Brown previews his big speech

Today is G-Day, and Gordon is doing the rounds of the broadcasters before his big speech this afternoon. Up against Sky’s Adam Boulton, Brown led off, as he did on Marr yesterday, on the “personalised” NHS – although when Adam mentioned that this very New Labour approach to health reform had been welcomed by Peter Mandelson at a meeting last night, the PM could barely muster a nod of disgusted recognition.

On election timing, he was positively sharp in response to Adam’s perfectly legitimate questions: “The first person I shall talk to is The Queen and not Sky TV.” Let’s remember that promise if, by chance, the date is actually announced in due course on the front page of a red-top newspaper. At any rate, the PM is conspicuously leaving open his options. If he is frustrated by the extent to which election fever dominates the papers this morning, he only has himself to blame.