Cameron: Economic situation a "national emergency".

Jon Sopel Presenter The Politics Show

Hello from Washington...

David Cameron in an interview for the Politics Show, with Jon Sopel... In pictures

As a journalist you always want to be where the big story is.

Nothing beats the thrill of seeing history as it's made. It's what makes this job so exciting.

It's what makes up for all those early starts, late nights in the edit suite and (whisper it quietly) even cancelled holidays.

So I'm here in Washington, watching and waiting to see if Congress passes President Bush's bail out plan at the second time of asking.

Either they pump billions of dollars of tax-payers money into rescuing the banks. Or Wall Street goes off a cliff. The first is frankly un-American. The second is frankly unimaginable.

Churchill once said that the Americans always do the right thing, after they have exhausted all possible alternatives.

We'll find out later what they think the right thing is. We will all have to live with the consequences.

"Oh Mandy..."

Peter Mandelson - returns to Cabinet

So that's great, I thought. I'm right at the heart of it. Only yards away from the floor of Congress itself. The big story is mine, all mine.

So imagine what I felt when my Blackberry trilled with the news that Peter Mandelson is back in the Cabinet. You may have heard the sharp crack of my jaw hitting the sidewalk from the other side of the Atlantic.

The fate of the world economy hangs by a thread here in Washington. But I yearn to be back at Westminster for this one.

So I'm trying to do both.

The vote here is later this afternoon. Then it's the red-eye overnight to Heathrow for this week's Politics Show.

I'll be talking to the Conservative leader, David Cameron.

Boris Johnson speaks exclusively to the Politics Show on Sunday

Also, to Labour's Deputy Leader, Harriet Harman and the Mayor of London, Boris Johnson.

All at the slightly later time of 13.30 on Sunday - because of BBC One's coverage of the Great North Run.

That might give me time to fit in a shower and a quick change of clothes. I'm going to be talking to two ex-Etonians and a former St Paul's schoolgirl after all.

See you then...

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