"I've decided in my own mind," this morning.
He was talking about whether to take part in television debates.
So it is now clear. He's going to do it. We just have to wait to see when he'll get round to telling us - and in exactly what format these will take place and when they'll begin, assuming all the other hurdles can be cleared.
screams the front page of the Sun the morning after Gordon Brown's conference speech.
The paper has timed its big political switch - away from backing Labour to backing the Tories - for maximum impact both in terms of gaining attention for the paper and of taking the gloss off Mr Brown's big day.
Years ago, Britain's biggest selling daily boasted that "It was the Sun wot won it". In truth, it never was. The paper - which is first and foremost a commercial product - tends to follow its readers' views rather than set them.
However, if they choose to ridicule or denigrate a particular politician they can do real damage. If they choose to campaign consistently on a popular cause they can drive it up the agenda. Ask Neil Kinnock, whose head was shown in a lightbulb on the eve of polling day in 1992 with the headline "If Kinnock wins today, will the last person to leave Britain please turn out the lights". Or ask the current Defence Secretary, Bob Ainsworth, who is forced to read headline after headline declaring him not up to the job and suggesting that his policies have led to unnecessary deaths in Afghanistan.
Rupert Murdoch always had a bond of respect with Gordon Brown - admiring his values and his work ethic. Not so his son James, who now runs News International and is close to the shadow chancellor George Osborne.
The Sun's decision to desert Labour in this way and at this time will cause dismay in Labour ranks. What they must hope, though, is that the paper does not choose now to treat Gordon Brown as it once did Mr Kinnock and now treats Mr Ainsworth. It is that, rather than a single day's endorsement of the Tories, which would do real damage.
Gordon Brown is famous for rewriting his speeches right up to the last minute.
Drafts of his conference speech yesterday contained a promise to do what no British prime minister has done before: to call for a series of TV debates with his opponents not just during the election campaign but starting now. Once again, however, Gordon Brown has shied away at the final hurdle. An offer to debate will not now be in his conference speech because, I'm told, "he wants to focus on policy not tactics".
The prime minister will tell the electorate today that they have a "big choice" to make between parties - and, by implication, not simply a referendum on the performance of him and his government. He will challenge the Tories to come clean on their policies, telling voters "you have a right to know". A call for debates now was the logical next step in his argument.
Team Cameron tells me that in principle they would be happy to take part in a debate before the election as well as during the campaign, although the details would have to be negotiated.
The old cliche - "the devil's in the detail" - is particularly true in the case of TV debates. Cameron has called for a three-way debate involving Nick Clegg as well. However, Labour sources suggest that Brown wants to go "head to head" with the Tory leader alone. Labour's team knows that broadcasters have a legal requirement to be fair and balanced, so is working on proposals for a series of Brown v Cameron debates as well as Brown v Clegg and Cameron v Clegg.
This is precisely the sort of detail which could scupper debates taking place at all. It's often said that no prime minister has ever offered to take part in debates. However, John Major did agree to take part in the last dying days of his government. The parties and the broadcasters could not agree on a format acceptable to all sides in the short time available.
This time round, proper negotiations can only begin when the prime minister gives the word. So, over to you Gordon?
This morning, Peter Mandelson claimed that there was .
It is all part of the strategy for this Labour conference to convince the electorate that it has a choice between parties - not just a choice of whether or not to kick out Gordon Brown.
It should have occurred to me when he said it, that this is the same Peter Mandelson who once declare himself to be .
The party's pitch is that it - a party of the centre left - can be trusted to tackle bankers' bonuses and to cut spending in a way that a free-market Tory party simply cannot.
This may be a tougher sell, Labour strategists concede, than Peter Mandelson would wish it to be.
"No ordinary week at no ordinary time".
That was the advance billing Gordon Brown gave to this, his week in America. A week in which decisions loomed on how to combat climate change, to limit the spread of nuclear weapons, to win the fight with al-Qaeda and to revive the economies of the world.
Looming too was the most predictably unpredictable figure on the world stage - Libya's Colonel Gaddafi. Team Brown feared that, after their maladroit reaction to the release of the Lockerbie bomber, the Gordon and Gaddafi show could ruin all they'd so carefully planned. In fact Gaddafi's theatrical tearing up of the UN charter gave the prime minister an irresistible opportunity to slap down Libya and stand up for the United Nations at one and the same time.
What Team Brown did not anticipate is that it would be the prime minister's relationship with the man he sees as a friend, ally and political soulmate - Barack Obama - which would threaten to overshadow the substance of the week's diplomacy.
Odd this since, if you listen to both men's speeches to the UN, it's clear they are in political lock step. Gordon Brown has long dreamed of an American president who would give a speech like the one Obama gave to the United Nations.
What's more, by week's end, prime minister and president were standing shoulder to shoulder not in preparation for war - as their predecessors had - but in an effort to avoid one by turning the diplomatic screw on Iran. Obama's support for what Gordon Brown calls "a growth strategy" - and what others call a policy of 'borrow and spend' - is a political boost on the eve of his party conference.
So, what went wrong? Ask Gordon Brown and his answer would be clear if probably unbroadcastable on a family programme. He is furious with what he regards as the media's childish games and disinterest in issues and results.
But it's not as simple as that. Downing Street were "desperate" - to quote the former Foreign Office Minister Mark Malloch Brown - for a Gordon and Obama moment . The White House had other more important things on their minds and in the president's diary. Both failed to foresee the headlines that would follow when all this leaked out .
The prime minister is now struggling to break away from two powerful media narratives. One lazily states that he's politically doomed and seizes on any evidence to confirm it. The other - advocated by his enemies on the right - insists that Britain is now in decline diplomatically, militarily and economically.
A snub from the US president fitted both narratives nicely. The news of a snatched conversation in a UN kitchen added unforgettable colour.
The irony is that once the"snub story" emerged, Gordon Brown was rewarded with the bilateral he'd craved and pictures to die for as the president repeatedly clapped him on the back and tightly held the hand of his wife Sarah. Thus, the special relationship was, once again, put back on track.
The same certainly cannot be said of the relationship between Gordon Brown and the media.
This was, indeed, no ordinary week.
Pittsburgh: Snub? What snub?
So Gordon Brown had the ultimate answer to those who said he'd been snubbed by Obama.
This morning, he stood shoulder-to-shoulder with the American president - not to make war, as his predecessor did, but to try to prevent one in the Middle East.
I sense that this moment may come to matter just as much as the time that Tony Blair and George Bush warned that Iraq was developing weapons of mass destruction, even though the approaches of the two pairings are totally different.
This time, the American president has declared his belief in the United Nations; in working with other nations and not alone; and in negotiation not military action.
However, if tougher sanctions do not flow - or if they do and Iran remains unmoved - war could still follow - waged not by the US and the UK, but by Israel which will insist it has no choice.
A new approach to peace and to war is now under test. The outcome cannot be predicted.
It's important to separate facts from interpretation in the story of Gordon's nightmare kitchen. [credit: ]
No-one disputes that Downing Street was "frantic" - to quote one source - when repeated requests for a proper bilateral meeting with the president were turned down. Nor does it dispute the fact that their only one-to-one meeting so far has been a "walk and talk" in the UN kitchen.
What though does all this tell us?
It reveals how keen Labour strategists were to play the Obama and Gordon card before their conference. When I interviewed Peter Mandelson in the summer he constantly linked the two men for having taken the right decisions during the economic crisis.
If they hadn't been so desperate, this would never have been a story at all. After all, no other EU country's leader got a meeting with Obama. What's more, those leaders he did meet he had good reason to want to woo now - the new Japanese PM and the presidents of China and Russia whose support is needed for tougher sanctions against Iran.
Even without a meeting, Brown could fairly claim that his and Obama's international and economic agendas are closely aligned - witness their complementary speeches to the UN yesterday.
What though of the White House's refusal to grant a meeting?
We simply don't know if it was down to carelessness - as with the cack-handed reception given to Team Brown at the White House; or political calculation - "why invest time in a foreign leader who could be out of office soon?" or simple pragmatism - "we have a lot to do and we're too busy to fix meetings to help anyone else".
What we do know is that a prime minister in real political trouble faces a press willing to put the worst gloss on most stories and lacks a good enough friend in the White House to lend him some of his charisma.
We also know that by day's end Obama will have found a way to show how much he values Brown. It will, of course, be too late.
A diplomatic source has told the 91Èȱ¬ that Downing Street was "frantic" over the weekend after repeated requests for a meeting between the prime minister and President Obama were turned down.
Earlier, the prime minister's official spokesman has described reports that the president had snubbed Gordon Brown's request for a meeting as "overplayed".
"A number of interactions have taken place in New York and the two men will be meeting again in Pittsburgh," he said.
In fact, the two leaders met for what is described in diplomatic circles as a "walk and talk" meeting in the kitchens of the UN last night, after the Leaders' Dinner. The meeting lasted only 15 minutes.
Traditionally, in recent years the British prime minister and US president have held a bilateral meeting at major summits followed by a news conference.
President Obama and Prime Minister Brown will be together at a meeting with Pakistan's president Zardari on Thursday and throughout the G20 summit in Pittsburgh.
However, the president has held bilateral meetings with the leaders of Japan, China and Russia and Mr Brown wanted a similar event.
This story has echoes of the prime minister's first visit to the Obama White House, when the Americans refused to hold the traditional full news conference and the president gave the Brown family a boxed set of DVDs - a gift which was widely criticised for being impersonal and cheap.
It is thought likely that in response to these headlines, the White House will now move publicly to reassure the British about the continuing strength of the special relationship.
I wrote my last post before seeing Gaddafi toss aside a copy of the UN Charter. It was an act - at the end of a 1 hour 36 minute address which provided Gordon Brown with an ideal opportunity to come to the defence of the UN.
The prime minister re-wrote the opening of his speech, which was delayed by over two hours thanks to the Colonel's ramblings, to add the ringing declaration: "I stand here to reaffirm the United Nations Charter, not to tear it up. I call on every nation here to support its universal principles."
Round One to Brown then but Round Two comes tomorrow when both men attend a meeting of the Security Council - or the Terrorism Council as Libya's leader prefers to refer to it.
What will the colonel have in store for us then?
Perhaps Gordon Brown didn't have to worry.
Colonel Gaddafi's speech was certainly provocative. It was predictably colourful. It was unsurprisingly rambling.
However, it was, in essence, a passionate plea for the rights of smaller nations and an attack on the dominance of the UN by the big nuclear states.
Gaddafi dubbed the UN Security Council "the terror council" whereas the General Assembly was, he claimed, the parliament of the world whose views were simply ignored and over-ridden. The 190 nations were, he said, like those who headed to Hyde Park Corner to deliver a speech and then disappeared having been ignored.
Gaddafi's worst diplomatic crime (so far - he's been going 50 minutes already) has been to praise President Obama as a "son of Africa" and a "great thing" which will delight Obama's enemies at a time when they will have been provoked by his promise to work with the United Nations, to cut the US nuclear arsenal, to pressurise Israel and to combat climate change.
UN HQ, New York: Colonel Gaddafi paused, smiled and waved as he took a step into the United Nations and into the embrace of what is rather misleadingly called "the international community".
"What is your message to Britain?" I shouted at the man I last saw in Tripoli in 2004 . His reply was wordless. He raised his hand in a Churchillian victory salute.
It is a gesture unlikely to reassure Western diplomats who fear the capacity of the colonel to upstage and embarrass the other world leaders here. US TV networks are gripped by the sight of the tent which follows Gaddafi everywhere and on land owned by the billionaire Donald Trump.
The prime minister, in particular, fears that his efforts to get agreements on the economy, climate change, non-proliferation and world trade will be overshadowed by the moment he is forced to share a room and, perhaps, a handshake with the man who celebrated the return home of the Lockerbie bomber.
Now, he and many others in New York are waiting to see what Gaddafi will say and whether it will be as provocative as that welcome home and that victory salute.
So, Gordon Brown is to put Britain's nuclear programme on the table at this week's talks in New York about how to stop the spread of nuclear weapons.
Later today he will tell the United Nations that "if we are serious about the ambition of a nuclear-free world we will need statesmanship, not brinkmanship" .
On Thursday, when President Obama chairs a meeting of the UN Security Council, Gordon Brown will tell that meeting that he is considering cutting the number of submarines which carry Britain's Trident nuclear missiles.
All this, we are told, is part of the drive to renew the Non-Proliferation Treaty which, in theory if not always in practice, prevents those countries which don't have nuclear weapons from developing them.
It is also, of course, part of a drive to cut costs and to be seen to cut costs. Questions are already being asked about the affordability of renewing Trident and ministers had made it clear that they were exploring whether three new submarines could do the job currently performed by four.
This would not, as you might expect, cut the cost by a quarter but could produce a significant saving.
Some close to the prime minister say that he has considered going even further - offering to review or delay plans to renew Trident if the big nuclear powers agree major cuts in their arsenals.
In a speech on 17 March, he hinted at just such a policy when he said: "As soon as it becomes useful for our arsenal to be included in a broader negotiation, Britain stands ready to participate and to act."
Anything which could be presented as an offer to give up Britain's programme entirely would be political dynamite.
On the one hand it would cheer many voters who regard nuclear weapons as either immoral or unnecessary and unaffordable in the modern age.
On the other, it would risk re-opening the painful wounds which were opened in the 1980s by Labour's embrace of unilateralism.
It is clear that the prime minister is not now ready to take such a step. The official line coming from Downing Street is that the existence of Britain's independent programme remains "non-negotiable".
Update, 11:00, 23 September 2009: I mistakenly wrote that Gordon Brown wanted to "replace" the NPT when I should have written to "renew" it. Put it down to jetlag!
The Treaty is undergoing a five-year review. The PM wants to strengthen verification and inspection rules, introduce serious penalties for those withdrawing from the NPT, and make nuclear security an essential part of what he calls a "global bargain" between nuclear and non-nuclear states.
VIP suite, Heathrow airport: No prime ministerial trip abroad would be complete without trouble brewing at home. Gordon Brown has the minor matters of the threat to the global economy, the planet, and peace and security to address in New York and Pittsburgh in the next few days.
However this morning, his thoughts have had to be on the baroness and the illegal immigrant. The prime minister has decided not to sack his attorney general on the grounds that she did not "knowingly" employ an illegal immigrant. His aides have dubbed this a technical breach of the law. In truth, it is a breach plain and simple, since not knowing a worker is illegal is no defence under the law which Baroness Scotland helped to pilot through Parliament.
the UK Border Agency and the cabinet secretary in his explanation on why he has backed, and not sacked, his attorney general.
Of course this was, in reality, like all such decisions, a political judgement, about the value of the individual concerned, the seriousness of the offence and the political cost of losing her against keeping her.
A promotional word from my colleague Laura Kuenssberg, who so ably stood in for me over the summer:
"I'm going to be covering this year's party conferences in a number of ways - obviously on the 91Èȱ¬ News channel throughout the next few weeks, but also for the first time on Twitter too. If you'd like to follow my updates, you can do so via this page: . You don't need a Twitter account to read my updates on that page, but if you want one (they're free), you can get one there by clicking the "Join today" box.
Ìý
I'd be interested to know what you think of this, so either send me a message via Twitter - I'm @91Èȱ¬LauraK - or you can add a comment at the bottom of this entry.
Bournemouth: Think about it for just a minute. Can you imagine a "savage" Liberal Democrat? Nice, yes. Decent, certainly. Well-meaning, some would add a tad patronisingly. But savage?!
Yet to describe the cuts in public spending that he says are necessary. He did so, not by chance but with intent - to get your attention, to surprise, to challenge preconceptions.
Thus, Tony Blair added the "New" to Labour and David Cameron talks of "modern, compassionate" Conservatives. Words matter hugely in politics and these days political leaders don't use them without one eye on their focus groups.
So, why add "savage" to Lib Dem? Precisely because that's the word voters are least likely to associate with the party or its leader. Nick Clegg wants to show that he's strong, that he can "tell it like it is" as well as being nice, decent and, well, well-meaning.
The problem he faces is that, unlike Labour members who wanted to be new and modern, or Tories who have always insisted that they are compassionate, Lib Dems do not think of themselves as savage.
That's why this morning Nick Clegg backed away from his headline-grabber, that "people can use softer, more emollient language if they like".
He was, I suspect, not the only Lib Dem to wince when looking at this morning's cartoon in the Times entitled Savage Cuts. Clegg is portrayed, bloodied-axe in one hand and his own severed head in the other, declaring "I told you I'd get on the news".
Now the C word - cuts - has passed the prime minister's lips, the process of identifying what will actually be cut has begun in earnest. This week the chancellor, Alastair Darling, began meetings with senior cabinet colleagues to ask them to establish their spending priorities and to identify possible savings in their departments. Sources say that the Treasury has not yet set ministers a percentage target for cuts although this might follow.
Consideration is being given to the idea that the cabinet as a whole should agree where the spending axe should fall so that, as a previous chancellor once graphically put it, all get to dip their hands in the blood.
Some ministers believe that the ID cards programme should be scrapped as a symbol of the government's willingness to take painful decisions. However, 91Èȱ¬ Office sources insist that this has not been raised with them although they are looking at ways to deliver the scheme more cheaply.
The Ministry of Defence is confident that its plans to renew Trident are not under threat but it is under pressure to replace the current fleet of four Trident submarines with a more reliable fleet of three new subs.
This political process of identifying areas for cuts follows an exercise carried out by Treasury officials over the summer. What is called the public value programme examined the scope for savings in areas covering around a half of total government expenditure. The PVP has generated ideas for improvements to police working practices, better use of hospital space and a scheme to reduce the overlap of different government spending programmes in areas of deprivation which, it's hoped, could save billions of pounds.
Some of the savings identified are to be revealed in the chancellor's pre-Budget report due this Autumn which is now likely to give much more detail about future spending plans than previously planned. Alastair Darling is said to believe that it is only when Labour has set out its spending priorities that the Conservatives will come under real pressure to spell out theirs.
Eurostar to Brussels: En route to tonight's EU leaders' dinner, my mind turns to what it would be like if David Cameron were prime minister. I am not the only one thinking about this.
Across Europe, they will have noticed that yesterday the Tory leader dodged a question on what he would do if the Irish vote Yes in their referendum on the Lisbon Treaty - putting what was once called the EU constitution back on track.
David Cameron is committed to holding a referendum on the treaty and campaigning for a No vote. His problem will come if the Treaty is law and European leaders and Eurosceptics alike demand to know what he means by saying he will "not let the matter rest".
Cameron said he did not want to comment before ratification was complete in all countries. Some Tories are hoping that their old ally Vaclav Klaus, the Czech president, may drag out his country's ratification process until after the election so that Cameron - if he's PM by then - can still hold his referendum.
What, though, if he can't? Would the Tory leader prefer to see his first few months in office occupied by a battle with the EU or with Eurosceptics in his own party?
Phew. That wasn't so painful, was it?
The - and done so referring not just to cutting costs and inefficiencies but also to "unnecessary budgets" and "lower priority budgets".
Translated that means public spending cuts across a host of government departments.
This, however, was more tactical repositioning than a historic moment when the prime minister told the country an unpalatable truth.
This was not, in other words, comparable with Jim Callaghan's declaration in the 70s that the party was over.
The "C" word concession was not the big message in his speech to the TUC. It was, instead, the U-turn needed to allow that message to be heard.
He and his government had faced, he said, a series of "big choices" since the financial crisis began.
At each stage - whether trusting the banks to sort themselves out or markets to resolve their own problems or allow the recession to run its course - the government had, he claimed made the right choice to intervene.
Now the country faced another big choice, he claimed, between Tory across the board cuts and his cuts that will not affect front line public services.
With this speech a new phase in the debate opens. The government will be under pressure to show how it can deliver what it promises.
The Tories will face more intense questioning about how they would cut faster and deeper without causing more pain.
So far, only the Lib Dems have come up with proposals that will save real money and cause real pain. The other parties cannot avoid that for much longer.
So Gordon Brown will finally allow the "C" word - cuts - to pass his lips.
Ministers and aides have told him that if his economic argument is to be heard, the electorate must believe in his ability on public spending, and that means clearing the decks on the "C" word.
The chancellor prepared the ground this morning by of his frustration at what he calls the "game" being played by journalists over use of the "C" word and points to Mr Brown's track record of cutting departmental spending in the past. For example, in .
Peter Mandelson was clearly frustrated by being asked repeatedly to utter the "C" word on the Today programme yesterday. This convinced him and Alistair Darling that they needed to "end the semantic game" as quickly as possible.
The reason that I for one have asked again and again about cuts is because I don't believe that there should be a gap between the government's rhetoric and its own economic forecasts. The forecasts do show that cuts are coming in investment spending - and that, once debt interest and unemployment are accounted for, cuts are coming in day-to-day spending too.
Brown's advisers have told him that if he is seen to be upfront with voters, they are much more likely to listen to his case - that case being that Tory cuts would wreck recovery and would damage public services.
The next act in this drama will be the chancellor's pre-Budget report. It is increasingly clear that Alistair Darling plans to announce a spending package designed to force the Tories to spell out what more they would do, or to expose that they are refusing to do so and have hidden plans.
Peter Mandelson has been re-writing the government's line on public spending cuts but no-one can re-write political history.
that if you listened hard you might just hear the sound of shredders in Whitehall as Gordon Brown's "lines to take" on spending were disposed of - in particular, the prime minister's insistence that the choice facing the electorate was "Tory cuts" versus "Labour investment". Lord Mandelson suggested that the words had never actually been used. Not so.
On 17 June 2009 ()
Prime Minister: "The first thing we are absolutely sure of is that, regardless of economic circumstances, employment, investment and inflation, the Conservatives will cut expenditure by 10%. The right hon. gentleman said it himself last week - Tory cuts versus Labour investment."
And again a few moments later:
Prime Minister: "The issue is that the Conservatives will cut current expenditure in real and cash terms. It is exactly what I said - Tory cuts, Labour investment."
This was at the time that after the Tory Health Spokesman, - also on the Today programme as it happens - that cuts of 10% in other departments would be needed to preserve increased spending on the NHS.
Update, 11:45: When the prime minister spoke of Tory cuts and Labour investment he was, Team Brown now claim, merely quoting David Cameron's own words back at him from the previous week's Prime Minister's Questions on 10 June ().
Cameron: "The next election - when he has the guts to call it - will not be about Labour investment versus Tory cuts, but about the mismanagement - [Interruption.] It will be about the mismanagement of the public finances, the appalling deficit that he has left and his plan for cuts."
Mmmm. Gordon Brown used the phrase repeatedly on 17 June ():
"His is the party of cuts; we are the party of investment" doesn't sound to me like a quote from the Tory leader.
Or, how about this one which doesn't use the key phrase but embodies the sentiment and talks about investment in the future and not just during the recession ():
"We are investing to get ourselves out of the recession; the Opposition would cut, and they would make the recession last longer. That would lead to higher debts and higher deficits that would have to be spent for. As for spending beyond 2011, the right hon. Gentleman knows the truth: he wants to spend less - 10% less in most Departments - whereas we want to spend more."
"Green shoots" is a phrase that no minister dare utter, even as t and the that the recession is already over.
It's not just that they don't want to be accused of being complacent or out of touch as people are still losing their jobs or closing their businesses.
It is not just that, , there is the possibility of "a second recessionary dip".
It is a crucial part of Labour's political strategy to insist that, though the worst may be over, the crisis is far from at an end.
For months now, party strategists have believed that Gordon Brown's best chance of holding on to power is if the election is held in an atmosphere which feels more like 1944 than 1945 - in other words, that the country must feel that it cannot risk changing its economic wartime leader. Otherwise, they've warned the prime minister, the electorate may treat him as they treated Churchill, saying, in effect, "thanks for all you did but now it's time to go".
So far, Brown has lost the political argument with the Tories about the need to cut spending to deal with Britain's debt by trying to pose it as a political choice between cruel Tory cuts and warm-hearted Labour investment. Now, since the choreographed shift in position on cuts over the summer, the government is acknowledging the need for spending restraint later whilst warning of the economic risks of cutting now.
Their argument is that continued spending is needed to sustain a recovery and that cutting now would put it at risk.
The Tories' answer to this is that if taking the money out of the economy now is so dangerous, why is the government embarking on around £10 billion worth of tax rises in the next year - fuel duty, VAT rising again, the end of the stamp duty holiday, higher business rates and next April's increase in the top rate of tax? They will argue that economic growth is threatened by extra government spending, not sustained by it.
So far, the Conservatives have won the battle for public opinion on debt by echoing the old slogan "spend now... pay later".
Labour will now try to win the argument over economic recovery by turning that slogan on its head saying, in effect, "spend now... pay less later" or "cut now... and you will certainly pay later".
Are the Tories about to call the Afghan elections rigged and call for new ones?
That would certainly appear to be possible from a conversation we caught on camera yesterday between David Cameron and William Hague. The two men knew they were being filmed at a meeting in the "green room" before David Cameron's speech on cutting the cost of politics but they appeared to be having a "genuine" conversation rather than one staged for the cameras.
In order to see this content you need to have both Javascript enabled and Flash installed. Visit 91Èȱ¬ÌýWebwise for full instructions. If you're reading via RSS, you'll need to visit the blog to access this content.
Here's what they said:
Cameron: "The things that seem to have happened are so naked, you know, you just saw the number of votes and the number of people who actually turned up at polling stations, it just couldn't possibly be right."
Hague: "There was the, I remember, in the 1979 election in Nigeria...[there is a short gap in the recording here]... and this is the same sort of thing."
Cameron: " We should be very clear about that."
So far, the government have studiously avoided commenting on the elections saying at all times that people should wait for the verdict of the Electoral Complaints Commission or the process to end. They know how politically explosive it is to have British soldiers being seen to die not for democracy but for a corrupt government. They also know how prickly President Karzai is and that they may, like it or not, have to live with him.
It is much easier, of course, for an opposition party than a government to make these comments. It is still significant, however since David Cameron and William Hague may have responsibility for Afghan policy within a year. If there is a gulf between a future British government and the Afghan government, and if the political consensus here fractures even more that will have real consequences.
I have spent the day filming behind the scenes with David Cameron on the day he set out to reassure voters that planned Tory spending cuts would begin at the very top.
"Trust me," he said to his wife Samantha as they stacked the dishwasher after breakfast this morning. He was trying to reassure her about something she was worrying about. He was also, of course, articulating his message to the electorate as a whole.
The Camerons dare not say so, but they know they may not be living in their home that much longer if - and it is a big if - the electorate are not frightened off the Tories by his plans to rein back the size of government.
His speech added promises to cut and then freeze ministers' pay; to cut the cost of ministerial cars and to end subsidised food for MPs in addition to already-announced plans to cut the cost of politics.
When I ask him why he's making such a fuss about saving £120m when the national debt is measured in hundreds of billions, his reply was clear: leadership. He is planning to ask others paid from the public purse - including the 91Èȱ¬ - to accept pay cuts and freezes.
In order to see this content you need to have both Javascript enabled and Flash installed. Visit 91Èȱ¬ÌýWebwise for full instructions. If you're reading via RSS, you'll need to visit the blog to access this content.
I filmed in the office which David Cameron and George Osborne's advisers share; all are under strict orders not to compare it with the West Wing. In this room, they've been discussing plans not just for pay cuts, but also for a new privatisation programme and how to cut government procurement costs - and much much more besides.
So why, I asked the Tory leader, didn't he spell those plans out? Leadership, I suggested to him, was about being clear about the pain that voters - not just MPs and ministers - might have to suffer. Yes, he replied to my surprise, before promising to spell out more detail between now and the election.
We'll be waiting.
David Cameron is to appoint Sir George Young, the veteran former Tory minister and candidate for Speaker, to join the shadow cabinet to replace Alan Duncan, who he demoted yesterday.
Mr Duncan lost his job as shadow leader of the Commons after being caught on camera complaining that MPs were expected to live "on rations". Sir George is a respected figure with MPs on all sides. If David Cameron becomes prime minister, he will have to deliver reform not just of the expenses system but of the Commons more widely. He and his leader have spoken of the need to give MPs more power to stand up to the government.
The subject of a speech the Tory leader's giving later today may explain why Alan Duncan was moved yesterday, and not earlier. David Cameron will promise to "cut the cost of politics" - he confirmed recently that he was looking at proposals to cut ministers' pay. It is likely that he thought that Alan Duncan's presence in his top team would rather distract from that message.
Alan Duncan - the shadow leader of the Commons who was - has been demoted from the shadow cabinet by David Cameron.
Mr Duncan agreed to meet the man who dug up the garden of his constituency home in protest at his expenses claims for gardening bills. Unfortunately for the garrulous Mr Duncan, the protester was wearing a secret camera and recorded the Tory MP's candid opinions about the plight of MPs.
This made him which revealed the details of MPs' claims and made Mr Duncan a source of embarrassment for his leader.
Mr Duncan is said to accept that he had become a "lightning conductor" for anger about MPs' abuse of the expenses system and agreed at a meeting with the Tory leader today to leave his post and the shadow cabinet.
He is to become shadow justice minister responsible for prisons. His successor will be announced tomorrow.
The release of the Lockerbie bomber was the diplomatic equivalent of pulling at a loose thread. Now the entire fabric of the extraordinarily difficult relationship between Libya and the UK is becoming unravelled.
Unlike the families of the victims of Lockerbie and the murdered policewoman Yvonne Fletcher, the victims of the Semtex explosive supplied by Colonel Gaddafi to the IRA have not had compensation.
Last night Gordon Brown announced that the government would now give full diplomatic support for their legal claims. This came many many months after a meeting at which the prime minister had, apparently, sounded sympathetic but not actually done anything.
So why does the victims' lawyer insist it is not, in fact, a U-turn? In part, it's because Brown said then, and still says now, that he will not engage directly with Gaddafi to get compensation - that, he insists, would not be "appropriate".
In part, perhaps, it's because Jason McCue does not want to slap in the face someone who's just given him some of what he wants. McCue and his wife, Mariella Frostrup are, incidentally, also friends of the Browns.
Britain restored diplomatic relations with Libya in 1999. Tony Blair diplomatically embraced Colonel Gaddafi on his visit to Tripoli in 2004. The stakes, at the time, were huge:
• economically - yes, in terms of oil, gas and trade
• politically - securing for Tony Blair a much needed success in his quest to combat the spread of weapons of mass destruction after the debacle of Iraq's missing WMD
• strategically - bringing to a close Libya's support for terrorism.
When I travelled with Blair to Tripoli, I carried with me a quote from Colonel Gaddafi, which I hoped to ask both men about. "If the US wants seriously to eradicate terrorism, the first capital that should be pounded with cruise missiles is London," Libya's leader once remarked. Funnily enough, they did not agree to a joint news conference.
That quote is a reminder of why Gaddafi's victims still feel so angry and why those who welcomed him back into the diplomatic fold were willing to make an awful lot of compromises to do it.
What is extraordinary, though less significant, about this whole affair is the long drawn out political mess the government has made of it. This morning that "None of us wanted to see the release of al-Megrahi". This came moments after he said he'd just been chatting with the prime minister on their way to a visit to a school. Only last week, the prime minister said he "respected" the decision to release him. Before that he refused to comment at all. Confused? No wonder.
Losing the argument over Britain's continued involvement in Afghanistan is much more of a concern for Gordon Brown than losing the defence secretary's aide, Eric Joyce.
The two are, though, connected.
, his defence of the resources he's committed to it, and his outlining of an exit strategy was planned long before Mr Joyce resigned but his resignation highlighted why it was needed.
Downing Street has watched with concern as polls show only around a third of the public back staying in Afghanistan whatever the cost, whilst a third want withdrawal now, and a third to see it within a year. They've been anxious about a growing split with some in the military. They've disliked a campaign in the Sun newspaper under the headline "Don't they know there's a bloody war on?"
The prime minister is hinting that fewer British troops will be needed IF more Afghan troops can be trained fast enough. BUT, the military are warning him that - in the short run at least - that will actually mean sending more soldiers to do that training.
Today, once again, people lined up on the streets of Wootton Bassett to pay their respects to .
The test of the prime minister's speech is whether he can convince at least some of the doubters that the losses and the pain were worth it.
would matter little if it weren't for the fact that Eric Joyce is a former army officer and is echoing, in public, concerns and criticisms many in the military make in private. Fortunately, for Gordon Brown, he has a speech already written as a reply to his critics.
The prime minister is much more worried about losing the backing of the military, and of papers like the Sun, which have attacked him for showing no leadership of Britain's war effort - than he is of losing Eric Joyce. He is most concerned though about losing the argument.
Today, he will try to convince his own MPs, the military and the public of the value of his war mission, to describe what success looks like and to prove that our troops are not being left under-resourced.
If he does not begin to do that, he has a much much bigger problem than the resignation of a junior member of his defence team.
A smile, or is it a smirk, is rarely off the face of the Scottish first minister but today he can scarcely conceal his delight. It's not just that he's unveiling his programme for government and plans for a referendum on independence (more on that on my colleague Brian Taylor's blog). It is that it's Gordon Brown, and not he, who is getting the flak for releasing the Lockerbie bomber.
Yesterday, but felt that was the end of his troubles on this issue and not the beginning of more to come.
It all raises the question what calculations lay behind the Scottish government's decision to act as they did. Just as I was pondering on this, I received an e-mail with the thoughts of Tim Luckhurst - now professor of journalism at the University of Kent - but a former editor of the Scotsman and adviser to Labour's Donald Dewar:
"Downing Street and the Foreign Office are being blamed for profoundly desiring a result they had no power to deliver. To achieve this release they had to make their sworn enemy, the SNP, do their bidding. How likely is it that the SNP simply volunteered? Think about it... The most likely explanation is that MacAskill released Megrahi despite intense pressure from London. That would explain why, in his statement announcing the release, he took care to explain that he was NOT releasing the prisoner under the prisoner transfer scheme and that the SNP had opposed the scheme from the beginning.
Ìý
Remember that they had a choice of letting Megrahi die in Scotland - either in jail or outside it under heavy police protection; transferring him to a Libyan jail under the Prisoner Transfer Agreement - apparently London's favoured option or releasing him on compassionate grounds as they did."
So far, so uncontroversial, but Luckhurst then goes on to ask a contentious question:
"Was MacAskill bribed with promises of an increase in the Scottish block grant? Was Alex Salmond given an assurance that Westminster will tolerate the referendum on independence he is explicitly banned from funding?
Ìý
If neither of these, then what?... did MacAskill believe his decision would embarrass Brown more than it has humiliated the SNP? That remains the most likely explanation. After all, the release has damaged UK interests. But it has damaged Scotland too and the alternative explanation, ie that Westminster offered Holyrood something valuable in exchange, now deserves thorough scrutiny."
Tim Luckhurst is, of course, no fan of the SNP, and given that Alex Salmond announced this morning that his spending powers for next year will fall by almost half a billion pounds and that Scottish Labour declared its adamant opposition to the referendum bill this morning, his first two theories seem unlikely.
There are plenty of other possible explanations:
• The SNP may have acted as ministers first and nationalists second, taking seriously the warnings of the economic, diplomatic and strategic impact of falling out with Libya
• The nationalists may have relished the prospect of their Scottish government taking a major internationally significant decision that set them apart from Westminster
• The prospect of Megrahi dying in Scotland, whether in prison or outside it, surrounded by dozens of policemen, could have raised fears about unrest or even a terrorist response
Of course, the real answer may simply be the one that the Scottish Justice Secretary, Kenny MacAskill, has given all along - that he followed the due process of Scottish law which culminated in an appropriate act of compassion for a dying man.
Speculation all, I grant you, but intriguing isn't it?
was revealing both for what he did and did not say.
He said nothing about the fact that the Libyans were told that he did not want to see Abdelbaset Ali al-Megrahi die in jail. No-one now disputes that that is both what was said and what was meant by the foreign office minister, Bill Rammell when he went to Tripoli. It remains the case that Britain said something to the Libyans that they were not prepared to say to their own electorate.
The prime minister implied that his public reticence had been diplomatic. He was, he said, privately seeking to persuade the Libyans not to turn last night's into a celebration of Megrahi's return. He claimed credit for the fact that the Lockerbie bomber was not visible in Tripoli last night.
Gordon Brown did then seek to defend his government's detailed involvement in the question of Megrahi's possible release by saying that it was in the British national interest to bring Libya out of the cold. This was not, he stressed, a matter of oil but was because of the value of Libya turning her back on terrorism and the development of nuclear weapons. This is the realpolitik argument I talked about in my earlier post.
There are, no doubt, plenty of questions that will emerge from what he said but there is one many of his own colleagues will ask - why on earth didn't he say any of this before?
So, at last, we have it. .
The foreign secretary has now confirmed that that is what they let the Libyans know in private, even if it was something ministers refused to confirm in public to their own electorate.
From Gordon Brown down, the government has refused to say what it thought of the decision to release Abdelbaset Ali al-Megrahi. It was not, they said, a matter for them. It would have been constitutionally improper to intervene in a quasi-judicial decision taken by the Scottish justice secretary.
Furthermore, they said, did we really believe that a Scottish nationalist minister would pay any attention to the views of their hated political enemies running the Westminster government? No doubt the prime minister will repeat that line today.
However, if you take a look at the bundle of yesterday, you see that ministers felt there was plenty to talk about.
Indeed, they spent more than two years discussing the legal, political and diplomatic parameters of releasing the Lockerbie bomber. What's more, Tony Blair has confirmed that, ever since , Megrahi's fate had been on the table. Throughout this time, Libya were threatening dire consequences if Megrahi died in jail. British business was warning of the consequences for British contracts and British jobs if Libya did not get its way.
British ministers advised the Scottish government that there was no "legal bar" to Megrahi's release. They advised them that the commitment made to the American government that he would serve in a Scottish jail was no longer binding. They refused to seek an exclusion for the Lockerbie bomber from the prisoner transfer agreement they were negotiating with Libya - a U-turn taken after pressure from Tripoli.
Isn't what we've learnt rather simple? British ministers - who are responsible for the UK's foreign, economic and trade policy - decided that they did not want Megrahi to die in prison and privately left no-one in any doubt? They did so, careful at all times, to stress that it was not actually a decision for them.
Some would argue that this is precisely the sort of hard-headed "realpolitik" decision that we elect politicians to take.
However, the Tory leader, David Cameron, insists that he would not have taken it if he were prime minister, since justice demanded that the Lockerbie bomber serve his time and, if necessary, die in jail.
That is a fascinating debate. It is one that ministers in London refuse to enter as they continue to insist that their views on this extraordinarily sensitive matter were, somehow, irrelevant.
PS. Team Blair have been in touch in response to yesterday's post. They've pointed me to an interview with the former prime minister on CNN in which he said:
"Let me make one thing absolutely clear. The Libyans, of course, were raising the case for Megrahi all the way along, not just with me but with everybody. It was a major national concern for them but as I used to say to them, I don't have the power to release Mr Megrahi."
He went on to say:
"The release that has taken place is a decision by the Scottish executive, which has taken place on compassionate grounds. Those compassionate grounds didn't even exist a few years back.So yes, of course it's absolutely right the Libyans were always raising this issue, but we made it clear that the only way this could be dealt with was through the proper procedures."
Camels, tents, Amazonian bodyguards. The memories are still fresh. Tony Blair's visit to meet Colonel Gaddafi in Tripoli is one that I will never forget.
Looking back now I wonder what we could or should have known or predicted about the fate of the Lockerbie bomber Abdelbaset Ali al-Megrahi.
Those of us who accompanied the prime minister knew then that we were witnessing a grand bargain.
Libya had owned up and paid up for its role in promoting terrorism and was giving up any ambition it might have had to develop weapons of mass destruction.
In return, Britain was welcoming the man many believed had more British blood on his hands than anyone else into "the international community".
Less visible but there nonetheless was the issue of money and trade - lots of it.
It should, perhaps, come as no surprise that having agreed one such bargain Libya would seek others later on her own terms.
Gaddafi knew that Britain badly wanted access to Libyan oil and gas. British ministers and officials were left in no doubt that he cared deeply about the return of the Lockerbie bomber.
Once again this morning Downing Street has vehemently denied that any deal was done.
They believe that the release this afternoon of all the "relevant" letters between the British and Scottish governments about the fate of Megrahi will re-inforce their case.
Interestingly, what ministers in London and Edinburgh have agreed as "relevant" does not go back to that trip in 2004 or the lead up to it.
When I asked the prime minister's official spokesman whether at any time any diplomat, minister or, indeed, the prime minister himself had indicated their concern about or opposition to the release of Megrahi it was clear that the answer was "no".
So, is it not possible, likely indeed, that, as ministers insist, no deal was done, no incriminating piece of paper exists but that everyone involved understood each others positions very clearly?
Jump to more content from this blog
I'm Nick Robinson. Welcome to Newslog, my blog about what's going on in and around politics.
For the latest updates across 91Èȱ¬ blogs,
visit the Blogs homepage.
|
Nick Robinson: |
 |
|
Douglas Fraser: |
 |
|
Brian Taylor: |
 |
 |
|
Richard Black: |
 |
|
Jonathan Amos: |
 |
You can stay up to date with Nick Robinson's Newslog via these feeds.
Nick Robinson's Newslog Feed(RSS)
Nick Robinson's Newslog Feed(ATOM)
If you aren't sure what RSS is you'll find useful.
91Èȱ¬ © 2014 The 91Èȱ¬ is not responsible for the content of external sites. Read more.
This page is best viewed in an up-to-date web browser with style sheets (CSS) enabled. While you will be able to view the content of this page in your current browser, you will not be able to get the full visual experience. Please consider upgrading your browser software or enabling style sheets (CSS) if you are able to do so.
