Few things are left to chance in the White House. Never the president's diary. So there was nothing impromptu about Gordon Brown's talks the other day with George W. Bush. It may have suited Britain's prime minister-in-waiting to pretend otherwise, but everything about this first face-to-face encounter was carefully choreographed.
The official story was that Mr Bush "dropped in" on talks between a visiting Mr Brown and Stephen Hadley, the US national security adviser. Mr Bush and Mr Brown then spent 40 minutes or so getting to know each other and talking about Iraq, Afghanistan and world trade.
