This is not a change of strategy says Downing Street.

This is not a new timetable, they say.

However, the prime minister's declaration that he wants British troops home by the next election does highlight the fact that his mind is on how and when to bring British forces out of Afghanistan.

David Cameron has repeatedly said that he does not view Britain's military commitment as open-ended.

In November last year he talked about imposing a "tight internal timetable". In April, he said that Britain would put everything into the fight "this year and next year" and said that "we've been there already for eight or nine years. That's already a long time. We can't be there for another eight or nine years".

He went on: "It's got to be in the next parliament that these troops really start coming home - as soon as possible but based on success, not on an artificial timetable."

On all those occasions, though, David Cameron was not prime minister. That's why his comments on Sky News that "we can't be there for another five years" are significant.

Earlier today he discussed Afghanistan with the host of this year's G8, Canada's Prime Minister Stephen Harper. In March 2008, Canada's parliament voted to pull the troops out of the war in 2011 (although members of its Commons Special Committee on the Canadian Mission in Afghanistan have spoken of maintaining a role after that date).

Tomorrow he will lead the G8's discussion of Afghanistan and hold a bilateral meeting with President Obama, who has committed to troop withdrawals from next year.

On his mind, and theirs, is the fact that June has been the bloodiest month for Nato forces in Afghanistan since the mission began in 2001, with the coalition death toll standing at 80.

What's more, he and they know that we are entering fighting season and that, as the prime minister said onboard the Ark Royal yesterday, we need to brace ourselves for a "difficult summer".

The prime minister's message to the military is that this is the year the generals get to show they can make progress.

What today's remarks suggest is that he may be thinking already about what to do if they don't make that progress.

PS: In another interview - with Canadian broadcasters CBC - the prime minister spells out his thinking on Afghanistan in more detail :

Q: The three major partners in this, the United States, Great Britain and Canada - the US and Canada both set dates already. The US saying they're going to start to withdraw in July of next year, Canada saying they're out as of the end of next year. Are you looking at a date?

A: I haven't named a date in that way, but obviously all of us, as I've said many times, we don't want to be in Afghanistan for a day longer than we have to be. As soon as the Afghans can take control of their own security then we shall be bringing our troops back home.

We shall go on having a very long and deep relationship with both Afghanistan and Pakistan. We've got to convince those countries that we're in for the long haul with aid, with diplomacy, with trade, with assistance. We don't want those countries to go back to being the bad lands for terrorist training camps, but do I want to get the troops out? Yes, of course I do.

Q: Why do you hesitate on a date when others seem to be rushing towards one?

A: Look, I accept the timeframes that have been set out by President Obama and I'm working very closely with him. A proper review of how we're doing towards the end of this year, the ambition that we should be starting to transition districts and then provinces of Afghanistan over to lead Afghan control by the end of this year and into next year and then, yes, the ambition to start bringing some troops home.

But I want this to be done, as far as possible, on the basis of success rather than lines in the sand and dates, but am I pushing very hard to get everything done so this can happen? Yes, of course, and I think there are basically three elements: it's making sure the surge works and the counter-insurgency is going full steam ahead. It's about training up the Afghan army and police, and then, vitally, it's about the political settlement that we need to make with those elements of the Taliban that want to lay down their weapons.

Get those three things right and the timetables are realistic.

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Deerhurst, Canada: Reassuring and yet worrying news emerges from the G8 leaders' retreat.

The prime minister has just told me that if - surely he means when - England score on Sunday morning, he will not run around the room with an England shirt pulled over his head. This may be a wise concession to make since the plan is for David Cameron and Germany's Chancellor Merkel to slip out of what will, by then, be the G20 summit in order to watch the second half of the match.

The PM told my ITV News colleague Tom Bradby that he would not wrestle Ms Merkel to the floor in the event of penalties.

Diplomats may breathe a sigh of relief but true footie fans may be puzzled as to how our nation's leader can even contemplate watching a crunch match with "the enemy".

PS: Perhaps more significantly, the PM insisted that there was no divide between the UK and the US on the need to tackle our deficit. Both countries, he said, wanted to deal with global imbalances so that countries like China and Germany support global growth.

Sky's Adam Boulton asked Mr Cameron if he wanted see British troops in Afghanistan home before the election. "I want that to happen," he replied. His officials insist that this is not a new timetable and that this was implied by his statements during the election about beginning to bring troops home in the next year, as President Obama has said.

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Canada: "Is that it?"

That, I'm told, sums up the prime minister's reaction on seeing the draft communiques to be issued by world leaders at the end of this weekend's G8 and G20 summits.

Gordon Brown used to react in much the same way. But there the similarity ends.

On the plane to a summit Brown would insist that world leaders had to do better and would soon be surrounded by a pile of briefing papers covered in his barely-legible scrawl in black felt tip.

Officials would spend the entire journey working on Gordon's latest plan to save the world. He would then come to the back of the plane to tell journalists of the pressing need to reform of the UN, IMF, G8 and G20 and any other global institutions he could think of.

The hacks would listen, engage a little before realising that this would be of almost no interest to their news desks or that they'd written this before and that reform had proved a tad elusive.

So; they/we would ask instead about his latest political crisis. The PM would get increasingly grumpy before heading back to first class to despair at the superficiality of those he'd been talking to.

David Cameron, in comparison, read his briefings, discussed his strategy for his first-ever summit and first-ever meetings with a host of global leaders, told travelling journalists that summits too often fail to live up to the hype, chewed the fat on other subjects before telling aides he wanted some sleep before a busy day ahead.

Thus, the self-proclaimed "new kid on the block" has come with the limited aim of arriving at a summit rested, getting to know his fellow leaders and urging them to take practical steps rather indulging in windy rhetoric.

As I write this, I can hear Gordon Brown telling the story of a London summit in the 1930s which failed to avert the Great Depression. Thousands of miles away, I can sense his brooding frustration with the failure of world leaders to do enough to avert another crisis.

History will be the judge of who was right.

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