Political weather forecasters are sniffing the breeze and wondering if it portends a change in the climate. The politicians themselves certainly think it may.

There are two major gatherings this weekend - one starts in Washington DC on Sunday while the other concludes in Britain's Buckinghamshire.

At the meeting of the International Democrat Union in Washington, centre-right parties from across the world are celebrating what appears to be a significant electoral switch in their direction.

George Bush is in the White House. Right-wingers are in government in Spain, Italy, Australia, and have recently taken over in Denmark, Norway, the Netherlands, and Portugal.

French voters going to the polls today to elect a new Parliament seem all but certain to repeat the crushing defeat of the socialists in last month's Presidential election. Later this year, a right-winger may well unseat Gerhard Schroeder as German Chancellor.

Delivery

Plenty to celebrate - though not perhaps for the chairman of the meeting, William Hague, for whom it's all come a year too late.

Mr Hague told the World This Weekend there was a clear trend of centre right parties notching up electoral success.

"A very important part of it is the failure of the left or centre left governments to deliver," said Mr Hague.

"That is at a time of economic growth and they have not actually been able to fulfil the expectations people had of them."

Britain has so far missed out on the right's success elsewhere but Mr Hague argued the UK was just at a different point in the political cycle.

Meanwhile, in Buckinghamshire, Tony Blair has called a meeting of his centre-left allies to ask why it's all gone so wrong, and so quickly.

The chairman of those talks, former cabinet minister Peter Mandelson, told the World This Weekend that the "third way" did provide a real ideological underpinning, which needed to be explained more emphatically.

Also on today's programme the conflict between India and Pakistan, has sharply reminded us of the threat of nuclear war.

Do India and Pakistan realise just how dreadful nuclear war can be? As Andrew Bomford reports they seem to regard it as merely an escalation of conventional conflict, not as something altogether different and devastating.

Click on the links above right to hear highlights from today's programme.