Downing Street confirmed today that the Prime Minister will meet US Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney in Downing Street this week. It sounds like a sensible plan, given Romney is so close to Obama in the polls at present. But there’s just one tiny little problem.
I have, in my shorthand notes from a lobby briefing on 5 March 2012, a quote from the Prime Minister’s official spokesman, which says the following:
‘As a general rule we do not meet candidates in foreign elections.’
Then the spokesman was talking about David Cameron’s failure to meet François Hollande, who was in Britain while campaigning against Nicolas Sarkozy for the French presidency. So why the difference?
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