But just for the sake of argument - and simply in the interest of encouraging some debate - let us suppose there is a third camp, those who might suggest that for the people who live in the EU, this could have been something of a triumph.

Let us take the Financial Times leader-writer's viewpoint: "By lasering in on the lowest common denominator ... leaders of the big member-states ... reveal themselves as geopolitical pygmies."

If you were seeking to contradict that in a debate, I suppose you could reply: "On the contrary: by insisting that unelected officials must remain clearly and unambiguously subservient to the elected leaders of all member-states, the leaders have shown themselves to have a better understanding of what democracy means than some leader-writers."

And you could point to a comment elsewhere in the FT (in the print edition only, not the online version, oddly): an anonymous US official is quoted as saying "Selecting a foreign minister with next to no foreign policy experience has sent a discouraging and disappointing signal to anxious US allies."

Foreign minister? Who said anything about a foreign minister, you might ask. And you might in turn quote the FT's own Brussels bureau chief, Tony Barber: "Perhaps the real winners are the EU's governments and the cross-national centre-right and centre-left political party groups that dominate the European parliament."

In other words, you might suggest, the people who have actually been elected to represent the EU's 375 million voters.

The core of the Euro-enthusiasts' case is to be found elsewhere in that same FT article: "Globalisation is pushing the world into an age of unsentimental Great Power politics, in which Europe must get its act together to avoid being pushed to the sidelines by Brazil, China, India, Russia, the US and so on. The EU's remedy is the Lisbon Treaty, a set of reforms intended to strengthen its cohesion and upgrade its global influence."

To which you might reply - if you still had the energy and appetite to debate these matters: "Fine, if that is the case, let us elect an EU president and an EU foreign minister so that they can meet all those other leaders as equals." Because the big difference between Brazil, China, India, etc. on the one hand, and the EU on the other, you might argue, is that the former are all independent nation states, and the EU is not.

But you would have to concede that whenever EU voters have been asked if they want the EU to resemble more closely a nation-state, or super-state, they tend to have answered with a resounding No. Which, you might suggest, could be why the EU leaders decided to do the choosing themselves.

Let me make it clear: it is not my intention to advance any particular argument. I just think these are interesting, and important, issues to consider.

Now, I wouldn't dream of comparing Barack Obama to a friendless school-child - after all, he's probably one of the most popular men in the world, and a former Harvard law professor as well - but he doesn't seem to be having too much luck at the moment making new friends among the people who count.

Iran, China, Cuba - you name it, he's tried to be friendly. But wherever he goes, whomever he talks to, they all seem to be disciples of the 19th century British statesman Lord Palmerston: "We have no eternal allies, and we have no perpetual enemies. Our interests are eternal and perpetual, and those interests it is our duty to follow."

Take Iran, for example: what do its leaders think are their nation's eternal and perpetual interests? To do what Washington (and, to be fair, many other governments too) wants them to do? Or to plough on with what looks to many like a secret nuclear weapons programme in order to emerge as a regional nuclear power?

Or take China. Where do its interests lie? In forming a strategic alliance with the US, or with continuing its economic development while keeping a firm lid on political pluralism?

If you were sitting in Beijing, or Tehran, or even Pyongyang, and the message came from Washington: "Hey, we've got a new guy in charge, and he wants to be friends", what would your immediate reaction be?

Would it be: "Oh, that's nice, let's tell him we want to be friends too", or would it be: "Hmm, how can we get something out of this?"

I don't want to over-simplify: it is perfectly possible, of course, for leaders to act in what they perceive to be their national interest and also to form alliances, or friendships, with former adversaries. But Palmerston's view was that it's the interests that come first, not the friendships.

Now, if you're the man in the White House - and you passionately believe that it should be possible to find common ground even with former adversaries - it can be a challenge to work out what to do if your faith in the power of shared interests isn't reciprocated.

What do you do about Iran, for example, if they seem to be stringing you along, saying that they might, one day, like to be your friend, but not just yet. What do you do about China, which seems to be making a lot of the right noises about reducing carbon gas emissions, but - again - not just yet.

"To jaw-jaw is always better than to war-war," was Churchill's too-often quoted maxim. But if the other lot don't fancy jaw-jaw, do you perhaps need a Plan B that stops short of war-war?

The Obama line is that it's still early days. It takes time to create a new global diplomatic discourse; no one should expect new friendships to be formed overnight. And the White House can claim some success: there's little doubt now that there will be a useful US-Russia nuclear stockpile reduction agreement soon, and Moscow seems to be closer to Washington than it used to be on the idea of some tougher sanctions against Iran.

We'll be returning to some of these questions in January, when we'll be taking stock of Obama's foreign policy achievements on the first anniversary of his inauguration, with the help of some of Washington's leading public policy pundits.

More on that nearer the time, but meanwhile, just a very brief toot on the trumpet: I wrote a month ago that I didn't think Tony Blair was going to be chosen as President of the EU Council. And last night, he wasn't.

Might all the fuss be the result of a mis-translation? I ask, following a letter in the Financial Times recently which pointed out that the French word "president" can be translated both as "president" and as "chairman", as in chairman of the board of directors of a company.

You could argue that the job description as at Article 9B of the Lisbon Treaty sounds rather more chairman-like than president-like.

Here's what it says:

The President of the European Council:
(a) shall chair it and drive forward its work;
(b) shall ensure the preparation and continuity of the work of the European
Council in cooperation with the President of the Commission, and on the
basis of the work of the General Affairs Council;
(c) shall endeavour to facilitate cohesion and consensus within the European
Council;
(d) shall present a report to the European Parliament after each of the meetings
of the European Council.

The President of the European Council shall, at his level and in that capacity,
ensure the external representation of the Union on issues concerning its common foreign and security policy, without prejudice to the powers of the High Representative of the Union for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy.

After all, the man who started this whole process rolling was former French president Valery Giscard d'Estaing. And I think we can safely assume that he wrote the original in French.

Now, fast forward to 2012. The opening ceremony of the London Olympics: 27 July. And just suppose it comes after two solid weeks of unusually heavy rain. Public transport has been disrupted, power supplies are down, in some places, food is running short. Could London cope? Are planners already trying to work out what they would do?

It would be what's known in the trade as a "low probability, high consequence event"; in other words, it's not very likely to happen, but if it does, it'll have very serious consequences. And it is directly relevant to the current debates over climate change, in the run-up to the international climate change conference to be held in Copenhagen next month.

I spent a day discussing all this at a conference earlier this week, organised jointly by The World Tonight, the foreign affairs think-tank Chatham House, the journal International Affairs, and the scientific academy The Royal Society. (You can hear the discussion that we broadcast at the end of the conference by clicking below.)

It was one of those conferences that leave you with plenty to think about. So here's some of what I learned:

-- Planners are already working on "worst case" climate change scenarios. They regard climate change as a "threat multiplier"; in other words, all the other challenges that we may face over the coming decades -- food security, access to clean water, increased demand for energy -- become even more acute because of climate change.

-- But traditional planning theory is based on the assumption that certain things will remain constant: rainfall in the future will be more or less the same as in the past; water flow in major rivers will remain pretty much what it was. If constants become variables as a result of climate change, how do you make your plans?

-- In the Himalayas, average temperatures are already rising much faster than elsewhere. Glaciers are melting rapidly, which means that water flow in the major rivers, which depends on ice melting in the summer, is already down by 60 per cent or more.

-- One quarter of all humanity depends on that water; and three of the nations in which those people live are nuclear powers: India, Pakistan, and China. Military forces in those countries are "war gaming" how they would deal with a major water crisis.

-- Black carbon, soot, is one of the major causes of warmer temperatures in the Himalaya region because millions of people heat their homes and cook their food on open fires. But black carbon is not a carbon gas, so it will form no part of the discussions at the Copenhagen conference next month.

-- The US Department of Energy has set up an Office of Intelligence and Counter-Intelligence to provide detailed analysis of all available data on energy and climate-related issues. The US government regards the possibility of climate change-inspired conflict as a major potential security threat.

-- Some intelligence officials worry about what they call "organisational adaptive disabilities"; in other words, they fear that governments simply aren't up to the job of dealing with some of the scenarios under consideration.

(Our editor, Alistair Burnett, has written about the reporting of climate change issues on the BBC Editors blog here.)

By the way, did you hear about the major power cuts that hit much of Brazil this week and left nearly 60 million people in the dark? Unusually strong storms brought down power lines, apparently, and knocked out all electricity supplies to Sao Paulo, Rio de Janeiro and several other major cities. (Brazil will host the World Cup in 2014 and the Olympics in 2016. Think about it ...)

But yes, I did pick up one bit of good news: the global economic slow-down has resulted in a significant reduction in the emission of carbon gases. We've got about four more years than would otherwise have been the case.

The shooting dead on Tuesday of five British servicemen by an Afghan police officer whom they'd been training seems to have brought to a head many of the nagging questions that a lot of people have been asking about the whole Afghan operation.

Can we trust them? Is it worth it? Might it be better just to leave them to get on with it?

In Washington and London, the answers from government are Yes, Yes, and No. As I write, Gordon Brown has just re-stated his government's determination to stay the course - Britain, he says, "will not be deterred, dissuaded or diverted."

Meanwhile, in Pakistan ...

The army is conducting a huge operation against Taliban fighters in the border region of South Waziristan. No foreign observers or reporters are allowed anywhere near the scene, other than on tightly-escorted trips ... so we have no idea what's happening. But it's hugely difficult terrain, and it has defeated countless military operations before.

The government has been told to its face, by Hillary Clinton on her recent visit, that Washington doubts its resolve in dealing with jihadi insurgents. Many Western analysts believe that some army elements are still quietly backing jihadis based in Punjab, close to the border with India, even as the military are battling against their fellow-jihadis at the other end of the country.

Why? Because to many of the military top brass, even after everything that has happened over the past two to three years, it's India that remains Public Enemy Number 1, not jihadi fighters. And if some jihadi groups can continue to make trouble for India in Kashmir - and let's not forget the attacks in Mumbai a year ago - well, that, they seem to think, is bound to be good for Pakistan.

Looked at from Rawalpindi, the Pakistani military HQ, India is a military giant: its standing army, including reservists, is more than 3 million strong, making it the second largest military force in the world, after China. And a substantial chunk of that military might is stationed along the border with Pakistan.

The Obama administration insists that it recognises the crises in Afghanistan and Pakistan as inextricably linked. Hence that ugly name AfPak for its strategic approach. But for the simple reason that there are US troops dying in Afghanistan, and not in Pakistan, that's where the attention is focused. (And because British troops are dying there too, we hear far more here about the Af than the Pak.)

So what flows from all this? Well, it's cerainly true that Pakistan is in a permanent state of crisis. It is used to weak government, rampant corruption and insecurity. I've lost count of the number of times I've read - or even written - that Pakistan is teetering on the brink of collapse.

Perhaps if the political leaders of Pakistan and India were able to do more to improve their relationship, then their military chiefs would stop glowering at each other with thousands of troops stationed more or less permanently on their borders. And then, perhaps, they could turn their attention to their domestic insurgents.

(The so-called Naxalite insurgency in India goes almost wholly unreported ... did you know, for example, that just a couple of months ago, India's Prime Minister Manmohan Singh described the Naxalites, or Maoists, as "perhaps the gravest internal security threat our country faces"?)

My point is this: yes, of course, Afghanistan has to remain the priority as long as our governments are sending troops there to fight and die. But Pakistan remains a serious issue, with a gruesome series of bomb attacks over recent weeks already beginning to dull the senses with their frequency.

Perhaps the fog will clear a bit after President Obama has announced what he intends to do about the US military's request for tens of thousands more troops for Afghanistan. But the truth is that there is no end in sight. And things could get a lot worse before they get better.

I was working for Reuters in Rome at the time, and was sitting quietly in the office minding my own business when a colleague from the Italian news agency ANSA, in whose building Reuters was then based, popped in to tell me the news. (In those days, ANSA didn't start up its news service till after lunch on Sundays - happy days!)

I phoned the police in Ostia to check it out, they confirmed what I had been told, and Reuters had the scoop. The police version of events was that Pasolini had picked up a young male prostitute in central Rome, taken him to Ostia for sex, and then the young man had attacked him and run him over in his own car, in which he was arrested some hours later.

But Italy in the 70s was a place rife with rumours. Pasolini was a man of the Left, and a dissident - many on the Left didn't believe the official version of how he met his death and suspected that political, even State-linked, opponents had killed him. As Geoff Andrews recalls in a fascinating piece at OpenDemocracy:

"Pasolini had made many enemies. In the weeks leading up to his murder he had condemned Italy's political class for its corruption, for neo-fascist conspiracy and for collusion with the Mafia. In articles for Corriere della Sera he had called for Italy's political class to be put on trial."

For a brief time, I was caught up in the maelstrom of rumour and counter-rumour. The investigating magistrate leading the inquiry into Pasolini's murder hauled me in for questioning: he wanted to know who exactly had told me of the film director's death and what they had said. I answered as best I could and heard no more about it.

But 30 years on, Pasolini's legions of admirers still insist that there are more questions that haven't been answered.

It was during the Lebanon war. Parliament was in recess, and many MPs were urging that the House of Commons should be recalled so that they could have an urgent debate. They were turned down, so that's where we stepped in.

We got 20 or so of them together, rented a hall just down the street from the Palace of Westminster, and held our own debate. We asked the Foreign Office to supply a Minister to reply, and they came up with Lord Triesman.

So for the first - and only - time, as far as I am aware, in British parliamentary history, a Minister who sat in the Lords was questioned by MPs. Now it seems, Parliament itself might follow our example.

I dreamt that a political analyst from Mars dropped by the studio - and this is what he told me:

"I have been studying your system of government here on Earth, and frankly, I can make no sense of it. I look at the maps, and I observe that you have divided your planet into lots of different countries, separated by borders, so I have tried to match these countries with how you people run your lives.

"I see that each country has its own separate governing structure (although I am puzzled by a place called Somalia, where there seems to be no structure at all).

"But I also see that in the continent called North America, you have something called NAFTA, which seems to link together three different countries called the United States of America, the United Mexican States (although I gather no one actually calls it that), and Canada. But they still have three separate governments. I understand that this NAFTA exists only for the purpose of commerce.

"And in the continent called Europe, you have something called the European Union, which doesn't have its own government, but which does have its own parliament. I have been reading that now it wants to have a President as well, although it still won't have a government. Apparently it has 27 different governments. Is this right?

" My understanding is that most people who live in this European Union want to keep their separate governments. I have read about referendums in which they said they didn't like their leaders' ideas.

"So I would like you please to explain: if your system is called democracy, which as I understand it means that ordinary people decide how they want to be governed, why are your leaders in Europe so determined to do something which most people don't want them to do?"

Also in my dream, there was a man from the European Union. This what he said in reply:

"My dear Mr Martian, I'm afraid you have it all wrong. The plans we have are the results of many years of discussions between all our different governments, each one of which has been fairly elected by the people they represent. That's why we call our system 'representative democracy'.

"In each country, people have had an opportunity to vote for parties with different ideas about how the EU should be run - but the parties they have chosen are those which have come up with the ideas which you seem to find so difficult to understand. For example, in the UK, there is a party called UKIP; in Ireland, there is a party called Sinn Fein. Neither of them is represented in government because neither of them got enough votes in a general election.

"You are right if you think that many European earthlings take little interest in how the EU is run. But they do like to be able to travel and trade freely across borders, and the people who run our businesses like being able to hire workers from wherever they are most readily available.

"I hope you are not making the mistake of believing everything you read in our newspapers, because they are not always reliable sources of information.

"When you were looking at your Earth map, did you notice a country called China? I ask, because it's becoming a major economic power, and we Europeans think we need to group ourselves together to make sure that China and the US don't decide for themselves how to run the world. As you will have noticed, European countries tend to be quite small, not like the US and China.

"What we EU leaders are doing is taking decisions which we believe to be in the best interests of the people who elected us. If they don't agree, they can vote for someone else. That's why we call our system democracy."

The man from Mars had one final question. "Please explain: why is it called the Lisbon Treaty?" And the man from the European Union replied: "I'm terribly sorry, I've completely forgotten."

And then I woke up. Funny things, dreams ...

Admittedly, they weren't sighs of relief from Afghan voters - I suspect most of them are far more preoccupied with keeping their families safe - but in Washington, London and points west, political leaders and diplomats could finally relax. Crisis over - for now.

Why was it such a crisis? Look at it this way - you're fighting a difficult, unpopular war with no end in sight. The man you're ostensibly there to help - and who occupies his Presidential office in no small part because he's the one you wanted there - has just been found to have pocketed nearly a million votes which, well, which sort of didn't really exist.

No wonder President Obama isn't quite ready yet to announce whether he's going to deploy tens of thousands more US troops to Afghanistan. It helps if the guys you're helping look as if they're at least half-way honest. (By the way, can anyone tell me the difference between "examining all the options with due consideration", which is what Mr Obama apparently does, and "dithering hopelessly", which is what Gordon Brown is said to be prone to? I merely ask ...)

I'm not naïve. I don't expect a perfect electoral exercise in Afghanistan. But I have the impression that Washington and London both felt that Mr Karzai had really let the side down. It was all so obvious, somehow - and he probably would have won anyway, without all the fiddling.

So US vice-president Joe Biden and US special envoy Richard Holbrooke got heavy with him. It seems angry words were spoken, but Mr Karzai is a proud man who doesn't like being pushed around. For weeks, he refused to budge.

It was Senator John Kerry, the man whom George W Bush beat in 2004, who eventually appears to have been able to sweet-talk the Afghan president into accepting a second round run-off.

Problem solved? Fraid not. Even if the second round is better run than the first round was, and even if Mr Karzai wins a cleaner victory, there's still the small matter of the Taliban, the warlords and the drug barons to deal with. And let's not forget: just across the border, the Pakistani army has now swung into action in South Waziristan, hoping that this time it'll manage to dislodge the tribal and Taliban commanders who so often in the past have defeated it.

So Afghanistan is still a mess. And as the US commander General Stanley McChrystal has pointed out, the people of Afghanistan will be reluctant to offer their wholehearted support to the US-led military effort until they are sure that the international community is in this for the long haul. After all, would you put your eggs in Washington's basket if you thought there was a chance the US might change its mind within the next few months?

Here's the point. The outcome of the Presidential election isn't what matters. What matters is that Washington makes up its mind what it wants to do and then does it. The anti-US forces have a clear objective: foreign troops out. I suspect there's a need for the same degree of clarity from the international military command.

And on an entirely unrelated matter: for what it's worth, I don't think Tony Blair is going to get the job of President of the European Council, even if, eventually, President Klaus of the Czech Republic signs the Lisbon Treaty. I can't put my finger on anything specific ... I just don't think it's going to happen.

Oh, and if you thought I'd be writing about the BNP this week, sorry to disappoint you, but I sort of feel that enough has been already been written, at least for now. Perhaps another time ...

Then, just a few days ago, he wrote, apropos Switzerland's current travails: "Most of the European countries that seem to be suffering in the new political and economic climate seem to be small states: Iceland, Ireland, the Balts, the Swiss. Why?"

So here's a question for you, Gideon: has the banking melt-down caused you to change your mind?

UPDATE: With his usual elegance and style, Gideon has recanted in today's column. He concludes: "Big is beautiful again."

There's a fascinating -- and detailed -- picture of the Gaza tunnel economy in the latest edition of the London Review of Books.

Five major attacks in 10 days; more than 150 people dead. Coordinated attacks in Lahore, close to the Indian border; Rawalpindi, where the army is headquartered; and Peshawar, close to the Afghan border. (There are reports of another attack in Peshawar as I write this.) If this what the Taliban look like when they're on the run, which is what Pakistani officials have been claiming, I'd hate to see them when they're at full strength.

On the other hand, it does seem that they have been taking quite a beating. The Pakistani army have wrested back control of the Swat Valley region, even though it's clear that some Taliban fighters remain. And they - or rather an unmanned US drone - did manage to kill the Taliban leader, Baitullah Mehsud, in August.

Has it weakened the Taliban? Probably - but clearly not to the extent that they are no longer capable of mobilising gunmen and suicide bombers across the country. Are the Taliban worried about the prospect of the major threatened military offensive in South Waziristan? Again, probably - but what we've seen over the past 10 days could well be their way of saying to the Pakistani government and military: If you come to get us, we can come to get you.

It's said that there are around 28,000 Pakistani troops available for the South Waziristan operation - and there are thought to be around 10,000 Taliban and al-Qaeda fighters in the region. Civilians are already fleeing, ahead of the expected onslaught, just as they did from the Swat Valley.

But no one in Pakistan thinks this is a war that can be won by military means alone. That's why just last night, President Obama signed the law which will provide $1.5 billion a year in non-military aid to Pakistan, making it the third biggest recipient of US aid after Israel and Egypt.

So what now for Washington's Af-Pak strategy? Well, President Obama may be announcing within the next week what he's decided to do about troop levels in Afghanistan - I expect him to announce a substantial increase, but their deployment may be time-limited, and he may set "bench-marks" for the Afghan political and military leadership to meet.

One intriguing hint last night: the Afghan ambassador in Washington suggested that there may, after all, be a second round in the Presidential election, after the allegations of widespread fraud in the first round. If he's right, it could be seen as a significant concession to US and other critics - although the final outcome will still be the same: Hamid Karzai will still be President.

I suggest that over the coming months, you keep half an eye on the American political timetable. This time next year will be the run-up to the mid-term Congressional elections: and if the Democrats are to retain control of Congress, President Obama will want to have a good news message from Afghanistan.

And a year after that, he'll be embarking on his re-election campaign for a second term in the White House. What he'll want more than anything will be to be able to say: "I can tell the American people that our military involvement in Afghanistan is coming to an end. Our security - and the security of the Afghan people - can now be left in the hands of the Afghans themselves."

Which will leave just one, big problem: what will be happening next door in Pakistan, a nuclear-armed state with a deeply-entrenched jihadi insurgency?

That's why I said that what's happening there is extremely serious.

Let's pretend we've already had the general election - and let's pretend that the Conservatives have won.

So David Cameron is in Downing Street. And let's pretend that he invites a few EU leaders over for tea. There'll be Nicolas Sarkozy from France, Angela Merkel from Germany, Silvio Berlusconi from Italy (well, if he's still around by then), and maybe Donald Tusk from Poland and Fredrik Reinfeldt from Sweden as well.

What do they all have in common? They're each and every one of them leaders of centre-right parties - and even if they were joined round the Downing Street dining room table by the leaders of Finland, Denmark, the Netherlands, Belgium and Austria, they'd still all share the same basic political philosophy.

Europe is now an overwhelmingly centre-right place to be. Of the major EU countries, only Spain bucks the trend: there, the Socialists were comfortably re-elected last year even as the country was in the grip of a very nasty recession. (The left has also just regained power in Greece.)

So here's the question: why, at a time when capitalism and free market economies are going through a major crisis, are left-of-centre parties being defeated again and again?

In the past, wouldn't they have been leading the charge against an economic system that has brought so much turbulence and uncertainty - and often real financial hardship as well - to so many millions of lives?

Last week, at the Labour party conference in Brighton, I heard Gordon Brown talk about how Labour would look after ordinary, hard-working, middle class families. This week, I heard David Cameron talk about how the Tories' top priority is to look after the poorest people in Britain.

And I was tempted to look for a mirror, because I found myself wondering if politics is now reversing itself. And if so, why? Might it be that one reason why left-of-centre parties aren't doing better during the current crisis is that they're no longer saying the sort of things they used to say? And that centre-right parties are saying what centre-left parties used to say?

Or do voters take the view that if you need someone to sort out a capitalist mess, you'd better get people who really understand capitalism to do it? Or was Francis Fukuyama really on to something when he suggested that the end of Communism in Europe meant the end of history?

Some political writers have been arguing for years now that the terms "right" and "left" no longer mean much. But there clearly are still real differences in how political parties look at the world: David Cameron says, as Ronald Reagan used to say, that Big Government is the Big Problem; Gordon Brown says that although he accepts that governments should never try to do what they can't do, they should never fail to do what they need to do.

There have, of course, been major social and economic changes throughout Europe over the past 30 years. Hundreds of thousands of jobs in traditional heavy industries like steel-making, coal-mining and ship-building have gone, and with them has gone the central role of trades unions and their political party allies.

So I'm not surprised that the shape of politics has changed too. But I do think it's interesting to look at our forthcoming election battle through a European prism. The UK is no stranger to bucking European trends, so I wouldn't dream of suggesting that because the left is in retreat across much of the European continent, it will head in the same direction on this side of the Channel.

But in our game of Let's Pretend, if David Cameron does find himself hosting that Downing Street tea party, he'll know that - Lisbon Treaty or no Lisbon Treaty - he just may have been part of a political transition that extends well beyond our shores.

Yesterday, in Geneva, during more than seven hours of talks, Iran seemed to be keen to defuse what looked like becoming a major new bone of contention.

According to a "senior US official", Iran has accepted a proposal - not about the Qom plant but about a much older one in Tehran - that, if implemented, "would be a positive interim step to help build confidence". (The full US background briefing is available here.)

The key questions were: would Iran agree to allow UN inspectors free access to the Qum plant? And would it agree to a proposal that it should export its known stocks of low-enriched uranium (LEU) to Russia, where it would be further enriched to allow it to be used for medical purposes but not for weapons?

The answers to both questions appear to be Yes. The New York Times reported: "Iran's agreement in principle to export most of its enriched uranium for processing -- if it happens -- would represent a major accomplishment for the West, reducing Iran's ability to make a nuclear weapon quickly and buying more time for negotiations to bear fruit."

By the way, a word about the people the Iranians were talking to yesterday. They are sometimes described as the E3 + 3 (in other words, three European nations - Britain, France and Germany - plus three others: the US, Russia, and China), or as the P5 + 1 (the five permanent members of the UN Security Council - the US, Russia, China, Britain and France - plus one other: Germany). It adds up, of course, to the same thing.

And just a thought about sanctions. Iran has been told that it has until the end of the year to satisfy the Security Council that it's not secretly developing nuclear weapons, or face the threat of tighter UN sanctions.

But if you look back at what sanctions did to Iraq under Saddam Hussein, or Zimbabwe (Southern Rhodesia as it was then) under Ian Smith, or Cuba under Fidel Castro (49 years and counting), it's evident that sanctions rarely do what they're designed to do.

And Iran has a neighbour, Iraq, with a very long border and a government that is more than friendly. No wonder many Western diplomats feel that the carrot may work better than the stick.

I refer, of course, to the Land Beyond the Ring of Steel, the Land of the Labour Party Conference. It is a Strange and Peculiar Land where Politics is All.

Outside, the Sun shone and the Sea glistened. But inside, the Select Few were filled with Foreboding: their Mood was Dark and the Clouds were Gathering. (Enough capital letters, thank you. Ed.)

It's been a strange few days. For one brief moment - after a gloriously over-the-top, end-of-pier performance by Peter Mandelson - it looked as if the conference delegates might have been ready to start smiling again. But Gordon Brown's speech on Tuesday didn't seem to deliver the goods - and then The Sun (the newspaper, not the bright yellow thing in the sky) went and ruined everything by announcing in that under-stated way it has: Labour's Lost It.

By May of next year, the expected date of the election, Labour will have been in power for 13 years. By British political standards, that's a very long time. With only one exception - the Conservatives between 1979 and 1997 - you'd have to go back to the days of Lord Liverpool and the Duke of Wellington (1812-1830) to find a single party remaining in power for longer. (The Tories also lasted for 13 years between 1951 and 1964.)

So it wouldn't exactly be surprising if voters decide next year that Labour's time is up. I wouldn't expect the party to accept that publicly, but maybe it helps to explain the slight dream-like air of unreality in the Brighton Conference Centre.

I went round asking delegates how they would describe their mood. Nearly all of them insisted bravely that they were ready for a fight and in good heart. They said they have a "good story to tell" - the story of accomplishments that Gordon Brown rattled off at break-neck speed at the start of his speech on Tuesday.

The winter fuel allowance, national minimum wage, Sure Start, civil partnerships, shorter NHS waiting times, less crime, better school exam results ... how can voters not be grateful for all that?

But they know the answer, of course. First, voters never say Thank You - not even to Winston Churchill at the end of the Second World War (which Mr Brown is reported to spend a lot of time brooding about). And second, after a bruising recession, with rising unemployment, and a Prime Minister who has claimed for more than a decade that he was uniquely able to steer an economy and abolish "boom and bust", well, gratitude is in short supply.

Two more thoughts: Labour is still in thrall to the US Democratic Party (at least when it wins elections). The original New Labour project owed a huge debt to Bill Clinton's New Democrats - and when I saw Sarah Brown do her Michelle Obama thing ("he's messy and noisy" - Sarah B; "he doesn't put his dirty socks in the laundry or put the butter away after breakfast" - Michelle O), it was clear that nothing has changed.

And finally, still in transatlantic compare and contrast mode, it seems you do need to be an actor these days to be a successful political leader: Reagan and Clinton were, and Obama is; Thatcher and Blair were, Brown ... well, he isn't.

It wasn't a disastrous conference for Labour, and I suspect most delegates did feel a bit better at the end of it than at the beginning. But was it the beginning of a long fight-back to electoral victory?

What do you think?