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Following her One Nation bus tour of the US East Coast, Sarah Palin is hoping to take her pre-presidential campaign international with a visit to London. A lull before the bus tour resumes in Iowa, where the first Republican primary will be held, means that Palin will have an opportunity to brush up on her geography.

She told the Times (£): "I love London and England ... We hope to be able to visit soon. I'd like to meet with Margaret Thatcher." But an aide for Thatcher cast doubt on whether the Iron Lady would meet with Palin. He told the Independent: "Nowadays, the Lady rarely meets people at all. If a meeting went ahead it would be very much low-key, and would very much depend on how things were on the day. We don't make firm appointments for this sort of meeting."

Palin reportedly expressed no desire to meet David Cameron, something that is likely to come as a relief to the Prime Minister. But, as my colleague Sophie Elmhirst noted in her piece on the rise of Palin's "mama grizzlies", several of Cameron's MPs are keen admirers of the former Alaska governer.

Nadine Dorries declared: "I think Sarah Palin is amazing. I totally admire her", while Louise Bagshawe hailed Palin as a "remarkable figure": "I watched her acceptance speech at the Republican party conference and it seemed to me that it was a glorious moment, a birth of a new political star."

Palin, who once mistakenly assumed that Africa was a country, not a continent, is hoping to stop in London on the way to Sudan in July.