Boycotting the Olympic Games scheduled for Beijing next August is a solution that has long been in search of a problem. A year ago, Mia Farrow, the actress, called for a boycott on the grounds that the government of Sudan, a close ally and major oil supplier of China, was committing “genocide” against rebels in the province of Darfur. Others have sought a boycott in solidarity with Burmese democracy activists, repressed by a junta that China supports. Only now has a consensus cause been found – the pro-independence demonstrations in the Chinese province of Tibet that have turned into violent riots and led to a crackdown.

Before a special session of the European Parliament on the Tibet question this week, Hans-Gert Pöttering, the body’s president, raised the possibility of a boycott. Others, from the Euro-MP Daniel Cohn-Bendit to the actor Richard Gere to the intellectual Bernard-Henri Lévy, have done the same. The Dalai Lama, the exiled Tibetan spiritual leader, has publicly opposed a boycott and Bernard Kouchner, the French foreign minister, warns that we cannot be “more Tibetan than the Tibetans”. He raised the possibility of boycotting, instead, the opening ceremonies. While Dr Kouchner backed away from the idea, other politicians in Belgium and France, notably president Nicolas Sarkozy, have taken it up. Too bad. A boycott would be a mistake. A semi-boycott would be both a mistake and an embarrassment.