A few days before Christmas last year, I penned a piece for Jewcy outlining the similarities between the Democratic frontrunner, Hillary Clinton, and the new British PM, Gordon Brown. The analysis was sound enough, but I trust you didn't put any money on the outcome. Hillary is dead and now merely awaiting burial, and Brown --- well, more on him in a moment. The focus has now shifted squarely onto the men who will lead the opposition into the next elections, Barack Obama and the British Tories' David Cameron.

David Cameron And BoJo: The Tory leader with the new Mayor of London: "Yes we can" elect toffs from the Bullingdon Club, Britons say Despite the real difficulty in reading across from one political system to another, commentators can't resist looking across the Atlantic and trying to divine trends that might be replicated in their own backyards. Making comparisons is usually a mugs game but, watching the progress of the two young pretenders, it's hard to avoid the similarities between them. (And keep in mind, despite the notions that the Democrats are the "left" party and Conservatives the "right" party in their respective countries, that the Tories are well to the left of the Democrats on a range of issues.) Young, charismatic and photogenic, both have turned their relative inexperience --- Cameron only entered the House of Commons in 2001 --- into positive strengths by running as outsiders against the system, a common trick in the US, where "I'll go and clean up Washington politics" is a cry as old as the hills, but more innovative over here. (David Cameron, in his own small way, is fighting against prejudice, too; doubts persist as to whether 21^st century Britain is really ready to elect a true upper-class toff as Prime Minister.)

In this regard, moreover, they have been fortunate in their enemies. After the best part of a decade as sidekicks to the men in the top jobs, both Hillary and Gordon have found it expedient to play up their experience when it suits them, and claim to have been mowing the lawn when it doesn't. So Brown built Britain's economic success, not Blair, but was careful to distance himself from the Iraq war; Hillary played a vital but unsung role in the Northern Ireland peace process, but behind the scenes she was fighting NAFTA tooth and nail, and so on. This is a fine balancing act, but the message has been spelled out time and again with shattering unsubtlety: We've been round the block more times than we care to remember, but our experience could make the difference in a time of economic crisis or national security emergency. These guys, by contrast, are just empty suits.

Both, however, have found the electorate less gullible than they had imagined. "The experience to deliver change" may have sounded cute in a strategy meeting, but voters have a reasonably cultivated nose for bullshit and saw right through it. Obama put it best when he said that "there are some in this race who actually make the argument that the more time you spend immersed in the broken politics of Washington, the more likely you are to change it. I always find this a little amusing." Cameron, too, talks incessantly of "broken politics", and of rebuilding the trust between government and governed.

Again, these are hardly the most original of tropes, but both Cameron and Obama find it much easier to talk this sort of language than their opponents, not just because they are untainted by the failures of previous generations of politicians to change the way politics works, but because they are naturals in a way that Tony and Bill were before them and that Gordon and Hillary clearly are not. Trying to attack them for lacking substance, as their enemies constantly do, is almost to miss the point. The same charge was levelled at Clinton I, Blair, Reagan and Kennedy. But all of those men had the force of personality to shape the political narrative around them and, crucially, all were running against opponents who were selling experience at a time when voters actually wanted to buy change. So when Conservative critics try to belittle David Cameron by scoffing that he is merely Tony Blair mark two, Labour fear that he might be exactly that.

Some Labour politicians are beginning to come to the view that the only way to defeat Cameron's Conservatives is to ditch the current incumbent and pick a new face unsullied by association with the past. Republicans have gone down a different route, but while their guy is hardly fresh, neither is he a standard establishment figure who represents business as usual. Whether Barack Obama's somewhat woolly charm will work against an unpredictable figure like McCain is anyone's guess, particularly given both candidates' appeal among independents. This time I'm making no predictions and keeping my money in my pocket.

Political analysts like to talk about "change elections"; 1980 and 1992 in the US, 1979 and 1997 in Britain. Both November 2008 and our own British election, whenever it comes, will be "change elections," all right. But in reality, every election is a balance between those who want change and those who do not; the laws of political entropy dictate that eventually the former will outweigh the latter. It is the joint misfortune of Hillary Clinton and Gordon Brown to be cast as establishment candidates in a time when anti-establishment feeling is running high, and that's why he will probably join her on the scrapheap before too long.

On May 1^st, Londoners go to the polls to elect a new Mayor. London’s only ever had one: Ken Livingstone. From the moment the Blair government announced its desire to shake up the city’s system of government in the late 1990s, and despite their subsequent efforts to block him from the job, he was the obvious candidate. An unabashed hard-leftist who made his name fighting Thatcherism in local government, “Red Ken” is, whatever else may be said about him - of which more in a moment - something of an original.

I’m no fan of Livingstone or his politics, to put it mildly, but any fair assessment of his record over two terms in the job must include a number of positives. He has fulfilled his brief in helping to build and maintain London’s status as unquestionably the world’s most vibrant and dynamic capital city. His flagship policy, the $15-a-day congestion charge for London’s notorious traffic, is certainly not without its detractors, but has inspired similar schemes worldwide. And he played a high-profile role in securing the 2012 Olympic Games for the city.

The very next day, when suicide bombers killed 52 on Livingstone’s LondonRed Ken (L) and Red-faced Boris (R): Two outsized personalities that deserve one another transport system, the mayor made a stirring speech in which he vowed to the extremists that "whatever you do, however many you kill, you will fail." But just two weeks later, he was sympathizing with (though not endorsing) suicide bombings against Israelis, noting that "the Palestinians don't have jet planes, don't have tanks, they only have their bodies to use as weapons", and asking why home-grown jihadists who went to “defend [their] Palestinian brothers and sisters” were any worse than British Jews who enlisted in the Israeli army.

That wasn't the first or the last time Ken put his foot in his mouth or made a questionable judgment call. The most high-profile incident was a suspension from office (later successfully appealed) for comparing a Jewish reporter to “a concentration camp guard," but there have been many others. A long-time sympathizer with the aims and methods of the IRA, he has also used his office to promote links with, and visits by, Muslim clerics such as Sheikh Yusuf al-Qaradawi (who has ruled that unborn Israeli children are legitimate targets for ‘martyrdom operations’, as they will one day wear a uniform), and last year he signed a co-operation agreement with his buddy Hugo Chavez to provide “expertise” in town planning and public transport in return for discounted oil for London’s buses. Even among his natural allies on the left, there has been real disquiet about the way he operates, with widespread allegations of cronyism and corruption. The recent resignation of his race relations adviser has only added to the sense among many that his time as London Mayor should be brought to a close.

This year, for the first time, Ken faces a genuine challenge to retain his job. Up against him is one of the few politicians in the country who is also instantly recognizable by his first name alone: Boris Johnson, a Tory MP who fits the clichéd label “maverick” almost as well as the incumbent. A staple of TV quiz shows and the gossip columns of the press, Boris is an irresistibly buffoonish figure whose initial expression of interest in the job was treated as something of a joke. But the realization has grown that he is in with a real chance of winning; opinion polls have them neck and neck six weeks out from the poll. Opponents in politics and media cannot quite decide whether to deride him as a bumbling toff or warn darkly of a hidden right-wing agenda waiting to be unleashed on the unsuspecting citizens of the capital.

“Better the devil you know” seems to be the rallying cry for candidates on both sides of the Atlantic right now. No one would claim that the race for London Mayor is anything like as important as the American election, of course, but it’s getting just as dirty, and it’s going to be even harder to call.