Carl Thomson is a commentator on Russian and East European affairs and was the Conservative Party candidate for Glasgow East at the 2005 General Election. He recently travelled to Georgia, Armenia and the breakaway republic of Nagorno Karabakh. The Russians may have won the war for South Ossetia, but the long-term victory belongs to the Georgians. Even though it was Mikhail Saakashvili who ignited the conflict by ordering the shelling of Tskhinvali, his government won ...

Tobias Ellwood, reporting from Tblisi, is the Member of Parliament for Bournemouth East. Who is to blame for firing the first shot in this conflict will never be resolved, partly because shots have been regularly exchanged since the 1990s when the West was too preoccupied with Kuwait and then Bosnia to notice regional uprisings in Georgia. Indeed we thanked Russia for offering to sort out its own backyard by sending in ‘peace keepers’ to both ...

Barack Obama was meant to be the best at using the internet but not everything is going to plan. The leaking of his choice of VP pick meant that the people who gave his campaign their txt and email contacts in order to be "the first to know" were not the first to know after all. After the Biden pick leaked the Obama campaign rushed out a txt msg in the early hours of yesterday ...

The main story in The Sunday Telegraph focuses on calls by "Leading Tories" to end Labour's "overtaxing, overborrowing and overspending". Lord Forsyth, John Redwood and CentreRight's Simon Chapman are all quoted. We have long argued that George Osborne was wrong to match Labour's overspending but public expenditure is only one ingredient of economic policy. What does the rest of Tory growth policy look like? Here's our good, okay and ugly guide to where we are...

ConservativeHome now carries out its shadow cabinet surveys just once every two months. The latest ratings are below with most recent on the right and reflect the votes of 1,587 members. For new readers the percentages equal the number of members who say they are satisfied with the individual minus those dissatisfied. Some movements of note: Eric Pickles has moved into second spot after shooting to near the top of the league after Crewe and ...

With the prospect of a formal UUP-Conservative alliance the already strong chances of Lord Trimble, who joined the Conservative Party in April after having taken the Conservative whip in the Lords, getting a senior role in a Conservative Shadow Cabinet/Cabinet have been strengthened further. As an internationally recognised politician and Nobel Peace Prize winner with a proven adeptness at diplomacy, foreign policy would be the obvious area for him. William Hague's disposition towards carrying the ...

I've just arrived in Washington DC and the talk of the town is this story in Spiegel. Iraq's PM appears to have endorsed Obama's plan for a sixteen month withdrawal plan from Iraq. If true then McCain's message that Obama is taking a risk with the security of Iraq becomes a much harder sell. Marc Ambinder agrees:"This could be one of those unexpected events that forever changes the way the world perceives an issue. Iraq's ...

This Steve Bell cartoon appeared in Tuesday's Guardian: It reveals a lot more about the prejudices of Mr Bell than it does of the Conservatives. There is no basis for suggesting that tough and necessary statements from David Cameron on knife crime had any racist content but Mr Bell just couldn't help implying that they did. Politicians need thick skins and get all sorts of stuff thrown at them but we think Mr Bell crossed ...

Lord Norton of Louth, a Professor of Government, former Chairman of the House of Lords Committee on the Constitution, and blogger, dismantles the Government's case for an elected House of Lords. The Government’s White Paper on Lords reform is a sorry affair. It fails completely to advance any principled argument for change. It bandies about terms such as democracy and legitimacy without defining them or seeking to justify them. It has no philosophic base, relying ...

Jack Straw has unveiled his White Paper for Lords reform. He proposes the abolition of hereditary peers but the retention of the Bishops. The new Upper House would consist of no more than 450 members - elected for terms of 12 to 15 years. Responding in the House of Commons, Shadow Justice Secretary Nick Herbert focused on unresolved issues: Method of election: "We believe that the electoral system should mirror this House – a first-past-the-post ...