Aaand they're off!

Last weekend was Labour day across the pond. To The Monocle, Labour day (or Labor Day if you will) is the moment in which New York City stops being a blissful, empty adventure playground and fills up once again with a**holes back from their Hamptons house shares. To the names on the 2008 sign-up sheet hung outside the Cafeteria of Destiny, Labor Day heralds the gunshot that starts the sprint to the primaries.

From here till what will seem like the end of time and is in fact next January, candidates will be careering along at warp speed, and political commentators will be frantically interpreting their every move. A new haircut, a new stump speech, a new voice-pitch, a particular tie...all will create first furious gossip, then serious analysis in the New York Times. Though surely no candidate would be s'darn foolhardy as to get a new haircut this late in the game. Which means it's probably all over for John Edwards: