Today, George Osborne will unveil a new Tory idea: the "green cut". It's really rather simple.

The Treasury, under Tory control, would calculate how much each Whitehall department would save if it cut its carbon emissions by 10%. Then they would simply cut that department's budget accordingly and force them to publish their carbon efficiency performance online.

Hey presto! Saving money and saving the planet at the same time. If only life were that simple.

Labour points out that in the past 10 years, they have struggled to cut carbon emissions by 10% in central government - so promising to cut it by 10% in one year with no specific plan about how to do it looks pretty implausible.

The Tories counter that businesses have done it; but, as far as I can tell, companies like B&Q and Tesco have achieved the reduction by cutting things like transportation costs and packaging - things not largely available to central government.

It could be, of course, that this could be a cut by another name. Dress it up as "green", though, and it looks much more attractive.

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Two speeches at the CBI this morning from the two men who want to be in No 10 after the election with one message in common.

One of them stated:

"Dealing with this deficit is not an alternative to economic growth - the two go hand in hand."

The other insisted:

"our strategy for growth is not at the expense of necessary deficit reduction - it is absolutely central to that objective."

Both are clearly determined that by emphasising growth or deficit reduction they do not seem to have ignored the need for deficit reduction or growth.

As it happens, the first quote is from David Cameron whilst the second is from Gordon Brown.

The prime minister adjusted his rhetoric over the summer to move away from the crude "cuts versus investment" mantra he'd produced week after week with such relish. Now, David Cameron is changing his - ditching talk of an "era of austerity" to outline instead a route to an era of prosperity. Yesterday he even stole a Brown-ism by promising to "go for growth".

Just as with Brown before him, my sense with Cameron is that it is the words rather than the policies or values which have shifted. Both men are positioning themselves ahead of the chancellor's pre-Budget report which will define the economic and political debate between now and the election.

Both are also inclined to find third parties to endorse their approach.

This morning Dominique Strauss-Kahn, managing director of the International Monetary Fund, helped Gordon Brown (for once) by telling the CBI that he and his team were owed "a debt of gratitude" for their work in organising a global response to the financial crisis. In words which will, no doubt, be heard at this week's Prime Minister's Questions he also helped Gordon Brown's argument about the need to sustain the stimulus:

"Exit too soon and you kill the recovery. Exit too late and you sow the seeds for the next crisis... we recommend erring on the side of caution as exiting too early is costlier than exiting too late."

David Cameron will have ready three quotes of his own to use in reply which he deployed this morning:

• The OECD pronouncement that "by developing and announcing more ambitious fiscal consolidation plans early... the government would strengthen the recovery"

• The CBI's own director general Richard Lambert who said that the CBI's "strong instincts" are "that the risks of going too soon" on cutting the deficit "are less than the risks of waiting too long" (the opposite of what the man from the IMF said)

• President Obama himself who has said it is important "to recognise that if we keep on adding to the debt, even in the midst of this recovery, that at some point, people could lose confidence... in a way that could actually lead to a double-dip recession."

Rest assured. This one will run and run.

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Much excited talk of a hung Parliament after one poll in the Observer yesterday. Here are my reasons to be careful (parts one, two and three) before getting carried away:

• Polls are interesting because they are surprising. They're usually surprising because they're out of line with other polls. Thus, one needs to be wary of interesting polls.

• Poll leads are the difference between two large numbers which are themselves only accurate within the range of + or - 3%. So poll leads are only accurate within a range of + or - 6%

• Ipsos/Mori sample the electorate differently to other pollsters. A large part of the shift in yesterday's poll appears to be down to this.You can read one interpretation here.

There is, however, one reason to think hard about a hung Parliament. It is easy for Labour to lose this election but hard for the Tories to win it since they start off with fewer seats than Michael Foot won in 1983 and need a larger swing than Margaret Thatcher's in 1979. That, however, was always true - long before yesterday's poll.

And, I'll concede this, there is some evidence in some polls of a hardening in Labour support.

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