Rarely has a story has commanded so many days on the front-pages whilst developing so little.

Expectations of an autumn General Election have been ramped so high that it seems amazing that The Telegraph can still run the headline 'Gordon Brown fuels snap election fever'.  Can expectations be raised any higher?

The FT suggests that the decision is weighing heavy on Mr Brown ("Brown agonises over election date") But I'm not so sure.

Not only has Labour whitewashed this week's coverage with the same story - its likely that the same story will be as much in play next week too.

Polls show that people like voting for people who they think are going to win the election - so be beating a Labour victory into the collective consciousness, the PM can only gain from such continued speculation.

As the days go by, the poll leads extend (11 points now according to YouGov for Channel 4), the expectations of a General Election build and build.

Indeed, Simon Heffer in The Telegraph, believes that after all rumours of a snap election, Gordon would look silly if he didn't now go sometime in 2007 ("Nation waits to see if Brown will move in for the kill")

Jonathan Freedland in The Guardian provides the most vivid portrayal of what is going on in the inner-circle as they weigh up the options on which Gordon  will cogitate("It can't be right that this decision will be made inside the head of one man")

One official has closely studied the tables charting the sunrise and sunset times for the coming weeks, calculating whether the afternoons will soon be too dark for an election campaign. It's not just that turnout will fall on polling day itself, as voters once home choose not to go back out again, but that canvassing could be thwarted.

The question is becoming less and less about why, and more and more about why not.

With Cameron looking so weak, even though he is generally broadly making sensible moves, the prospect of putting the Conservatives out of action for another decade is no doubt in the forefront of those urging an early election.

PS - In a convoluted line towards the end of the article, Heffer looks ahead to a post-election era where it's Clegg's Lib Dems, not Cameron's Tories, challenging Labour in the next Parliament. Heffer's anticipation of such a situation is just another signal about how serious the Tory in-fighting would be following a Cameron defeat.

Today's comment pages are dominated by the Gordon Brown's speech to the Labour party conference.

A common theme is Brown's attempt to appeal to the Tory vote. "Here was a political pitch with which Daily Telegraph readers could feel comfortable", comes the verdict straight from the horse's mouth ("Gordon Brown signals new chapter of illusions, Telegraph). As it points out, the appeals to the Union, hard work, Britishness and responsibility have an undercurrent of moralistic social conservatism that may be Brown's own but still chimes with Middle England. But nevertheless, the same editorial gives voice to the increasingly common complaint from the right:

"His solutions had one thing in common. They are all built on Labour's fixation with top down, government-knows-best policies."

Others were less convinced that there is a matter of such philosophical difference between Labour and the Tories. In fact, the FT ("Plenty of 'what' but not enough 'how'") points out that while Gordon Brown knows what he wants to achieve, and which problems he wants to tackle, the policy detail on how to achieve these goals was actually rather scant:

"In the final years of his premiership, Tony Blair's speeches were peppered with the "how" - the introduction of choice and competition and the use of the private sector to improve a range of public services...Gordon Brown's speech was chiefly about the what: new targets for this, new goals for that, with little mention...about how the changes will be achieved."

Core themes of the speech included 'aspiration' and 'Britishness'. While the FT's leader article ("Brown's aspirations") is sceptical about how new Brown's vision is compared with what Brown called "the old equality of opportunity", there seems no denying that there is a conceptual difference between a meritocracy that does not correct for disadvantage and one that does. Britishness, meanwhile, is more nebulous, but clearly an idea which Gordon Brown thinks is a winner - seeking to marry the patriotism of the right with selected progressive values (and some less progressive ones) from the left. Most of all, though, it is a way to animate his own political character, as the Guardian points out ("Brown's British vision"):

"The prime minister linked his own character and life story to that of his country, presenting himself - the clever, hard-working boy from Kirkcaldy - as an embodiment of British determination."

What is undeniable is the Brown is seeking to appeal to everyone. As yet another FT column ("Brown's concern is to look before he leaps") notes, "David Cameron was not even mentioned". Gone were the partisan attacks that, paradoxically, Blair was so fond of. While Brown isn't winning any awards with the sketchwriters for his speaking style, he is achieving an extraordinary feat in seamlessly continuing the New Labour agenda whilst improving Labour's standing in the polls and appearing fresh to voters. The Independent's Steve Richards ("With the utmost skill, Brown has distanced himself from Blair and reinvigorated Labour") even contends:

"He has rebuilt a similar political force to the one that strode towards power in 1997."

A year ago, who would have thought that it would be Brown and not Cameron about whom these words would be written?

The Liberal Democrats' Conference is coming up, which means that for a few days their existence is rather more extensively than usual.  The Spectator's piece speculating about the Lib Dems' potential position after the next general election ('Sir Menzies Campbell will either be sacked or will end up in the Cabinet'), furthermore, not only talks about the Lib Dems but also mentions us:

But analysis published last week by CentreForum, a liberal think tank, says this would be impractical if Gordon Brown was perceived to have taken a beating at the election — regardless of the technicalities. It is possible, for example, for Labour to be the largest party even if the Conservatives win a million more votes. Should the Lib Dems be seen to help Mr Brown cheat political death by giving him a majority, it is likely that both parties would be hated for it and any coalition would be a suicide pact.

It's always nice to be name-checked - and to have one of our latest publications recommended.

When the British press discusses the 2008 american elections, it tends to talk about the presidential election.  But it is the Senate races which may prove the most interesting come January 2009.

The Democrats currently hold a razor thin 51-49 seat majority in the Senate, which in a chamber which allows a 40 of senators to stop a bill being voted on, is not much use.

Three republicans are retiring - Wayne Allard in Colorado, John Warner in Virginia, and the maverick Chuck Hagel in Nebraska.  In all three, the Democrats are favourites to take the seat - with Congressman Mark Udall in Colorado, popular former governor Mark Warner (no relation to John) in Virginia, and former Senator Bob Kerrey in Nebraska.

Further, Republicans are having to defend nearly twice the number of Senate seats in the 08 cycle - a third of the Senate goes up for re-election every two years, and this cycle happens to favour democrats.  The only vulnerable-looking Democrat is Mary Landrieu in Louisiana. In addition to the three open seats, Republicans have vulnerable incumbents in New Hampshire, Oregon, Maine, Minnesota and even Republican strongholds such as Texas, where John Cornyn has the lowest approval ratings of any Senator in the country.

Lastly, the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee is significantly outraising its Republican counterpart under the astute stewardship of Chuck Schumer of New York. Even the fact that the Republican National Committee is outraising the DNC will provide little consolation to vulnerable Senate democrats, since that money will primarily go to plug the funding shortfall the Republican presidential candidates are currently suffering against their democratic opponents. 

The only conclusion to draw is that 2008 looks like being a productive cycle for Senate Democrats.

A new survey reveals that the pay gap between men and women increased for the first time in a decade this year ("Pay gap is growing between men and women", The Telegraph). Such inequality is depressing, and reveals how deep-rooted discrimination is in the workplace, with simple anti-discrimination legislation failing to tackle tacit patriarchal attitudes. The problem is two-fold: not only are women being paid less for the same job, but they are aspiring to lesser jobs, often due to the responsibilities of family life. With affirmative action (rightly or wrongly) off the political agenda, it seems that the only way to tackle this is to extend policies encouraging women into work and designed to tackle the assumption that women ought to, in whole or in part, stay at home. This, in turn, requires questioning the model of the family that the Tories have been so keen to propagate in recent weeks.

Not that you would know it from Jan Moir's opinion piece in the Telegraph ("Career mums: stop talking about yourselves!"). Moir seems to be arguing that for a woman to express frustration with juggling home and work life is self-indulgent. What her piece misses, of course, is that when society expects 'home life' to fall disproportionately on women, it is not a simple grievance or complaint but an issue of equity: it is harder for women to work than men. Equally, if family life is a privilege, not a burden, as Moir argues, why shouldn't men share in that privilege and restrict their careers to a similar degree in order to do so? In fact, despite her praise for working women who "put up and shut up", Moir's argument is ultimately little more than a rationalisation of gender inequality. Just because previous generations of women have "put up" with this situation does not mean that it isn't unfair.