We have just heard that John McCain, the frontrunner for the Republican presidential nomination, has pulled out of a planned meeting with Gordon Brown on Friday. As this was only announced by the prime minister’s spokesman this morning, it is bound to cause some embarrassment at No 10.

People are inevitably going to speculate about whether the prime minister is worth seeing. But we suspect the real reason for the cancellation has less to do with Mr McCain’s willingness to shoot the breeze with Mr Brown, and more to do with Super Tuesday. Had Mr McCain’s main rivals dropped out, he would have had the time and space to hobnob with the statesmen of Europe. But with Mitt Romney and Mike Huckabee clinging on, it may look somewhat presumptive to leave the US on a overseas jaunt.   Read more

Was it fair for this blog to compare Caroline Flint’s comments yesterday with the Tories (eg Tebbit) of the 1980s? Not necessarily.

I’ve gone back to Margaret Thatcher’s famous "no such thing as society" (20 years ago now) and there are clear parallels with Flint’s nowt for owt speech to the Fabian Society on Tuesday. Read more