Newspaper review: 'Good spell' for Tories

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-23394336

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Many of the papers agree it has been a good few weeks for the Conservative Party.

In the Mail on Sunday, James Forsyth writes that "David Cameron is in the best mood he's been in for years". Forsyth says there is a "confidence, verging on cockiness, coursing through the senior ranks of the party".

One un-named minister tells him: "The economy's recovering, and Labour's done".

In the Sunday Telegraph, Matthew D'Ancona says the opposition look "introspective and disunited", while "the Tories dare to dream of victory".

'Lizard of Oz'

Not so fast, says Andrew Rawnsley in the Observer. Although Conservative MPs seem "more united and optimistic than for some time", the party's "structural weakness has not changed".

To win the election, Rawnsley says, the Conservatives will need at least 40% of the vote, compared to 35% for Labour.

They are weak in the north of England, and unpopular with ethnic minorities, he adds.

In the same paper, Will Hutton thinks the Tories are living in "Fantasy UK". The economy may be growing, he says, but it remains "profoundly dysfunctional".

In the Sunday Times, Adam Boulton writes that Lynton Crosby - a Conservative adviser - "seems to be getting most of the credit for the Tory revival".

"His allies swear by him," writes Boulton, "and his opponents swear about him".

But in the Sunday Mirror, the former deputy Prime Minister John Prescott thinks Crosby is too close to private business. In the Observer, the Australian is profiled under the headline "Lizard of Oz".

The holidays are here, and Rod Liddle in the Sunday Times thinks they reveal British people "in all our aspirational awfulness".

"You get the Guardian-reading couple in the Dordogne with their vile children Oscar and Joscata," he writes. "Lord Mandelson on someone else's yacht. And Margaret Beckett in her caravan, in the rain, eating ham and lettuce sandwiches with salad cream by a canal".

In the Independent on Sunday, DJ Taylor thinks "middle-class British people don't actually enjoy their holidays".

Look at pictures of the Prime Minister, he says. "Though clearly doing his best, on holiday he looks horribly uncomfortable, his smile forced, his clothing inappropriate. He knows there is something wrong".

Honest bookseller

The warm weather is making Toby Young nostalgic for the summer of 1976.

In the Mail on Sunday, he says it was "a summer holiday of hot days and sleepless nights, of Bjorn Borg and Ille Nastase, and of Denis Howell - Britain's first and only minister for drought".

Finally, The Sunday Times reports on a London bookshop owner who has "turned down the chance to make a small fortune".

In April, David Headley bought 250 signed copies of The Cuckoo's Calling by Robert Galbraith. Galbraith has since been revealed as the pseudonym of Harry Potter author JK Rowling.

But, rather than cash in, Mr Headley has sold "all but a handful" of his remaining copies at their face value - £16.99.