Britain's big Olympic turnaround

In a screeching turnaround of which the mystery driver from Top Gear would be proud, Downing Street put on a brave face and maintained "we have always said the prime minister would not be attending the opening ceremony but go to the closing ceremony instead". Slightly different to Brown's chatter earlier in the month, then, when he announced that Britain would be "present at the Olympic ceremonies and I will certainly be there."

So why the U-turn? Public opinion states that 40% of people don't want Brown to go to the ceremony, but those figures imply a 60% majority who either do or just don't care - surely not persuasive enough to pull out at this point? Maybe he just wanted to establish a base degree of solidarity with other counties who won't be sending any representatives at all - Germany, Poland and France among their number. If that was the case, however, wouldn't it make more sense to take a 100% no-go attitude?

Maybe the actual answer is much simpler. Perhaps the PM - in layman's terms - just couldn't be arsed. Countless hours of maintaining a fixed grin while people dance around in weird costumes, all as a prelude to a few weeks of stick-throwing and barrier-jumping? Sounds like torture. And Westmonster is sure that the host country knows all about that ...