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PARTISAN REVIEW
million pounds. The Scots are the living defini tion of the dependency cul–
ture, their economy supported by subsidy and their public services
massaged by largesse. Take away the money and you take away the drip
feed. This is the dream scenario for those who see devolution as a staging
post on the way to full separation.
If
the Union won't allow the Scots to
decide for themselves whether to increase taxes sufficiently to keep up
spending levels, then there is only one way forward: independence.
It
doesn't take a rocket scientist to work out the atti tude to that of the
most symbolic of Britain's
ancien rc,((ime
institutions. For the past few years
the House of Windsor has been caught in a modernizing dilemma.
It
knows that it needs to change if it is to stop the drip, drip, drip of con–
tempt from poisoning the well of its popularity. Charles's treatment of the
sainted Di, the Queen's inability
to
emote in public in the days following
Diana's death, and the Duchess of York's salacious behaviour are but the
three most obvious causes of the public's newly disrespectful attitude. And
if Diana was indeed, in Tony Blair's phrase, the People's Princess, then her
absence makes a replacement retormed People's Monarchy that much
more pressing. But Labour poli ticians have tradi tionally dotTed their caps
to the royals with even greater gusto than Conservatives. Tony Blair's halt–
ing approach to the other constitutional reforms is revisited in his attitude
to the monarchy, but with greater simplicity. He just doesn't know what
to do.
Tony Blair's Labour government was elected in part because it
appeared to offer Conservati sm wi th a smiling face, and in part because of
a sense that some sort of change was necessary. But in typically British
fashion, the realization has never moved beyond the vague notion of
"modernization"-a key Blair word that is, of course, utterly without
meaning in abstract form. Blair talks in private of "the project," but beyond
"modernizing the Labour Party," that is still a diffuse concept. At the
moment it matters not. Blair rides high, the Conservatives are a rabble, and
there is no credible opposi tion. But as Newton's Third Law of Motion
states, every action produces an equal and opposi te reaction. So we'll just
have to wai t and see.
