Two-horse race

Whether the derby is at Epsom, Kentucky, Westminster or the White House, nothing beats a close race. This humble space at the foot of the leader columns is happy for others better qualified to explain the sudden fall from grace of the people's party on this side of the Atlantic, and merely rejoices in the prospect that the next election may be a damned close-run thing. One landslide per decade is quite enough.

Whether the derby is at Epsom, Kentucky, Westminster or the White House, nothing beats a close race. This humble space at the foot of the leader columns is happy for others better qualified to explain the sudden fall from grace of the people's party on this side of the Atlantic, and merely rejoices in the prospect that the next election may be a damned close-run thing. One landslide per decade is quite enough.

And so it is in America, too. Al Gore came out of last month's presidential nominating conventions with a double-digit lead over his Republican rival, threatening to turn the two-month electoral season into his own victory canter. Now, however, with the speed of British summer turnarounds in the opinion polls, his challenger for the White House, George W Bush, has caught up.

The reasons don't matter much at this great distance - American analysts tell us that it has something to do with Gore saying that his mother-in-law paid three times as much for the same drug used to treat his dog; we believe an especially winsome grin by Dubya on the Oprah Winfrey show may have been the remaking of the boy. Anyway, we've got a horse race on our hands again. Newspapers love one; so do the voters. If only it stays that way until 7 November.