Down to business: Obama holds talks with Cameron and Miliband

Libya and Afghanistan will top the agenda at tomorrow’s talks between President Obama and David Cameron. Over there, some think we’re getting a bit frisky about leaving Afghanistan and that our defence cuts package looked too severe. Some here think the US has been “leading from the back” on Libya.

Well, the two men get 30 minutes minimum together in Downing Street tomorrow to talk through that and other stuff. Nick Clegg waits dutifully outside the door until that’s over … he then comes in to get 20 minutes in the room with the other two. Then there’s a larger meeting, a very large one by the sound of it, in the Cabinet room before the barbecue in the garden (President and Prime Minister with the serving tongs).

So where are we on Libya? Two weeks ago there was an important stock-take meeting in No. 10 on how the whole thing was going. Did it need a re-think, acceleration, escalation?

The escalation option was not seriously considered. The “troops on the ground” option is still not in the realms of reality for the government. Neither are other types of escalation like directly supplying the rebels with arms or mercernaries, attacking oil fields. Instead, the government has decided on “intensification,” trying to do more from the air, looking again at “targetting directives” and, as with the helicopter deployment story that triggered an urgent question in the Commons this afternoon, looking at the deployment of different equipment. (Nick Harvey told the Commons that there was no decision yet taken on the helicopter deployment and the French briefing was wrong.)

Why didn’t they escalate? Why was the stock-take content to carry on with a strategy which, to some eyes, looks like it is freezing a situation not advancing it? Well, the stock-take heard that there were signs that Gaddafi was trying to find ways of importing fuel. There have been defections, signs that the bombing got sufficiently close to Gaddafi that he had to change his location and then other bits of intelligence gleaned that suggest the pressure is hitting home.

Word has already wafted across Westminster of a triumphant meeting between Ed Miliband and President Obama (in Buckingham Palace, Douglas Alexander and Harriet Harman also in attendance). You measure the presidential love on these occasions by the meeting time over-run and Team Miliband is suggesting that a meeting that was expected to be about 20 minutes long inflated to 40 minutes. They discussed the “squeezed middle”, we are told, though that was introduced as a subject by Ed Miliband. Like David Cameron, Ed Miliband wants to show affinity with the President who outscores all-comers in British popularity ratings (we have a YouGov poll on this tomorrow).

David Cameron would love anything that looks like an endorsement for his own deficit reduction plan. Tomorrow’s press conference is the moment for that. We’ll see if he gets it.