Signs of a split?

In the Guardian, Andrew Sparrow has Downing Street contradicting the Observer's story yesterday that Bush and Brown were at odds over Iraq troop withdrawals.

It's hard to know who to believe, although George has a point when he reminds us that Gordon promised last October that troops would be cut in the spring.

The Observer also interpreted George Bush's comments about Brown's plan for a series of meetings on the oil price as critical of Brown:

Bush called it an 'interesting idea', but warned against expectations of any major short-term improvement and made it clear he had no plans to go. 'I'm going to go home and take a look at what it all means and I'll decide who's going to attend on our behalf,' Bush said.

He had already been urging King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia to increase production. But he said: 'There's no magic wand. It took us a while to get to where we are. It's going to take us a while to get out of it. And the truth of the matter is that there's either got to be more supply or less demand. And demand doesn't decline overnight' - particularly with 'big consumers of hydrocarbons' such as China 'subsidising their populations'.

There must have been a lot of spin on this as it doesn't look overly critical to me.