David Cameron today launched an attack on Gordon Brown’s strength, claiming that, “for Mr Brown it is always politics before government. Such a partisan approach is not a strength but a weakness”.

The Leader of the Opposition was writing for today’s Sunday Times, claiming that the Conservatives are ready for an election, and that “if Mr Brown was deciding whether to call an election on the basis of a sincere evaluation of the national interest, he would not have spent the past few days poring over opinion polls. You don’t need a focus group to tell you what the country needs.”

And Dan Hannan MEP was also on the offensive on his blog this morning:

“Did you see Gordon Brown just now? What a berk! What an arse! It wasn’t so much the fact that he was fibbing: he’s been doing that for weeks, with his preposterous claims about “being totally focused on governing the country” and “not thinking about the election”. No, it was the way he took us all for fools. What does he mean, he wants a mandate for change? If he’d wanted such a mandate, he’d have called an election immediately after taking office”.