The Romneyshambles road show

David Cameron broke with Downing Street tradition today by meeting Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney. But Romney might now be wishing that, like François Hollande, he’d been snubbed by the Prime Minister until the elections were over. He started his day with forgetting Ed Miliband’s name, calling him ‘Mr Leader’ instead when the two met. That wasn’t too bad: it’s not as if British people, or indeed the media, can remember what the Labour leader is called half the time, anyway. But once in Downing Street, he decided to get out a spade and dig a rather large hole for himself in the back garden (which he accidentally described as the ‘backside’) by trying to make amends for the remarks Jonathan reported earlier describing British preparations for the Olympics as ‘disconcerting’. This afternoon he said:

‘My experience as an Olympic organiser is there are always some little things that don’t go as planned, but those get ironed out and then when the Games themselves begin and the athletes take over, all the mistakes that the Organising Committee, and I made a few, all of those are overwhelmed by the many things that the athletes carry out that capture the spirit of the Games.