David Cameron will tomorrow slip into the White House without fanfare for a low-key behind-closed-doors meeting with President Bush, his first since becoming Tory leader.

Yesterday aides were still insisting - in public at least - that they did not know if Mr Bush would have time to see him. The White House itself, apparently irritated by what they see as “pre-trip spin” coming from the Conservative Party, has steadfastedly declined to comment.

However, it is understood that Mr Cameron will be granted a short meeting with Mr Bush, probably without a photo-call or joint press statement.

Conservative aides are acutely aware of the danger of repeating Neil Kinnock’s disastrous trip to the White House in 1987 when President Reagan’s spokesman briefed the then Labour leader.

Mr Cameron’s visit to Washington tomorrow will be the first by a Tory party leader since Iain Duncan Smith in 2002. In the intervening period, relations have been poor, with both Michael Howard and Mr Cameron distancing themselves from Mr Bush - who is deeply unpopular among British voters.

Karl Rove, Mr Bush’s former chief strategist, has privately vented his anger over what he regarded as a manufactured row with Mr Howard before the last British general election. Mr Cameron also annoyed the White House by choosing the anniversary of 9/11 last year to make a speech attacking “neo-conservatives” and calling on the US to show more “humility”.

As recently as last month in Berlin, Mr Cameron reiterated his position, with a speech rejecting Tony Blair’s “liberal interventionism” and instead setting out a vision of “liberal conservatism” that strikes the “right balance between realism and idealism” in foreign policy.

But relations with the Conservative Party have been at least partially repaired since their nadir three years ago. An article in the latest edition of the Weekly Standard magazine - which is regarded as an authentic voice of the Republican right - even suggests that Mr Cameron has evolved from an “anti-American Little Englander” to offer a brand of conservatism “tailor-made for these new times”.

Mr Cameron and William Hague are expected to fly to the US after Prime Ministers’ Questions. They are due to have a private dinner with the Mayor of New York, Michael Bloomberg - who recently switched his political affiliation from Republican to Independent - and the maverick Republican Senator Chuck Hagel in Manhattan tonight.

Tomorrow the Conservative leader will visit Arlington National Cemetery in Washington DC before delivering a speech on the Balkans to the Brookings Institution.

The meeting with Mr Bush is expected to take place at the White House in the afternoon. Additional meetings are scheduled with senior administration figures at the US State Department, the US Treasury and the World Bank.

It will not be until after his encounter with Mr Bush that Mr Cameron will speak to the press at a nearby hotel.

Mr Bush’s team will, however, have been alarmed by a clutch of weekend newspaper reports - one claiming to quote White House foreign policy advisers - in Britain. These suggested the President was “warming to Mr Cameron especially since his party’s rising success in the opinion polls” and that he feels little “sense of loyalty” to Gordon Brown.

The White House, although wary of some members of the Government such as Lord Malloch-Brown, the former British Ambassador to the UN, is determined not to upset the British Prime Minister who remains an important ally. One source in London yesterday suggested that Mr Cameron’s aides had been ordered to “shut up” about the visit.

Times Recommends

• DIY video helps the WI get to grips with sex
• Artists urge nation to save Titians
• Go home, Iraqi leader tells Britain