91Èȱ¬

Bizarre though it may be, the words of the Polish chief rabbi about the attitudes of a Polish MEP have become crucial to the debate about the future of Britain, to its relationship with Europe and, perhaps, to the future of the foreign secretary.

David Miliband had passionately attacked the Tories' new European allies and, in particular, the leader of their new grouping in the European parliament, Michal Kaminski MEP - who Miliband described as as a former member of the extremist Polish Revival Party (NOP) - and as an opponent to this day of a national apology for the massacre of Jews by Poles in 1941.

Miliband quoted Poland's chief rabbi, Michael Schudrich :

"I do not comment on political decisions. However, it is clear that Mr Kaminski was a member of NOP, a group that is openly far right and neo-nazi. Anyone who would want to align himself with a person who was an active member of NOP and the Committee to Defend the Good Name of Jedwabne (which was established to deny historical facts of the massacre at Jedwabne) needs to understand with what and by whom he is being represented"

However, this morning the that, though he will not forget or condone Mr Kaminski's past, he regards the MEP today as an opponent of anti-Semitism, a friend of Israel and a member of a mainstream political party.

This will fuel from Mr Miliband.

It won't, I suspect, be forthcoming. The foreign secretary could argue that no-one disputes Mr Kaminski's past - something he feels particularly passionate about given his own family's Jewish roots.

What's more, David Miliband knows that this controversy has highlighted the Tories' European stance when all previous attempts to do so have failed. He also knows that his attacks have unnerved some in the Jewish community who were thinking of backing the Tories just as his attacks on the alleged homophobia of other Tory allies has been used to try to win back the gay vote for Labour.

However, for the first time in this controversy, the Tories feel they are on the front foot. They will argue that alleging extremism in the leader of a foreign political party even after the chief rabbi of that country has exonerated him is not fitting behaviour for a foreign secretary.

And with Tony Blair's presidential hopes fading, it may not help those who hope that Mr Miliband will switch from being Britain's foreign secretary to being what many will regard as Europe's - the new High Representative role which will come into being if and when the Lisbon Treaty becomes law.

PS: Labour MP Denis MacShane has indeed claimed that this morning's interview changes nothing and that the chief rabbi "does not clear Kaminski", adding: "until Mr Kaminski expresses full and unreserved regret over what he said and did in relation to the Jedwabne massacres I will continue to criticise the Tory alliance with him."

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Over dinner for two in Paris last night Angela and Nicolas plotted the future of the new Europe, chatting about whether Tony could be their candidate for president. Threatening to give them both political indigestion though was another Brit - David - the man who ought to be their natural political ally.

The chancellor of Germany and the president of France are infuriated by the behaviour of the man who their diplomats tell them looks set to be Britain's next prime minister.

Neither Angela Merkel nor Nicola Sarkozy have met David Cameron for more than a year. Both tried and failed to persuade him to change his European policy. It is, though, about to change thanks not to them, but to events.

The Tories promise of a referendum on the Lisbon Treaty will die with their hopes that the Czechs might halt the progress of the treaty into law.

The new Conservative approach to Europe will not be to the liking of those Eurosceptics who believe that only a full-blooded battle with the EU will deliver change.

David Cameron spoke this week of a policy based on "realism not isolationism". His allies shudder at the memory of John Major's beef war with Europe. They remember it producing not victory, but messy face-saving compromises.

Their aim, one shadow cabinet minister tells me, is to avoid idle threats "to bring the whole temple crashing down". Instead, the Tories are working on a list of changes they want to see and a list of changes others want which they can block if a Cameron government doesn't get its way.

Those who are demanding a referendum to strengthen the government's hand or to ensure that they do not "sell out" to Europe look set to be disappointed too.

David Cameron's "cast-iron guarantee" to Sun readers of a Euro referendum expires, I'm told, once there is no further chance of stopping the Lisbon Treaty. In its place comes a different cast-iron guarantee of a new law to force any future government to put any future EU treaty to a popular vote.

Cameron's aides have noted with relief that both the Sun and the equally Eurosceptic Telegraph seem to have joined what they regard as the realists' camp.

Senior Tories know that if they are to have any chance of changing Britain's relationship with the EU, David will need to be able to sit down with Angela and Nicolas. They believe that success will come not through confrontation but patient, tough-minded negotiation.

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David Cameron warned today against what he described as an "all-singing, dancing and acting... El Presidente of Europe".

What he wouldn't do was repeat William Hague's alleged warning that a future Conservative government would regard as "a hostile act".

Mr Cameron also refuses to say yet what he will do if the Lisbon Treaty is ratified - although there were hints. He spoke of the need for "realism not isolationism" and argued that on every decision in Europe, he favoured "co-operation and co-ordination".

I read this to be not a referendum and not a repeat of John Major's campaign of non-co-operation.

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It was the exposure he'd long dreamed of. It was the opportunity to move from the fringes to the mainstream. It was a moment when Nick Griffin - the self-styled "most loathed man in Britain" - could have tried to persuade the British people that he thought what they thought about immigration and that voting for him could shake the cosy political establishment out of its complacency.

That's what the leader of the BNP hoped for. It's what those who despaired about his invitation to appear on Question Time feared. .

Exposure can work both ways. For much of the programme, Nick Griffin did not speak to the British people. He talked instead about himself and struggled to explain his past views and actions.

He was not a Holocaust denier, he insisted - but could not say why he had compared those who believed that Hitler killed millions of Jews with those who believed that the Earth was flat.

On the other hand, he could and did say that the "indigenous people of Britain" - by which he insisted he did not mean whites - were themselves victims of genocide. Surprisingly few of them appear to have noticed.

The Ku Klux Klan was not all bad, he went on, but Islam mostly was. And so on and so on.

That is not to say that Nick Griffin did not take the opportunity to make a direct appeal to voters. He presented himself as the moderniser of the far right - the creator of "New BNP". The old BNP had, he conceded, been racist. He had talked of wanting to create an all-white Britain. But now he and his party merely wanted to shut the door to newcomers and were happy to let everyone else stay.

Will that convince many? Probably not, but it may give cover to those who are fed up that their views and concerns have been ignored. There may well be people who feel that Nick Griffins views are too eccentric or too dangerous to make him a candidate for high office but who, nevertheless, feel that voting for him is a means to give the rest of the political class a mighty big kick.

That, in the end, will be the key to whether the BNP continues to rise or begins to fall. Will voters now feel they know what the BNP really stands for and cannot stand for it? Or will they say that's largely irrelevant if your aim is to tell other politicians: "It's time you woke up to our concerns"?

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David Cameron has derided the prime minister for not displaying the courage and leadership needed to take on the striking postal workers and win. This morning that the next Tory government would privatise the Royal Mail. If the Tories mean it, they will need to display the "strength" of Ted Heath, and not the "weakness" of Margaret Thatcher, Tony Blair and Gordon Brown.

The Tories would do well to remember that the CWU could line the walls of their HQ with the scalps of politicians who took them on, and lost. Only Heath beat them.

Mrs Thatcher flirted with privatising the Royal Mail before shunning the idea.

In 1992, John Major and Michael Heseltine - then the president of the board of trade - were forced to scrap their plans to privatise when a dozen or so Tory backbenchers rebelled, threatening to wipe out the government's Commons majority of only 14.

Hezza's New Labour successor Peter Mandelson backed away from his plans to privatise the post in 1998 after the CWU leader roused the Labour conference to oppose him.

Ten years later, Gordon Brown brought back Peter and his privatisation plans only to abandon them both in the face of massive backbench hostility.

Team Cameron have to go back almost four decades for the last politician to defeat the posties. Ted Heath withstood a seven-week strike, after which postal workers settled for less pay than they'd originally been offered as the union had run out of strike funds to make up for their lost wages.

Of course, if Gordon Brown wins this dispute, it might help Cameron privatise the Royal Mail if he becomes prime minister. It might, of course, make that victory less likely.

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This week will put that old maxim to the test. The British National Party are getting more publicity than they can have dreamed of, culminating in a controversial appearance for Nick Griffin on Question Time.

Many will be deeply uncomfortable with this. Others argue that it is the inevitable consequence of the BNP's electoral - albeit limited - success. What's more, one senior Tory argues, shows the value of exposing the party's arguments.

Until recently, most mainstream politicians have gone out of their way to avoid even talking about the BNP in order to deny them the oxygen of publicity. Ever so quietly behind the scenes, all the mainstream parties co-operated to try to head off the threat from the BNP - sharing intelligence about them and working to ensure that they faced proper opposition wherever they stood.

Then a number of Labour politicians who saw the party's rise in their areas - Margaret Hodge in Barking and Jon Cruddas in Dagenham - abandoned that approach and tried to force their own party to address the anxieties of white working-class voters who they feared were defecting. Some used anti-BNP campaigns to rally Labour activists who were otherwise reluctant to campaign for their party.

Now Conservatives are reacting to fears that the BNP is successfully hijacking traditional symbols of patriotism - the flag, the Spitfire and the poppy. Hence the campaign organised by two well-connected Tory activists which shot to prominence yesterday when .

This week may mark an important shift in the way in which the other parties handle the threat from the British National Party, though all will be watching with some trepidation the opinion polls that follow.

It is worth remembering that the party remains a very small force. As I wrote after the European elections, the BNP's two MEPs were elected on a smaller share of the vote. They have just a few dozen councillors. However, the big parties now sense that they are a force that can no longer be ignored.

Update, 16:10: Earlier I pointed out that Nick Griffin became a member of the European Parliament even though he won fewer votes than he did five years ago.

He got 132,194 votes whereas five years earlier the BNP in north-west England had polled 134,959 votes. Griffin won because of a collapse in the Labour vote from 576,388 in 2004 to 336,831 in 2009.

However, lest this has led some to wonder what all the fuss is about, I should point out that nationwide the BNP's vote share went up 1.3% to over 6% and its total number of votes went up more than 16% to a figure not far shy of a million (943,598 to be precise).

In the nine regions of Great Britain where the BNP did not win a seat, its total vote went up by more than a quarter - 26.5% to be precise.

(Thanks to the European Movement for pointing this out.)

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The leader of the BNP, Nick Griffin, has told me that he does not, after all, want to see two former heads of the British army put on trial and hanged for war crimes.

Earlier Mr Griffin was reported on the BNP's website comparing Generals Sir Mike Jackson and Sir Richard Dannatt with Nazi war criminals hanged after the Nuremberg trials. The BNP's leader now says that this was "black humour".

This is what the BNP's website said:

"Those Tory generals who today attacked the British National Party should remember that at the Nuremburg Trials, the politicians and generals accused of waging illegal aggressive wars were all charged - and hanged - together.

"This was the reaction of Nick Griffin MEP to the announcement that Tory lackeys Sir Richard Dannett and Sir Mike Jackson had broken all military protocol with their statement attacking the BNP."

I suggested to Mr Griffin that the families of victims of World War II and the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan might not get the joke. He did not respond.

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David Cameron is warning his party that he will impose all-women shortlists - once anathema to the Tories - on some local parties which have yet to choose their parliamentary candidate.

From January, Tory HQ will take control of the short-listing of candidates as they operate under what they call "by-election rules". The Conservative leader told this morning's Speaker's Conference that he still did not have enough women candidates. He predicted that if he got a majority of one at the election he expected that there would be nearly 60 women MPs. This would still lead to a cut of the number of women in Parliament. So I've been told that all-women shortlists will be introduced in one or two constituencies or a handful at most.

He called this "positive action" not "positive discrimination". Not all in his party will agree.

It is a sign of the times that on an issue on which his party clearly lags he was given an easier time than Gordon Brown who was confronted by two of his own MPs - Diane Abbott and Parmjit Dhanda - for not doing enough.

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This morning should have been the moment when we saw three men who say they are aiming to be prime minister after the next election together side by side on TV.

This was not for the first of the much talked about - and yet still elusive - TV debates. It was for a joint appearance at . At least according to Commons officials, the three were supposed to appear together at the same time on the same platform. .

However, they will now follow one after the other. It's a decision which the Tories are pinning on "Bottler Brown". It is one which frankly matters little other than to demonstrate where we might end up if the parties don't reach a firm agreement on prime ministerial debates sooner rather than later.

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David Wilshire, the Tory MP facing expenses allegations, has announced that he will not fight the next election. His decision follows what are being described as a series of "lengthy conversations" with the Conservative chief whip.

Mr Wilshire insists that he's done nothing wrong and will fight to clear his name... and so on and so forth.

However, he becomes the latest victim of the expenses saga and the latest scalp claimed by the Daily Telegraph. His going also presents another in a long line of opportunities for those hungry to enter the Commons (yes, really, there are some).

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Is another Tory MP's career about to end thanks to the expenses saga?

Team Cameron called the cameras in this afternoon to respond to questions about the future of David Wilshire - the MP who referred himself to the Parliamentary Standards Commissioner after the Daily Telegraph's revelations about the office expenses he diverted towards a curious company run by himself and his partner.

The Tory leader was to deliver a holding statement. It never came. A short time ago the cameras were asked to leave again.

Now sources say that Mr Wilshire is being invited to give careful consideration to standing down at the next general election.

Apparently, he is, as yet, unpersuaded.

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The Head of the Armed Forces, Air Chief Marshal Sir Jock Stirrup says that 2,000 is a myth.

He was not making some obscure philosophical observation or reading out an extract from the sequel to Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy. Sir Jock was, instead, denying the oft-repeated allegation that Gordon Brown had turned down a military request - his request in fact - . Having got what he wanted from his political master, the general was trying to help him out and to close the gulf that had opened between ministers and the military.

What then is myth and what reality?

It is beyond question that the prime minister did turn down a request for a major new deployment of troops first made in February of this year. His critics say that it was purely on financial grounds. His allies insist that he was concerned to ensure that any new troops sent were properly equipped.

"Everyone talks in round numbers" I'm told by one source familiar with the Ministry of Defence. At the beginning of the year General Dannatt, who was then head of the Army, talked of wanting an uplift from around 8,000 British troops to around 10,000 which is where the figure comes from.

However, the numbers used in formal proposals to the PM are "force limits" - in other words, the ceiling on the number of troops to be sent. The actual number of boots on the ground at any one time can be a few hundred above or beyond the force limit depending on the speed with which men come and go from theatre.

In February, the force limit was, I'm told, 8,300 and the most ambitious of three proposals made to Gordon Brown was for a new limit of 9,800 troops - an increase, therefore, of 1,500 not 2,000.

That is why Stirrup, who wants to end stories about disputes with ministers, can describe 2,000 as a myth. He may also want to damage his old rival General Dannatt who continues to use the figure. However, the row about troop deployments is anything but a myth.

John Hutton, who was defence secretary at the time, says that it would have been better if the decision had been made earlier since it would have given the Army a clear sense of direction. He accepts that it might not have meant that troops were deployed much quicker. I asked him in an interview yesterday whether lives could have been saved and he said he honestly could not say.

What is clear is that the delay caused tension between ministers and the military - General Dannatt versus Gordon Brown; within the military high command - General Dannatt versus Air Chief Marshal Sir Jock Stirrup and between the government and the press who began to air popular doubts about the success of the mission.

Incidentally, in the months since February, the Army "scrubbed through" their proposals looking for ways to carry out the same task with a slightly lower number of troops. Thus, yesterday's annuncement of a new 9,500 force limit was, I'm told, effectively the same as that which Army chiefs had first requested more than six months earlier.

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Hush! Hush! Whisper who dares!

than many economists and, indeed, the government feared.

The number of people signing on rose in September by the smallest amount in 16 months (the Office for National Statistics reported this morning that the claimant count rose by 20,800, below expectations of a rise of up to 25,000).

What's more the wider so-called International Labour Organisation (ILO) measure of unemployment did not breach the 2.5 million mark as expected.

Now if you're one of those who's just lost their job or fears losing it this will come as absolutely no comfort.

However, government ministers are now expecting an unexpected windfall of several billion pounds which was set aside to pay for higher levels of unemployment planned for in the chancellor's Budget.

This will allow the Treasury to make future "savings" (in reality, of course, simply a reduction in what they would otherwise have had to borrow) without making cuts.

Ministers are also set to claim that this slowing in the rate of increase in unemployment is down to their policies and interventions which the Tories...well, you know the rest of the script.

The real economic debate will surely focus on whether it's British labour market flexibility, other inherent features of the UK economy or dodgy forecasts that account for these better than expected figures - or should that be "not as bad as feared" - rather than any short term small scale government interventions.

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Last night in the Commons, I could not find an MP with a good word to say about - asked by the Commons, mind.

Senior MPs with a legal background said Sir Thomas would not have a leg to stand on if his demands for repayments - based on rules he is applying retrospectively - ever came to court. They point to the fact that his remit invited him to assess claims by the "rules and standards in force at the time".

I have now obtained a copy of the document that all MPs have been sent by Sir Thomas which explains why he has acted as he has.

Sir Thomas says that "to interpret and determine the rules and standards" applying at the time was "not a straightforward task".

He points out that the Commons Fees Office frequently allowed "disproportionate claims" which "must be judged to have been in breach of the rules".

He notes that "in some areas, such as household furniture and equipment... the Fees Office did in fact impose... limits" - in other words, .

When it comes to mortgages, he says that "the upper limit of the allowance may normally be taken as the relevant and sufficient control" - in other words, those who "claimed to the max" for their mortgage do not risk having to repay money (unless, of course, their claim contained errors).

However, Sir Thomas notes that in other areas - cleaning and garden maintenance - "some limits must be regarded as having been place to prevent disproportionate and unnecessary expenditure from the public purse".

That is why Gordon Brown has a large cheque to write, whereas David Cameron does not. It is also why Labour MPs were cursing the PM last night for proposing - albeit with all-party support - the Legg Review.

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So near to power and yet so far to go.

No wonder he looked and sounded nervous - his voice struggling to meet the scale of the occasion.

David Cameron knows that most people assume he will be our next prime minister. He knows that they could so easily be proved wrong.

This was designed to answer those who say they don't know what he really believes. His answer - a traditional Conservative one - family... community... country.

It was a speech designed too to show what makes him angry - that was Labour's belief that "big government" was the cure rather than the problem.

The Tory leader believes that Gordon Brown is stuck in an old political rut in which voters make their choice on the basis of rival shopping lists of give-aways, political dividing lines and who they fear more.

Hence his claim that what matters more than manifestos and policies was judgement, temperament and character.

So, this was a very personal plea to the British people to trust him to sort out the mess he says Labour has created.

It's going to be a long and nerve-racking wait to see if they do.

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Another half-empty conference hall this morning. It's been like that most days at all the major party conferences. Thousands of people there but few of them willing to sit through the pre-packed, made-for-TV, corporate-away-day-style presentations that the parties have substituted for what we used to call debates.

Tory conferences were always the most stage-managed of all but nevertheless I can still remember ferocious debates:

• about Rhodesia (as was) in the year Margaret Thatcher came to power in 1979

• about the economy in 1981 when the former Prime Minister Ted Heath spoke from the conference floor and told conference not to applaud as "it will annoy and irritate your neighbours"

• about Europe when in 1992 Norman Tebbit angrily pointing his finger at Prime Minister John Major in the row about the Maastricht Treaty which tore this party apart

Of course that list explains why the leadership wanted to snuff debate out. The same is true with Labour after defeats on so-called contemporary motions such as the embarrassing 75p rise in the state pension. Even the Lib Dems - the most democratic of the lot - moved to quieten down their conference after debates about goldfish, prostitution and the future of the monarchy.

It's not that the conferences have died. The fringe meetings are packed with lively political talk, so too the cafes and the bars. What's happened is that they have mutated into part political bazaar - where those whose career is politics, whether candidates, MPs, lobbyists or political journalists, meet to do their trade - and part political festival. Think Glastonbury for politicos without, of course, the mud, the music nor, deary me no, the drugs.

Chris Grayling's gaffe was seized on by tired hacks sick of the dreary conference stage management. Just as was when she walked past a TV showing Gordon Brown speaking and said in a stage whisper "that's a lie". As was the delightful moment when Charles Kennedy's pre-speech photo opportunity went awry. "What are you in for?" he asked the hospital patient who just declared that he'd be voting for the Lib Dems. The painful reply was "brain surgery".

Perhaps the spin doctors will begin to realise that spending hours shaping speeches that are delivered to empty halls and ignored by your own party workers, let alone large parts of the media, is not serving them well, let alone everyone else.

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Oops. Chris Grayling is not the only one to have gaffed today.

On tonight's Six O'Clock TV news I accidentally referred to David Cameron as the prime minister. I'd just been talking about Gordon Brown's anger with the way in which support for the war in Afghanistan has, in his view, been undermined by an alliance of critics in the military, like General Sir Richard Dannatt, the Tory press and the Tory party. I was then asked by Huw Edwards about David Cameron's speech and replied "Well, the prime minister will once again want to focus on the big issue that George Osborne, the shadow chancellor was talking about, the deficit..."

Oh well. It's proof at least that I don't use an autocue, that it has been a long few weeks and that I really should go to bed earlier at these conferences.

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"I hope that this isn't a political gimmick".

That is how the Shadow 91Èȱ¬ Secretary Chris Grayling accidentally reacted to the news that the former head of the British army, Gen Sir Richard Dannatt, might be appointed a junior defence minister. Unfortunately for Mr Grayling, the gimmick - if it is one - was a Tory and not a Labour one.

Mr Grayling clearly misheard my colleague Emily Maitlis's question. Here's a transcript of the exchange:

Emily Maitlis: General Dannatt being lined up to be a junior defence minister in a future Tory government. Can you tell us more about this?
Ìý
Chris Grayling: I admire the work of General Dannatt and other senior generals who've done so much in Afghanistan and done so much to lead. I hope that this isn't a political gimmick. We've seen too many appointments in this government of external people where it's all been about Gordon Brown's PR. General Dannatt's an experienced figure and should rightly be working alongside government. But I'm always suspicious of government's motives when it does things like this.

The question followed the news that Gen Dannatt is to be elevated to the House of Lords where he will advise the Tories on defence matters. Some Tories suggest that he is being lined up to be a junior defence minister in a future Tory government with specific responsibility for operations in Afghanistan. However, sources close to David Cameron are playing down that possibility.

What Mr Grayling dismissed as a "gimmick" was originally planned to be the major new announcement in David Cameron's speech tomorrow.

Update 15:30: A sheepish Chris Grayling has just returned to clear up what he called the "misunderstanding" about his earlier comments.

He said he had misheard the question and had thought General Dannatt had taken up a government appointment.

He goes on to say it is "great news" that the general is joining the Conservatives and that he'd wished he had known before "as I'd have liked to have given him a more enthusiastic welcome".

Moral of the story - don't open your mouth if you don't know what you're talking about.

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David Cameron has told me that he has been talking to , the former head of the British Army, about taking a role in a future Tory government.

Earlier, Gen Dannatt told 5 live that he would consider taking up a post in a Conservative government.

He also says that he believes that the government tried to damage his reputation because it .

Gen Dannatt says the government resorted to "politics by smear" after "losing the argument" over tactics.

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Vote for us and we'll delay your pension. Vote for us and we'll cut your tax credits. Vote for us and, if you work in the public sector, we'll freeze your pay - and if you work in Whitehall, we might cut your job.

This was no ordinary electioneering .

This is, of course, no ordinary time.

The Tories' calculated gamble is that they will be rewarded for being open, up-front and honest about the pain that lies ahead. What's more, they have tried to signal that - in the phrase the shadow chancellor used again and again - "we are all in this together".

Thus, the right will not get its 50p tax rate cut while others will see their pay frozen. Thus, no-one on less than £18,000 will have their pay frozen, and baby bonds and child tax credits will still be paid to the poorest.

In the past, politicians have learned to their cost that honesty is not always the best policy. Voters who applaud talk of tough choices tend to howl when those choices hurt them.

The Tories today took a massive electoral gamble.

They know that John Smith's shadow budget of 1992 was applauded for being honest about the tax rises needed to pay for Labour's spending promises. They know that New Labour blamed him and it for losing them the election. They hope that they will prove that history does not have to repeat itself.

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Frantic breakfast consultations for Team Cameron this morning when they realised that the hasty unveiling of their pension plans could lead to headlines that if you were a 50-year-old woman you might have to work for up to three years longer before getting your state pension.

The policy has now been urgently clarified to offer women reassurance that their pension age will not rise any faster than under existing government plans. Currently, ministers plan to raise the state pension age for women in steps from 60 to 65 between 2010 and 2020.

Last night the Conservatives announced that to save money they would bring forward the date when the state pension age would rise to 66 for both men and women. They said that the money saved would allow them to stick to their pledge to link the state pension with rises in earnings.

Under existing government plans the pension age for men will increase to 66 in 2026. The Tories have said they want to look at bringing that date forward to 2016 at the earliest.

However, they were unclear when the pension age for women might rise to 66 opening up fears that women now in their 50s would have to work for up to three years longer if a Tory government were elected.

They are now insisting that the earliest date at which all women will have to work until the age of 66 before receiving their state pension is 2022.

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Listen very hard. What do you notice? Labour are not condemning to take £25 a week off people on incapacity benefit who are deemed "fit for work".

The reason is that, although they've hardly shouted this from the rooftops, that's their policy too. Yes, that's right the government has already published plans to make every claimant of incapacity benefit face a tougher fitness-for-work test which will lead some to be switched off £89/week IB and onto £64/week JSA - the job seeker's allowance.

So, why are the Tories heralding this as a revolution and Labour, while not condemning the specific idea, attacking their overall approach as being "unfair" and "callous"?

The argument between the two parties boils down to how explicit they're being about their plans and how fast they think they can be carried out.

The Conservatives see a value in headlines about a "crackdown on the workshy" and also want to show that they can make the tough public spending choices necessary to fund an expansion of help for the unemployed. I can find no occasion on which ministers have spelt out the benefit implications of their plan to re-examine the claims of the 2.6 million people on incapacity benefits.

The Tories - encouraged by Freud - believe that they can do this quickly, get private companies heavily involved and tear up Treasury rules to allow them to spend money upfront to get people back to work in the hope of future savings in benefits.

Ministers are sceptical that this can be done at all and believe the Tory plan would be an unacceptable risk with the public finances. Thus, they argue that the Conservatives will have to cut incapacity benefit even for those who need it in order to make their sums add up.

The fact that the Tory and Labour positions are so close should come as no surprise. David Freud drafted the government's green paper as an adviser to the then secretary of state for work and pensions before switching to become first an adviser to David Cameron, then a shadow minister and now the architect of the Tories plan.

It also shouldn't surprise us that both sides exaggerate the differences between them. After all, there's an election coming.

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So what does the self-proclaimed "straight talking" guy say about one of the biggest foreign policy dilemma he's likely to face if he becomes prime minister?

Nothing. Nowt. Nix. Zippo. Zilch.

David Cameron's official explanation for not telling us what he'll do if the EU's Lisbon Treaty is law by the time he reaches office is that "you can only have one policy at a time". He adds that he doesn't want to do anything to "undermine or prejudice" the ratification proceedings in Poland and the Czech Republic.

The real explanation is that he is determined that his last conference before the election will not, to use his phrase, "obsess about Europe".

This is, however, a crucial test of how Cameron will weigh up principle and pragmatism.

A principled Euro-sceptic approach might argue that the British people deserve their say on Europe whatever has been decided elsewhere.

That is what Boris Johnson appeared to back yesterday before hastily getting his spokesman to brief that he was only calling for "an urgent opportunity for the British people to have a say on this treaty before it takes force".

A more pragmatic approach might reply that unpicking a law ratified by
27 nations would not only be nigh on impossible but also a serious distraction from what needs to be done to sort the economy out.

The signs are that Cameron is veering to the latter but would prefer to unveil what some in his party will see as a betrayal when they are not all gathered in one place.

Intriguingly, there are signs that some of the biggest Euro-sceptic cheerleaders in the Tory press may be coming round to this pragmatic position.

Yesterday, my colleagues at the 91Èȱ¬ reported that Cameron's referendum pledge remained unchanged.

I joked with one senior Tory that the headline should have read "Betrayal postponed". He smiled before chastising me for my cynicism.

13:20GMT: Is the Czech in the post?

The Tory Chairman Eric Pickles has told the 91Èȱ¬ that he is "confident" that the Czechs won't have ratified the Lisbon Treaty by the time of the next election and, therefore, that he's confident that his party will still be promising a referendum on the EU.

What does he know that we don't? Up until now it has been assumed that the Czechs will finish their ratification process in three to six months.

We do know that David Cameron has written a letter to his Euros-ceptic friend, the Czech President Vaclav Klaus, but we don't know what that letter said or what reply - formal or informal - he received. Perhaps Mr Pickles should tell us.

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It's on - or, at least, it should be.

The prime minister has, finally, confirmed that he is willing to take part in a prime ministerial debate on TV ahead of the election. Now all that remains is to agree the details. This could be easier said that done.

In a Gordon Brown makes clear that he wants a series of debates on specific subjects - the economy, public services, foreign affairs - to take place around the country starting as soon as possible, ie before the election campaign. He signals his desire for public involvement and argues that there should be a parallel series of debates involving senior ministers as well.

Mr Brown does not mention the involvement of Nick Clegg but, as I wrote last week, he's said to be keen to go head to head with Mr Cameron and to be prepared to agree to debate with Mr Clegg on his own in order to allow that to happen.

Up till now Team Cameron have favoured a single debate during the election campaign, although I reported last week that they would agree to an earlier one providing the details could be negotiated. The Tory leader has always argued for the involvement of Nick Clegg in a three-way debate.

The two parties' positions stem from their analysis of their own positions. The self-proclaimed "underdog" wants as many chances as possible to reveal the weakness in his opponent's policies. He prefers to be asked questions by the public than the media as he regards them as less hostile. He wants to travel away from London to places where he believes Labour is stronger. What's more he wants a series of debates between the chancellor, home secretary, foreign secretary, etc and their shadows to expose what he sees as the shallowness of the Tory team.

David Cameron is sure to be cautious about this since, as the front-runner, debates represent a risk. He's likely to argue that the more debates there are, the less public interest there will be. He'll welcome the presence of Nick Clegg in a debate with Gordon Brown hoping that in the search for Labour seats Mr Clegg would join him in attacking the prime minister. He's likely to argue that a three-way debate is fairer and less likely to be challenged legally.

Thus, we come to the broadcasters. Yesterday the 91Èȱ¬, Sky and ITV agreed that they favoured three debates - one for each broadcaster - to involve the three UK-wide party leaders. In their minds are their obligation to balance and fairness - not just to the Lib Dems but to the nationalists in Wales and Scotland as well. If mishandled this could be tested in court. The broadcasters are also concerned about levels of audience interest if the debates are to be broadcast on mass market channels - 91Èȱ¬ One and ITV 1 - not just on news channels.

All this will have to be settled in tricky negotiations. I wonder if Senator George Mitchell's free?

However, TV debates now look more likely than ever to happen since all sides have declared their willingness early enough for the details to be hammered out before the campaign makes compromise impossible.

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