It was a gaffe-prone Budget, and his reputation has taken a hit. But the true significance is that it underscored the Chancellor's leadership ambitions

David Cameron will deliver a powerful reminder when he arrives in Washington today that the days are long gone when the Conservative and Republican parties were viewed as transatlantic cousins.

He looks very familiar.

If the United Kingdom pulled out of the European Convention on Human Rights – as some right-wing Tories are demanding – it would be the first country to do so since a junta of neo-fascist colonels seized power in Greece in the 1960s, the Justice Secretary Ken Clarke warned yesterday.

The power of judges to review ministerial decisions should be diminished, former Tory leader Lord Michael Howard said today.

Minimum sentences for murder are set to be abolished and thousands of people will escape prison altogether as part of the largest shake-up of the criminal justice system in decades.

Rant

David Cameron's judgment was called into question last night after a new Conservative peer was forced to apologise over remarks that benefit cuts would encourage "breeding" among the poor.

Although a hereditary peer, Richard Acton was one of the prime movers of Lords reform that in 1999 led to the end of the inherited right to vote in the Upper House.

MPs standing five deep at the bar of the House, the galleries packed, an intent audience looked down at the Dispatch Box adversaries. We had all sensed the possibility of carnage, I'm sorry to have to report. What sadism lurks in our respectable hearts.

Lord Heseltine is not on the list. John Major is out of the country, and Nick Clegg has "another engagement". But Lord Howe, whose resignation speech ended Margaret Thatcher's reign in Downing Street, will today be a guest of honour at the former prime minister's 85th birthday party in Downing Street.