Mitt talks Olympics with British leaders

Mitt Romney met Thursday with former Prime Minister Tony Blair and Labor Party leader Ed Miliband in London. The presumptive Republican presidential nominee focused on the Olympics, rather than policy issues, in his meeting, The Washington Post reported. "The athletes have arrived, the torch is about to come into London ... My experience is that this event will change the hearts of many, many people," said Romney, who led the 2002 Olympic Games in Salt Lake City. Romney planned to meet later in the day with Prime Minister David Cameron, Deputy Prime Minister Nick Clegg and Chancellor of the Exchequer George Osborne. Romney aides have said U.S. Republicans were irked with Cameron's embrace of President Obama. Cameron, who visited the White House in March, joined the Democratic president on a visit to a college basketball game in Ohio -- a key swing state in November's presidential election -- and was later honored with a White House state dinner, even though the queen is Britain's head of state. Cameron declined to meet any Republican leaders during the visit, the Romney advisers -- who requested anonymity -- told the British newspaper The Daily Telegraph. "It was unprecedented," a member of Romney's foreign policy advisory team told the newspaper. Senior advisers to the presumptive Republican presidential nominee expressed similar criticisms to the British newspaper The Guardian in May, calling Cameron's White House visit a "love-in" with Obama. U.S. conservatives expressed surprise to the Telegraph that Cameron had not made more effort to forge relationships with the Republican Party, which they pointed out controls the U.S. House and could win the Senate as well as the White House in November. A second Romney foreign policy adviser told the Telegraph Cameron's contacts with Republicans "are really quite limited, and have been, going back to when [George W.] Bush was president. "In many respects Cameron is like Obama," the adviser added. In a Telegraph story published Wednesday, the advisers described Obama as a "left-winger" who doesn't sufficiently appreciate the shared "Anglo-Saxon" heritage of the United States and Britain. The Romney camp flatly denied the former Massachusetts governor or his campaign shared that sentiment. One of the Romney advisers told the Telegraph Romney considered Britain "our oldest friend in the world," although Romney wrote in his memoir "No Apology": "England is just a small island. Its roads and houses are small. With few exceptions, it doesn't make things that people want to buy." The Republican Party presented a united front with Britain's Conservative Party in the 1980s, when Ronald Reagan was president and Margaret Thatcher was prime minister. But a shift to the right, as reflected by the rise of the Tea Party movement during the 2010 midterm elections, has left the GOP out of step with Britain's center-right Tories on issues such as taxation, healthcare and rights for same-sex couples, the Telegraph said. Cameron's party is more in line with Democrats in several areas. He supports legalizing same-sex marriage and has called his administration the "greenest" in the nation's history. Romney representatives have denied any disgruntlement in his camp over Cameron's Washington visit. A Cameron spokesman told the Telegraph Cameron met Romney in London last year and maintained ties to Republicans despite not having met any during the Washington visit. The Telegraph reported Wednesday and Thursday the Romney advisers requested anonymity because they'd been instructed by the Romney campaign not to criticize the president in the foreign press.