For the last years of Labour’s time in power, bilateral summits between France and Britain became a commonplace. At the last one between Gordon Brown and Nicolas Sarkozy, the French offered a deal to share aspects of their nuclear deterrent – submarine patrols that would reduce the need to have so many Trident Subs, and warhead maintenance.

Mr Brown emerged saying that an Anglo-French deal that compromised the integrity of the “independence” of the nuclear deterrent would be politically undeliverable.

But sources both sides of the Channel have told me recently that David Cameron is actively interested in rendering such an agreement more than politically deliverable.

A couple of weeks ago a senior French Government source told me to look forward to the next Anglo French summit with considerable anticipation. There’s “something very big to be announced”, he told me.

Today’s FT begins to put some more flesh on the bones, suggesting that French nuclear technicians may be engaged in maintaining the UK’s nuclear warheads. The article points out the considerable concessions the US would have to make, effectively to allow the French in on US nuclear secrets.

There’s little doubt that the Brits are desperate to reduce costs on Trident. In my interview this week with Mr Cameron he told me that “we have already been able to make considerable savings with our nuclear deterrent”.

The idea that two allied European Atlantic powers have required totally independent submarine cover (bearing nuclear weapons) has for some time seemed something of an anachronism. My contact told me that Sarkozy’s idea had been for joint patrols which would reduce the total number of nuclear capable boats and missiles in both countries.

Watch this space. Is a UK Prime Minister, formerly regarded as something of a Euro-sceptic about to take what many might regard as a radically European step?

From the Office of Tony Blair, a rare and privileged communication received yesterday afternoon.

It promised that if I went to this website I would be treated to advance extracts from his book. Further, they would be published at 11.30pm last night. For me – perhaps for no one else – a broken promise.

When I went to bed at 11.46pm, no extracts. At 6.00am this morning, no extracts. All I could find were some rather eerie photographs of the former premier. I’m indebted to others for supplying me a few quotes from inside the tome.

“Maddening” Gordon made him drink more than he should have. So if there are no extracts on his website (for me at least), at least there are his somewhat gaunt features to prove that this at least may have been true. He was “right” to go to war. No apology for Iraq, but he writes that he will try to remedy the “consequences” until the end of his days. Buy the book and you too can contribute to his efforts.

All “maddening” Gordon seems to have done, in Blair’s book, is to have lost Labour a British general election. Even A Journey doesn’t blame him for Iraq. Although if Gordon had been a bit more “maddening” he might have done many tens of thousands who died, and millions who fled (and have still not returned), a great service.

For some reason, our former dear leader has not seen fit to grant Channel 4 News an interview. This is a loss. I always found him a rewarding interview. He was good at it. I never found the small talk easy - publicly relaxed and personable, he was privately awkward, almost, and unexpectedly gauche. But definitely seemed a nice man.

So how will history judge him? One of his confessions is that he regrets the fox hunting ban - it is close to an apology, not to the fox, but to the country.

“I didn’t understand the issue”, he is reported to have said. So that’s OK, he understood the war on Iraq – it was “right” – but not the attempt to prevent acts of cruelty against our four-footed foes.

Doubtless, A Journey (THE Journey was reportedly pulped as too much) will infect our debate tonight live on Channel 4 News with all five Labour leadership candidates.

At the height of the MPs expenses scandal, the then Commons Speaker Michael Martin - himself under siege - agreed a meeting with the three main Westminster party leaders.

Gordon Brown, David Cameron and Nick Clegg met in a crisis session with the Speaker in his Commons rooms.

Senior Tory sources have disclosed that when the meeting convened, Gordon Brown offered what we now know to have been his stock-in-trade.

He immediately produced his papers listing in large bold letters his own multi point system for redeeming the reputation of the Commons.

As was his wont, Brown would brook neither questioning nor challenge to his edict. Exasperated, Clegg and Cameron found themselves cast in alliance against the bulldozing Brown.

My sources say that this was the first time that they began to forge coherent political co-operation and in conversations afterwards realised that they had enough in common to do some serious talking.

Will history one day judge that the intransigent over-bearing Brown became the unwitting midwife of the eventual birth of coalition politics in Britain?

“Two weeks to save the Tory Party” screamed the headline in the Spectator Magazine two weeks ago. And not for nothing. What the Cameron-sceptic Conservative writer divined was that electoral reform could destroy his party’s chances of ever being in government again.

An outright victory was what was required to avoid such a consequence – any kind of accommodation with proportional representation, he opined, could see the party confined to the back benches for all time.

Hard it is to imagine the Tory Party ever accepting a genuine risk of abandoning first past the post. On the other hand, on this day, exactly seventy years ago, Winston Churchill – not much loved inside his own Conservative Party – replaced Neville Chamberlain as prime minister at the head of a rare and hugely successful coalition government.

We are in a time of omens in which we search for routes through the voters’ wisdom in refusing to trust any party to deliver us from the evil of deficits.

Hard it is to imagine what many have described as the most Euro-sceptic leadership the Tory Party has ever know, doing a deal with a man who has lived the most Europhilic life of any man in present day British politics.

The war disposed of ideological difference in 1940. Will the fight against the deficit do the same in 2010?

The current impression is that it will. But impressions are a dangerous thing in politics. If Clegg wants to see off the Conservatives on Europe, his best bet in a coalition is to demand the Foreign Office. He doesn’t need Vince Cable in the Treasury even if the political classes think the voters do.

The Tories can keep the Lib Dems in check by dumping the Home Office on them – the curse of two defeated MPs, Charles Clarke and Jacqui Smith – or the Ministry of Justice.

More likely still, the Lib Dems will tolerate ONLY the fight against the deficit – support the Tory budget and the outline Queen’s Speech (but retaining the right to fight every bill within it) and put a minority Conservative government into unstable power.

Finally, is this the most unlikely statement we shall hear today? “I resign as leader of the Labour Party to allow immediate elections for a successor – I shall remain prime minister to carry us through the current constitutional moment. I shall then make myself available to serve in whatever subordinate position my successor as Labour leader deems appropriate.

“In the event that the current Clegg/Cameron talks fail, I shall leave my successor free to conduct his own discussions with whomsoever he pleases, in order to attempt a stable Government to take Britain forward.”

Have I just seen a pig flying down Whitehall?

In the absence of a three leader debate on Channel 4, Messrs Clegg, Brown and Cameron pledged to do wide-ranging individual interviews with me for Channel 4 news.

Interviews with Mr Clegg and Mr Brown duly took place on the agreed dates.

You may have heard me billing them as “the first” and “the second of three interviews with the main party leaders”.

Obviously, we try hard to be fair to all the parties, but in this case I’m afraid we won’t be able to deliver on that promised third interview.

My encounter with Mr Cameron was originally scheduled to take place ten days ago, but his people called at the last minute to ask if they could postpone it to yesterday afternoon.

But yesterday brought another cancellation, leaving the possibility open that they it would happen today.

Now we’ve been told that the campaign schedule in these last few days means it’s just not possible.

This will be the first general election campaign I’ve presented for Channel 4 News in which one of the main party leaders has declined to do an interview with me.

In this X Factor election, the X Factor that Gordon Brown’s aides fought for us never to see, has been seen. The problem for Labour is that in this ‘personality’ driven contest, an event has occurred that is about personality laced with policy.

Some have argued that Mr Brown’s “bigoted woman” moment is not a game changer. Mr Brown attacked a core Labour voter about a core issue which has dominated all our own interactions with the electorate.

The danger for Labour under Brown, was that it would never be able to push beyond its core vote. Now it may have threatened even that ‘tribal’ rump of voters who have never voted for anyone else.

I have described this election as the “none of the above” vote. The BBC’s Poll of Polls today suggests 67 per cent of the electorate do NOT want Cameron’s Tories; 70 per cent do NOT want Clegg’s Lib Dems; and 72 per cent do NOT want Brown’s Labour.

The game changer in Mr Brown’s ‘accident’, is that it undermines the one ground upon which voters might have broken from the pack – the idea that in disliking the choice on offer, voters would stick with nurse (Brown) for fear of worse.

His behaviour – worse, the revelation that what so many have talked about is true, is now a campaign issue.

Brown’s X Factor advantage had been that, whilst we were told there was a personable, kindly, and effective Brown, there was also a nasty ‘finger jabbing’ four letter word uttering  Brown. But we never had to witness it – until yesterday.

Where does the disaffected Labour core rump go? The BNP – a few? UKIP – fewer? Stay at home – more? Cameron – very few? Clegg … mmmm? That is the biggest question now posed by the “bigoted woman” incident. At best, Labour will hang onto its unelectably low poll rating.

It’s hard to see the Tories doing something the polls suggest Cameron has failed to do thus far – pick up swathes of disaffected core Labour voters. That leaves Clegg’s Liberal Democrats.

There is polling evidence that he has drawn support from Labour’s softer fringes. It is possible that in the first instant he will pick up crucial Labour votes in Lib Dem/Tory marginals – the unanswered question is can he do more – it’s unlikely that the old Labour rump vote will flood to him. If it did, he would be within hailing distance of Number 10.

So, curiously, whilst the “bigoted woman” incident is probably terminal for Brown, and disastrous for Labour, it is bad news for Cameron too.

That’s because the first surge of transfers to Clegg affects more Tory held seats than Labour – a secondary surge is required to start handing Labour seats to the Conservatives.

And now, as Greece sinks, Spain and Portugal totter, Ireland wobbles and analysts warn of blow back from Greece affecting the US, Japan and the UK – on the brink of what looks like another looming global financial crisis – there is another debate tonight this time, poignantly focused on the economy.

Televisually a far better viewing experience than I had anticipated. In good part because of the crisp handling by Alastair Stewart.

On points its hard to depart from the consensus that Clegg took his chances and gave a consistently competent and relaxed performance. The geography of the line up appeared to disadvantage Cameron in that body-lingually he appeared to be being squeezed by the other two and forced back on his heels.

The prediction was always that the Lib Dems would always be favoured by being there at all. But Clegg ensured they did better than that, and the polls reflect that.

For Cameron, ahead in the polls but not by enough, the pressure was on. His problem is that whilst he did his stuff consistent with the performances that have brought him thus far, he did not manage to exceed expectation to anything like the degree that Clegg was allowed to.

In this sense then, Clegg’s success in succeeding, and Brown’s failure to fail, have left the Tory leader no further forward and possibly, even if not the points loser, the political loser of the night.

The Tories needed to emerge last night definably ahead. They needed to be assisted by a lacklustre Liberal Democrat performance, coupled with a Labour implosion. Both were denied them.

Of the three men, for Brown this was the least natural environment. He emerged even tempered, and never appeared to lose control. It doesn’t seem to leave him much further ahead, but neither does it seem to leave him any further back.

In yesterday’s Snowblog I wrote of the ‘American import’ that the ‘thing’, the debate, represents. The American tuition was evident. Clegg’s engagement with the camera was by far the best – I do not know whose input that might have been – possibly his own. But it was a wise use of the medium.

The most notable American influence in the debate was the wheeling out of individual and anecdotal stories. They didn’t work – they were thin and largely inconclusive, sometimes begging the question as to whether they were true. They don’t seem to work in a UK context.

Whatever last night delivers – the ‘X Factor’, ‘Big Brother’, and ‘Britain’s Got Talent’, had prepared a UK TV audience for its first ever mass engagement with pre-election Westminster politics. Will they come back for more? Those programmes alone suggest they usually do – for a bit anyway.

In America the debate is the ‘thing’. In part because there is, in effect no other ‘thing’. Every appearance by the candidate is managed and reduced to an audience of loyal supporters only. The chance of a heckle, or an encounter with opponents is all but non-existent.

Hence ‘the debate’ is the ‘thing’ – the one moment when some other force – usually a news anchor and three questioning journalists – are unleashed upon all the candidates in debate.

But the ‘thing’, the debate, is so ringed around with rules, agreements, and the rest, that the chance of something exceptional, revelatory, is all but dead.

And so into our system – where the candidate is exposed daily to dozens of journalists, and occasionally even the public, every day of the campaign, either on the street or in phone ins, or at a press conferences – we have imported the American model, ringed it around with English rules, and called it the leaders’ debate.

Net result? The number of press conferences at which ‘the leader’ is present has been drastically reduced. Leaders from all parties are traipsing into loyal living rooms or safe photo ops and the chance heckle, or encounter with a non-supporter, is this year all but ruled out.

This is not the British way. Ours is not a Presidential system. We consolidate our general election campaign into a presidential one at our peril. Today there will be no press conferences, no serious opportunity to quiz the big three parties on anything.

Instead the entire thirty six hour build up is devoted to, yes, ‘the build up’. Three debates, three two day segments of a three week campaign in which effectively nothing happens, until the American imported ‘debate’.

Don’t get me wrong. The biology, the body language, the image of all three party leaders standing lectern to lectern is hugely enticing. And there is the chance of a banana skin.

But there are 76 rules tonight. If the chancellor’s debate is anything to go by, at least one major party will be on the phone at 90 second intervals accusing the broadcaster of breaking the rules. The pressure on all to ‘behave’ is palpable.

But unlike the United States our parliamentary system already brings these three leaders together at weekly intervals on the floor of the House of Commons. They shout at each other. They point score. For some of the electorate it’s too raw.

The joy of a UK general election has been that for a season the electorate’s intersection with the leaders has been on the street, down the phone line, even occasionally in the TV studio without seventy individual rules of engagement.

That day is it seems, done. Tonight will be ‘must watch’ make no mistake, but will it be the organic tussle of politics in the raw that even the most self regarding of political leaders in the past has had to weather?

There is the danger of a ‘beauty contest’.

But there is one far flung hope. That David Dimbleby, who conducts the last of the three debates, knowing it’s too late for anyone to complain, knowing too that this could be the autumn of his general election anchoring, simply rips up the rules and provokes a real debate between the three.

It’s improbable. I may be over-pessimistic. I love the idea of a debate, but I know the reality of escape from encounter and conflict that it may also represent. See what you think. I’ll be the first to accept the error of my American informed view, if I’m wrong.

Oh the joys of electoral campaigning Britain. Sudden unannounced journeys to Ellesmere Port, Hull, Luton and beyond.

If today is Tuesday it must be Dartford.

The wonderful thing about today’s modern train journeys is that they all seem to be fast getting out of London and painfully slow ever returning. Last night I looked at my watch. It was 10.55 pm. I pondered – it must be Milton Keynes. How will they spin it out to get us to Euston at two minutes to Midnight?

You never know until just a few hours before, quite what you will be doing. One moment you are going to Birmingham to observe the launch of the Labour manifesto, the next to Cheshire to interview the leader.

The journey up was as fast as it was expensive. A flight to Boston, Massachusetts, would have cost less.

At least there was evidence of life at the Vauxhall plant – the venue for a segment of the day’s electioneering.

At Crewe station after we had done the programme, there was less than life. It had the reek of a place where God had died. That awful contest between hunger and a plastic bagged cheese roll, was won unwisely by the roll.

The five minute battle to find someone to pull half a pint of lager in a place so cold and uninviting it wasn’t worth the wait.

Crewe station, designed for the golden age of steam was alleviated by the smooth subtle arrival of the Pendolino from another world. At £359 return, not a soul in first class. Rather more in the £150 return second class. Who are the ‘they’ that are trying to price rail travellers out of using trains? These prices are beyond scandalous. Then to find that a journey took us a mere two hours coming up, takes nearly three hours going back.

The Pendalino is so fast that it has to dawdle between stops – and then at Rugby, another Crewe, we linger in the deserted station to try to stay within the unambitious timetable.

At least the recession delivered taxis by the truckload at Euston. As I tumbled into bed I wondered what Britain I had just traversed. At least I could thank the ingenuity of Italian train builders for the few minutes of shut-eye I had succumbed to on the journey, to add to my short six hour night.

So to Dartford.

On a balmy spring Sunday morning in London yesterday, I walked from my home across three London parks to visit the Richard Hamilton show at the Serpentine Gallery.

I wondered how long it will be before someone digs up a few streets to create genuine green pedestrian corridors to allow London’s people to walk unmolested by traffic – her parks are an exhibition of their own – green, blossom strewn, pleasant lands.

Upon entering the exhibition past Margaret Thatcher playing on a TV screen above an NHS bed titled ‘treatment room’ one is very quickly struck between the eyes by ‘Shock and Awe’ – an absolutely startling full length gun slinging portrait of Tony Blair. Pistols on the hips.

It would make a terrific cover for his forthcoming memoirs. I see it comes from the artist’s own collection. It certainly ought to enter the public collection. The arresting technicoloured square portrait of Blair’s predecessor Hugh Gaitskell already belongs to us, via the Arts Council.

Hamilton pre-empts the era of photographic manipulation using the shocking images of the killing of students at Kent State University in the US during an anti Vietnam War protest; the ‘dirty’ protest in the Maze jail during the Northern Ireland troubles; and the hand cuffing of the Rolling Stones on suspected drug offences, as emblematic of the turbulent age that his art has spanned. You find yourself leaving the show wanting to see much more.

I pen this as I prepare to go north to interview Gordon Brown – not yet, so far as I know, depicted by Hamilton.

Last night, I tweeted for questions triggering a cascade of answers as vivid as the art show. Controlling the banks, sending post cards to cancer patients, vision, and the opportunity to work are interwoven with Snoopy and a persistent Twitter from a man who has lost his car keys and seems to want me to ask the prime minister where they are.

I am a one week old novice on Twitter. I confess I am intrigued by a platform I had tried very hard to eschew. But if you are a journalist and want a whiff of what people think, very quickly, it works.