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Talking about religion

• Justin Webb
• 3 Apr 08, 09:50 PM GMT

There should be nothing surprising about John McCain's . It is, after all, one of the areas where he can differentiate himself from his predecessor. He has noted as well, no doubt, that the Republican Party was not desperately well served by its religious wing in 2006 - perhaps he feels the Bible Thumpers could do with a period in the shade. He stands at around 6, I see, on the , which seems about right.

But homilies about faith might well be absent this year: this is, after all, going to be the first US presidential election of the 21st Century involving two candidates both of whom accept the scientific truth of evolution - which the outside world (except the Islamic world, I suppose) may well see as progress.

Meanwhile, on the other side of the Atlantic, Tony Blair has . His situation is the opposite of the US recent experience - to talk of religion while in office in the UK is to mark yourself down as weird, as the Guardian notes: "The speech was his first and most detailed public statement on religion, a subject his most senior advisers told him to avoid during his decade-long premiership."

And the man who brought us The Office has .

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Democratic misery

• Justin Webb
• 3 Apr 08, 10:45 AM GMT

is probably dodgy but you do have to wonder whether the Democratic voters of Pennsylvania (Deer Hunters among them) might be preparing to take a rather adult decision and put the party out of its misery.

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