Theresa May publishes plans for police pay: Politics live blog You can read all today's Guardian politics stories here. And all the politics stories filed yesterday, including some in today's paper, are here. As for the rest of the papers, here's the PoliticsHome list of top 10 must reads, here's the ConservativeHome round up of today's political stories and here's the New Statesman list of top 10 comment articles. And here are some stories and articles I found particularly interesting. James O'Shaughnessy, David Cameron's former head of policy, explains in the Daily Telegraph how the Conservatives could win the general election. Calling for more house-building is rarely popular with Conservatives, but Britain's restrictive planning system has led to a disastrous shortage of family homes, with aspiring voters the hardest hit. A big bang approach is needed, with councils being obliged to set aside land to accommodate 3 per cent annual housing growth, homeowners allowed to add a storey without planning permission, and - most radically - allowing anyone who doesn't own a property to buy a piece of the 50 per cent of Britain's land that is unprotected, and build their own home on it. My second proposal would give families more flexibility over the family budget. It involves taking the £4 billion annual budget that supports child care for the under-fives and wrapping it up into a one-off cash payment of at least £4,000 for every child, with the authorities able to take control of this money if a family is too dysfunctional to use it properly. These funds are currently spent on the state's priorities, not parents," and this policy would give aspiring parents much greater control over how they care for their children. Bronwen Maddox says in the Times (paywall) that David Cameron would do better not giving his speech on Europe at all. It would be better for Mr Cameron not to give the speech at all. It is ridiculous that he has deprived himself of the option of silence. He has nothing to say, as the delay reflects. Yet the minute he opens his mouth, he loses. Anything will be a concession to his party that he does not need to make. He is doing all this in premature response to changes in Europe that he has also exaggerated in his own mind. All he had to do was nothing, to maintain the most advantageous terms that Britain was ever going to enjoy in its relationship with Europe. Instead, in fighting phantoms at home and abroad and in prematurely provoking real battles with other governments that he is in no position to win, he has jeopardised this country's single most valuable relationship - and put it beyond his own power to control the outcome ... All Mr Cameron had to do was what prime ministers have done for years: work out what he could get from Brussels, pronounce that the goal, go there and get it, and return home to declare victory. Instead, he wants to set out his notion of an ideal Europe with a new status for Britain; although he cannot secure this, he has still pronounced it his goal. Failure is guaranteed, although the form it takes - the scraps and tatters thrown back at him by Berlin and other capitals - are not in his control. He has compounded this by a promising to put this future relationship with Europe, unclear in every detail, to a referendum at home. He has no control whatsoever over the result; although he says that he would mount a firm "yes" campaign, others would do the opposite, and even though the clamour of the anti-Europe newspapers in Britain is enormously overstated, it is a force. It is an astonishing display of the repeated surrender of power that should disqualify him from being called a politician. Kim Sengupta in the Independent says military commanders are going to warn David Cameron against getting involved in military action in Mali. Defence chiefs have warned against Britain becoming enmeshed in the mission against Islamists in Mali, pointing out that any action could be drawn-out and require significantly greater resources than have so far been deployed. The most senior commanders are due to make their apprehension clear at a meeting of the National Security Council with the Prime Minister today. They have the backing of the Defence Secretary, Philip Hammond. Rachel Sylvester and Alice Thomson say in the Times (paywall), in the second day of their series on the relationship between ministers and mandarins, that senior civil servants are worried about Whitehall being politicised. "I do worry about politicisation," said Lord O'Donnell, who was Cabinet Secretary at the start of the coalition. There are concerns among the permanent secretaries because they joined a meritocracy and this is a different world. The austerity age has created its own pressures. Already, about one in four senior civil servants has left as Whitehall implements a 20 per cent reduction in staff. At the same time, like all public sector workers, officials have had their pay frozen and lost out in pension changes which mean that younger employees no longer qualify for valuable final salary schemes. The decision to restrict the use of external consultants has increased the workload for the Civil Service. "There's a real morale issue," said one senior figure. There has been a lot of upheaval. People have been distracted, applying for new jobs or watching restructuring. That's left people feeling bruised. What really hurts senior civil servants, though, is the feeling that ministers are out to get them. "You can put up with the rest if you feel valued, but if you don't the rest becomes a monstrous weight on your shoulders," said a Whitehall insider.