Last week this guy Barack Obama gave a speech to both houses of Congress, but that was just a curtain-raiser, it turns out, for the moment today when Gordon Brown does the same. It's the speech of his political career, and all eyes in Westminster will be watching. So will a handful of Americans too, maybe, perhaps! Brown will become only the fifth British PM in history to address Congress, after Churchill, Attlee, Thatcher and Blair, and he's expected to use the speech to warn against protectionism and call on America to "seize the moment" when the world wants to work with it to reshape the future (though he still won't apologise for the present). Will America listen? Domestically speaking, will Brown pull off a reputation-boosting winner? Will Congress give him 37,000 standing ovations, like they did for Tony Blair? Will Joe Biden, who'll be in the audience, lighten the mood with some kind of "hilarious" introductory comment? Come back here from 11am eastern time, 4pm uk time for what can only be described, quite literally, as a liveblog.
