Start booking those poster sites now!

If, as the Times and the Guardian would have us believe, Gordon Brown is giving serious consideration to an October general election, then all three parties have work to do to prepare for the imminent poll. The Times quotes Labour vice-chairman and Reading West MP Martin Salter as saying that the PM has put the Labour Party organization, and especially its fundraising apparatus, on standby for an October campaign ('Brown drums up funding for snap autumn poll'), whilst a Guardian piece suggests that Brown's visit to the US - and especially his successful initiative on Darfur - will do him no harm at all with would-be Labour voters ('Brown returns home amid election speculation'). An FT leader warns that tough foreign policy decisions lie ahead, but nonetheless predicts that the PM's "businesslike" approach will give him leverage in dealing with President Bush that his predecessor never enjoyed ('Memo to Bush: No more "Yo Blair"') Brown's careful distancing from Bush, and his statesmanlike performance at the UN, could prove to be the substance that solidifies the Brown bounce, especially when set against the backdrop of David Cameron's difficulties with the Tory party.

On the other hand, Peter Riddell in the Times invokes Brown's legendary caution and the large number of vulnerable Labour seats as good reasons to bet against an early poll ('It's a temptation, but one that is likely to be resisted'). A Times leader adds that an October poll which pre-empted the Tory party conference would most likely be seen as a "cheap, sly and essentially unfair scam" by many voters, and argues instead for an election on November 1 or 8 ('November surprise?').  And on foreign policy, John Bolton in the FT ('Britain can't have two best friends') and a Telegraph leader ('The PM is playing to the wrong gallery') suggest that, whilst electorally popular, the PM's emphasis on the EU and the UN will come back to haunt him in the long run.

"For years, the Tory party and the Tory press have been infiltrated by our own neoconservatives, more determined even than Blair to serve the national interest of another country. Under William Hague, Iain Duncan Smith and Michael Howard - egged on by Charles Moore, Matthew d'Ancona and Michael Gove - the Tories came close to being what the socialist leader Leon Blum called the French Communists, "a foreign nationalist party"."

Interesting analysis of Cameron's positioning on foreign policy.  Wheatcroft praises Cameron for shifting the Tory's position - but can he carry his party with him?

Geoffrey Wheatcroft - The Guardian