The Conservatives gather for their conference in Manchester this week knowing that the next election is for them to lose. Nothing that happened at Labour's gathering in Brighton changed the settled conviction among most of the government's senior figures that they are headed for defeat.

By choosing yesterday to announce that Gordon Brown will take part in leaders' television debates, Labour was clearly hoping to do a spoiler on the Tory conference build-up. Yet that was also a further sign of Number 10's desperation about the government's unpopularity. No previous prime minister has conceded to a debate because no previous prime minister has wanted to give equality of status to his opponents. Mr Brown has agreed to head-to-head combat with the other leaders only because he has...