw, the Justice Secretary, was accused of an "atrocious abuse of power" after he announced tough curbs on election spending, which could be designed to stop millions of pounds being poured into Tory target seats.

Ministers were accused of hypocrisy and extravagance after the Conservatives calculated that Whitehall departments and major public bodies clocked up more than 300 million "air miles" last year.

With the political world now shut down at least until the party leaders' new year messages are issued political journalists are reduced, this morning, to wondering what our political masters got in their stockings.

His personal troubles have endeared him to nobody, but Mel Gibson doesn't seem to have let them affect his film-making. Few other period movies would dare to deploy unknown actors and dialogue exclusively couched in Mayan, and fewer still would get away with it. Apocalypto begins in a deceptively innocent key, conjuring a prelapsarian world of noble hunters who make jokes about impotence and the mother-in-law (yes, they had them even then).

So farewell then, Sven, you have coloured our lives in a way those of us who so enthusiastically supported your appointment five years ago never expected, and had no reason to fear; we thought you were a cool Swedish man of the world who would carry the England team away from erratic, patternless leadership, not to mention faith healing and quasi-religious claptrap.

Viciously vegetarian, aloofly sensual, the troublesome singer is both national treasure and scourge

From rustic cottages and historic townhouses to modernist whitewashed retreats, Alastair Sawday takes his pick of the most stylish places to stay