DAVID CAMERON has secured a party conference season coup by persuading John McCain, a frontrunner in the race to be the next President of America, to address the Conservatives’ annual gathering in Bournemouth next month.

In another move that enables the Tories to claim that they are now being taken seriously as potentially the next government of Britain, Mr McCain, the war hero who has emerged as a leading Republican candidate to succeed President Bush, will speak on the opening day of the conference.

Senior Conservatives are delighted at the most obvious evidence that the chill in relations between the Conservatives and the Republicans when Michael Howard was in charge may be over, and that the thaw will be complete when Mr Bush stands down. The Bush White House was furious at what it saw as a weakening under Mr Howard in Tory support for the Iraq War.

The agreement comes amid increasing signs that Mr Cameron’s Conservatives are regarded abroad as candidates for power. The leadership is building contacts with overseas governments and is detecting a growing interest in what it is doing, senior party sources say.

The McCain visit is one of a series of top-level meetings with foreign politicians. Last week Mr Cameron met Nelson Mandela in South Africa. This week George Osborne, the Shadow Chancellor, travels to Japan to meet Shinzo Abe, expected to be the next Japanese prime minister, and next week Mr Cameron and Mr Osborne will travel together to India to meet Manmohan Singh, the Prime Minister.

Mr Osborne, who heard Mr McCain speak at the 2004 Republican convention, saw him in London last year and showed him around the Commons. That was when the idea of him speaking at the conference was raised and Mr Cameron has since issued an invitation that has been accepted.

The easing in relations between the Republicans and Conservatives began in earnest this year when Mr Osborne, William Hague, the Shadow Foreign Secretary, and Liam Fox, the Shadow Defence Secretary, went to Washington. They were given a warm reception at the White House by, among others, Karl Rove, the deputy chief of staff, who reportedly left Mr Howard’s aides an angry voicemail in 2004 saying that the then Tory leader was not welcome in Washington.

On that visit Mr Hague made some calculated criticism of US foreign policy without upsetting his hosts, dealing with the challenge that faced the Tories of restoring ties while not alienating British voters deeply hostile to Mr Bush.

Mr McCain, the Arizona senator, has recently been trying to win support from Wall Street with a series of speeches and meetings as he prepares to run for the presidency in 2008. He has a reputation for independence of mind and has been critical of some of Mr Bush’s policies.

MILITARY RECORD

Candidates for the Republican nomination may also include Chuck Hagel of Nebraska, Newt Gingrich, Rudolph Giuliani, the former Mayor of New York, and Mitt Romney, the Governor of Massachusetts

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