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?

It is hard to overstate what an extraordinary event the appearance of the joint Brown-Sarkozy article in the Wall Street Journal represents. It is a most remarkable development.

Two politicians, technically coming from opposite sides of the political spectrum, coming together to forge a significant and powerful attack on the global banking and energy speculating system.

Two leaders from two nations with economic and cultural clashes in their backgrounds that are amongst the most lampooned in Europe. Why, it’s only little more than a week since they were supposed to be at loggerheads over who had won what in the disbursement of high level posts in the EU.

Yet here they are, singing from the same hymn sheet on a day after the UK chancellor attempted the first serious tax hit on bank bonuses.

And make no mistake, this is a less than veiled acceptance by Mr Brown that the German attack on the Anglo-Saxon financial model was justified. So this will go down incredibly well in Berlin too.

This may also represent a rallying point for Democrats in America, disenchanted with the way the banking system there has used taxpayers’ money to recover and return to the opaque ways of remunerating itself to extreme levels from producing very little.

Bankers using taxpayers’ money to fatten their war chests and their wallets at the expense of NOT lending to those who actually DO make something, represents one of the continuing scourges of the post-crunch world.

In so many ways too, the Brown-Sarkozy alliance in all this flies in the face of so many media stereotypes.

The thought of energy-rich France, which profits so considerably from energy-strapped Britain’s needs, actually siding with us in the face of energy speculators also represents a fascinating first.

The article is likely to serve as an intriguing watershed which is likely to prove a reference point for a good bit of time to come.

It certainly renders today’s G8 meeting in Italy suddenly rather interesting. And if bankers think they can shunt their ill-gotten gaming activities elsewhere, it is beginning to look as if we may actually be seeing the seeds of an international action to block them.

Wellington and Napoleon must be spinning in their graves, let alone Harold and William the Conquerer!

I’m sitting the Locarno room at the Foreign Office waiting with 200 other hacks for the Obama/Brown press conference, and even in this august circumstance there’s an air of a palpable expectation.

Not of course in terms of economic breakthrough but the mere arrival of The Man.

There are American and British flags entwined on the base in this English Imperial pile, and everybody awaits with some anxiety the arrival of what is called the “travelling White House press corps”.

They are notoriously assertive and will come crashing in, seizing our preciously reserved seats. Some of us have been here since dawn.

As for content, everyone is talking about Sarkozy’s threat to walk out if there isn’t a global regulatory deal. And others are talking about Brazil’s President Lula coming here by train from Paris.

He will change trains at Stratford East, and some are jesting that he will see few white faces with blue eyes (those that he has blamed for the pickle we are in).

To watch live coverage of Barack Obama’s meeting with Gordon Brown, plus the protests in the City of London, click here.