This Public Realm

The NHS Destruction Bill dead in the water. More train journeys than in any peacetime period since the 1920s. A cross-party committee of MPs advocating nuclear power rather than windmills or entreating Poseidon. Even Policy Exchange whingeing in such a way as can only be answered by vigorous statutory pay restraint at the top and by bringing of the blue-collar side of public services back into the direct employment of the NHS, local councils, and so on. All this, and the Royal Wedding, too. Why, we could almost be in Britain again.

As for the carry on over Lord Guthrie's allegedly having been denied the Garter because of his closeness to Blair, who could not possibly have been invited to the Royal Wedding in view of his despicable behaviour when the groom's mother died, Wilson and Callaghan both had the Garter. Brown, sadly unable to be invited because of Blair's screaming unacceptability, might very well end up with the Thistle. Attlee ended up all four of an earl, a Knight of the Garter, a member of the Order of Merit, and a Companion of Honour.

And the Order of the British Empire was in fact created by George V, later a sympathiser with the General Strike (as the Queen Mother, who kept up her family's ties to the Durham coalfield, was with the Miners' Strike), very largely in order to have something to bestow on the rising industrial and municipal commanders, NCOs and foot soldiers of the Labour Movement, who have always been very heavily represented at every level of that Order, an integral and important part of that Order's culture. No wonder that Tony Blair doesn't have anything.