"Were you expecting Gordon Brown to do that?" I asked a Tory briefer in the press gallery after the PM responded - quickly and positively - to David Cameron's challenge to say that, yes, he will be meeting the Dalai Lama when he visits London in May. "Sort of," he replied. In fact my assiduous colleague Julian Borger had published the news - courtesy of the daily Foreign Office briefing? - on guardian.co.uk's politics site at 11.45am, a good 17 minutes or so before Dave and Gordon did their stuff.
So well done, chaps. Well done, Dave, for pressing a good point. Ditto the PM for being faster on his feet than sometimes and realising he should say something quickly.
What he actually said was: "I think it is important that we all facilitate discussions but the most important thing at the moment is to bring about an end to the violence, reconciliation, and to see legitimate talks taking place between those people in China."
GB had actually raised the issue with Wen Jiabao, his Chinese counterpart, on the phone this morning.
No one wants (do they?) a repetition of the boycott of the 1980 Moscow games in response to the invasion of Afghanistan (theirs, not ours), when the US team stayed away and Britain's decided to go?
But we don't want Tibet airbrushed out of the picture for reasons of mere expediency (do we?).
