Snowmail: a big day for political grandstanding in war zones

Last Modified: 19 Jul 2008
By: Krishnan Guru-Murthy

On tonight's show...

Just time to give you a quick run down on what's in the news tonight at 6.40pm.

It's a big day for political grandstanding in war zones. Gordon Brown's gone to Iraq, Barack Obama is in Afghanistan. But the two men are not as tuned in as perhaps they might be.

Brown repeated his new mantra that there will be no artificial timetables for British withdrawal. That's the message George Bush wanted.

But Obama has already set his timetable: 16 months after he becomes President (if he wins). And just as Gordon Brown was arriving to meet the Iraqi PM, Mr Maliki was being quoted welcoming Barack Obama's timetable.

The Democrat is on a whirlwind tour supposed to make him look presidential. Britain's PM is on his pre-holiday visit to the troops.

Pretty depressing, Darling

Alistair Darling is frightening the horses a tad with a pretty depressing interview in The Times. He says the economy is all much worse than he thought (didn't we tell him that at the time?) and there'll be no extra money for public spending so his cabinet colleagues can forget about any policy ideas that cost money.

Plus we'll have the latest on the Pope down under and a dreadful bomb attack in Kashmir that has killed several Indian soldiers. In the sport we'll have the results from the Open golf at Royal Birkdale and the cricket plus the Team GB athletics team is finally unveiled for Beijing.

See you soon

Krish