It’s a serious question. We are set to hear a lot of words on this as Gordon Brown jets to New York tomorrow to discuss international financial regulation. “Supervision can no longer be national, it has to be global,” he has just said in his speech.

But how will a global regulatory monolith - based in Tokyo, or Wall Street for example - be able to monitor financial services more effectively than a national one?

Mr Brown will argue that financial markets are now more interconnected than ever before. A regulator in one country, for example the FSA, needs to communicate with those monitoring different arms of the same businesses in other markets. Fair enough.

Yet it seems very much as though he is simply trying to distract people from the failings of the British authorities.  

In my last job - the FT’s property correspondent - I met a 20-something salesman from Leeds who, on a salary of about £25k a year, had been lent £4m to purchase nearly 20 buy-to-let properties over a period of two years (he is now bankrupt). Just one example of Britain’s absolute failure to prevent ridiculous lending practices during the bubble years.

How, exactly, would a global regulator be better placed to spot this kind of thing?

Those outside the Westminster village may be bemused that an op-ed (today’s Guardian) on Labour’s future could be seen as a statement of leadership intent.

David Miliband’s language is carefully coded.

No such doubts exist here though. There are the omissions (no mention of Gordon Brown), the timing (he could have kept his head low) and the criticisms (he says Labour could have done more to improve the NHS).

The rumour is that Number 10 feels betrayed. The word “traitor” has cropped up in conversation.

My colleague Sue Cameron, whose Whitehall contacts are unmatched, writes in this morning’s FT that Miliband should wait instead of risking “doing a Hague”.  

The 43-year old looked defensive this afternoon, saying: “I think that my article today was a challenge to David Cameron and not a challenge to Gordon Brown.”

One voice which has remained conspicuously silent over Zimbabwe is Tony Blair, former prime minister.

Unless I’ve missed something, Blair has not commented over the sham election and human rights abuses under Robert Mugabe.

Curious, given his track record on interventionist foreign policy. Over a year ago he was quoted describing how “our self-interest” had to be defined in the context of a more interdependent world.

“If we let Sudan get any worse, if we let Somalia crumble, if we don’t intervene to try to help those countries in Africa, at some point in the world in which we live today, those problems will come back and visit themselves upon us,” he warned.

“I think we can be proud of the interventions we have made. In removing the dictatorships that we have from Sierra Leone, from Kosovo, from Afghanistan and Iraq, yes, I believe the world is a better place, for the removal of those dictators.”

Still waiting to hear back from his spokesman.

UPDATE:

 You probably guessed this already; but he hasn’t replied.

Officials are a bit slow to wake up to the world of the $130 barrel.

The government has revised its estimates for oil prices upwards in the wake of the recent spike, but still believe it will halve in the next 18 months.

The government’s “central scenario” for the oil price suggests a real terms fall in the price of a barrel to $65 per barrel by 2010 and $68 by 2015.

Thanks to Norman Baker, Lib Dem transport spokesman, for digging this out.

The forecast, made by DBERR, has been revised upwards from an earlier estimate of $57 in February. But it is still far below the actual price - which has soared because of a cocktail of concerns (demand spike in India/China, supply constraints).

DBERR predicts a drop to $70 a barrel by 2020. Even its “high scenario” suggests a rise in real terms to just $105 a barrel by 2030.

Baker argues that this risks skewing policies on issues including energy, transport and the environment.

“I think it is cynical and deliberate, if they had to admit where prices were going it would change a lot of government policy,” Mr Baker said. “Raising its forecasts would require ministers to re-examine “every aspect of life.”

For example, ministers might consider the need for more renewable energy even more pressing than at present. They might also take greater risks with - dare I say it - road pricing.

Vince Cable, Lib Dem Treasury spokesman and a former economist at Shell, said that it would be a mistake for anyone to predict the future price of oil with confidence. But under two “oil shock” scenarios - war in the Middle East or a peak in oil production - there would be a damaging impact on the economy, he warned.

Few forecasters can say with certainty how consumer behaviour would

DBERR admits its estimates are not rock-solid and have come from industry analysts. It’s impossible to forecast the price of a barrel of oil “next week, let alone in 2020”, moans Malcolm Wicks.

Global Dashboard have spotted an incredible interview in the LA Times with “Curveball”, one of the most important “disinformation” agents in the run up to the invasion of Iraq.

Rather depressingly, it shows that a good deal of Colin Powell’s UN presentation on WMD was based on the word of a jobbing burger flipper who failed to even win the trust of his colleagues at Burger King.

This passage is unforgettable:

In early 2002, a year before the war, he told co-workers at the Burger King that he spied for Iraqi intelligence and would report any fellow Iraqi worker who criticized Hussein’s regime.

They couldn’t decide if he was dangerous or crazy.

“During breaks, he told stories about what a big man he was in Baghdad,” said Hamza Hamad Rashid, who remembered an odd scene with the pudgy Alwan in his too-tight Burger King uniform praising Hussein in the home of der Whopper. “But he always lied. We never believed anything he said.”

Another Iraqi friend, Ghazwan Adnan, remembers laughing when he applied for a job at a local Princess Garden Chinese Restaurant and discovered Alwan washing dishes in the back while claiming to be “a big deal” in Iraq. “How could America believe such a person?”

British diplomats in South Africa have had a busy few months, but this afternoon their problems were less to do with Robert Mugabe and more to do with Gordon Brown.

Mr Brown’s comments in parliament on Zimbabwe today included not one, but two embarrassing blunders, according to a foreign office source. Here are his words in full:

The Prime Minister: I have not only kept in touch with the President, Thabo Mbeki. I was also in touch on Sunday with the president-elect—that is, the president of the African National Congress, Jacob Zuma. I made it clear to him, and he supported the idea, that there would be 1,000 monitors from the ANC party offered to Zimbabwe, so that they, too, can play their part in the election. So it is not strictly the case that South Africa is not making available election observers or monitors; that is exactly what they are doing.

The first error is that Mr Zuma is not the president elect of South Africa; the election has yet to take place.

The second, much more serious error, is that Mr Brown incorrectly stated that the ANC would send 1,000 election monitors. Indeed, the ANC have already released a statement denying what Mr Brown claimed:

MEDIA RELEASE
ANC MEMBERS TO FORM PART OF SADC OBSERVER MISSION

The African National Congress has noted a report on Reuters suggesting that
the organisation will send a contingent of 1,000 people to observe the
Zimbabwean run-off elections.

The ANC wishes to correct this report.

The ANC will be sending observers as part of the 400-strong SADC observer
mission. The ANC’s contribution to this mission includes 14 Members of
Parliament and 15 others.

The ANC remains committed to contributing in whatever way it can, within the
ambit of multilateral institutions like SADC, towards a sucessful and
credible run-off election.

This appears to be a serious mistake at sensitive moment in the Zimbabwe crisis. Mr Brown must know that revealing the details of conversations with world leaders — elected or not — is a big blunder. Spreading misinformation about private conversations with world leaders is an absolute howler. I’m told that Mr Zuma is not happy, with some justification.

This error comes days after Mr Brown upset relations with the EU, Iran and the US by announcing sanctions that do not exist.

Some diplomats are beginning to see a pattern of unhelpful and distinctly undiplomatic interventions by the prime minister. It is not making their job any easier.

The idea has been raised before - in relation to our foreign policy and our economic reliance on the US.

No wonder then that the 10 Downing Street spokesman said this morning that “we were the fastest growing country in the US last year”…..before correcting himself…..”sorry, the G7″.

At the same time, Gordon Brown watchers are likely to have a field day this week as they watch the prime minister on a crucial trip to New York and Washington. The body language with “Dubya” has not seemed great, as seen in the picture below.

Meanwhile check out The Times on how the visit could be overshadowed by the pope.

Back in 1978, Argentina was preparing to host the World Cup. The fact that the military junta had by then purged the nation of thousands of dissidents and that one of the biggest torture and death camps was a few hundreds yards away from the River Plate stadium mattered not a jot to FIFA, the world governing body, the participating nations, and the fans.

But thirty years on, China has a problem on its hands, unless it smartens up its human rights image. When you have global internet, and rolling 24-hour satellite TV, the phrase, the “whole world’s watching you” takes on a different meaning.

It forces participitants to examine their consciences, and turns ‘Absolutely Fabulous’ actress Joanna Lumley into a sure candidate for the first female Archbishop of Canterbury.

Fresh from delivering her flowers at Prince Philip’s sick-bed, the gorgeous Joanna told the world, care of the BBC, that through the ages light can have the power to break through the darkness. The Olympic torch, she told us, is already working in mysterious ways, as it makes its progress through the world, shining a light on China’s human rights record.

As the FT exclusively revealed last week, the Chinese have enlisted the support of a PR company to limit the damage to its reputation of its brutal record in Tibet and elsewhere.

They should get a simple world of advice. Start loosening the political straitjacket, and engage constructively with the Dalai Lama, while reminding the world of China’s status as a major political and economic power-one the world cannot afford to boycott.