The woman who saved us from President Blair

If there is a single word that has come to define David Cameron's premiership over the past two years - and one that is likely to continue to define it long into the future - it is almost certainly the word ‘austerity.’

But although circumstances have decreed that the administration which he leads is overwhelmingly focused on economic matters, this almost certainly wasn’t the way the Prime Minister originally planned it.

A few years back, the then opposition leader could be heard opining somewhat heretically that perhaps the role of policy-making should be more focused on making people happy than on making them rich.

Alas, after a couple of outings, the so-called ‘happiness agenda’ sank without trace in the face of the financial crisis that gripped the nation from 2008 onwards and which has continued to set the parameters of current day political debate.

Perhaps this week's Diamond Jubilee celebrations, however, have shown that Mr Cameron remains at heart much more of a social cavalier than the economic roundhead his opponents would sometimes like to depict.

Asked on Thursday whether other European countries would benefit from having Jubilee days off like Britain's, Mr Cameron replied with disarming honesty: ''It is not good for the economy, but it was good for the soul.''

The first point is pretty much unarguable, with the £700m boost from overseas tourism barely registering against the estimated £6bn in lost economic productivity over the course of the long bank holiday weekend.

But what the heck, we have all had a damned good party, and after what already seems like years of economic doom and gloom, perhaps that's just what we needed.

Mr Cameron is a not entirely disinterested observer, of course. Historically the ‘King’s Party,’ the Tories invariably enjoy a boost whenever the red, white and blue bunting comes out.

Furthermore, as I noted in last week’s column, the government was pretty much relying on this Jubilee weekend to draw a line under the post-Budget ‘omnishambles’ that has seen it stagger from crisis to crisis in recent weeks.

As the Tory blogger Harry Cole put it: “As a big shiny distraction from our economic woes and the political disaster that David Cameron’s government is perilously close to becoming, the Royal Jubilee weekend was pretty good.”

Whether it will work remains to be seen. But if a new ‘feelgood factor’ can emerge from the Jubilee and Olympic celebrations that will book-end this summer, then perhaps the Coalition can look forward to some sunnier times ahead.

What of the monarchy itself? Well, despite being given a frankly puzzling degree of prominence by the BBC, the Republican cause was pretty much routed by this week’s show of public affection for the Queen.

Left-wing commentators who blame the Monarchy for the decline in social mobility in the UK are forgetting that the first two decades of the Queen’s reign saw the biggest upsurge in social mobility in our history.

On a personal level, surely no monarch could be more deserving of the adulation that has been heaped upon her this week than Queen Elizabeth II.

As the historian Dominic Sandbrook put it: "We have had more exciting, more effusive and more colourful monarchs. But we have never had a sovereign who worked harder, served her country with more devotion, or better represented the innate decency of our national character."

For me, though, as has often been said, the importance of the monarchy lies primarily not in the power that it has but in the power that it denies to others.

And as such, my own debt of gratitude to the Queen is not so much for her devoted life of public service, nor even for the way she has held this country together in a period of unprecedented social change.

No, it is for the fact that, by her very presence at the pinnacle of our political system, she saved us from the baleful prospect of President Thatcher or, even worse, President Blair.

And for that, if for nothing else, I gladly join with the rest of the country in wishing Her Majesty a very happy Diamond Jubilee.

Thirty years too late....

The Guardian reports today on moves towards the formation of a UK football team for the 2012 Olympics. It's easy to see why this idea is being considered now, when in the past it has been vociferously opposed by every major UK sporting body, but from where I'm standing it's about 30 years out of time.

With all due respect to Scotland, Wales, and Northern Ireland, a UK football team as constituted today would be basically the England XI. Welshman Ryan Giggs might make the subs bench, but he won't be around for 2012.

I say this with no great relish or desire to do down our Celtic cousins. I was in fact a huge fan of Scottish football in the 1970s and it is a matter of regret that the land of Jim Baxter, Jimmy Johnstone, Billy Bremner and Kenny Dalglish would no longer be able to provide realistic contenders for a UK-wide XI.

But the days when a collection of mining villages west of Glasgow could supply an entire European Cup-winning team, as amazingly happened with Celtic in 1967, are sadly long gone.

I personally would have loved to have seen a UK team when I was growing up as a football-mad youngster in the 70s. England had some decent players then - Kevin Keegan, Colin Bell and Roy McFarland to name but three - but we were always two or three players short of a great team, hence our elimination from the World Cup qualifiers of 1974 and 1978.

How different might that story have been had the national team been able to call on the likes of Bremner, Peter Lorimer, John Toshack, Pat Jennings - still the greatest goalie I have ever seen - and of course, George Best.

Incidentally I reckon Best's career would have been prolonged if he'd had the incentive of meaningful international competition. Given that he'd achieved everything there was to achieve in the club game by 1968, it was hardly surprising that sex, drugs and rock 'n' roll became a more interesting option.

You know what I think? I think Bestie would have played in the '74 World Cup in Germany, and we'd have won the bugger, with Bremner as skipper emulating Bobby Moore's achievement of eight years' previously.

In the 80s, a UK team would potentially have been even stronger. This was the era in which Liverpool dominated Europe and Dalglish, Alan Hansen and Ian Rush would all have been key players in the national set-up. In the 90s, there would have been Giggs and Mark Hughes.

But as for today, I don't see a great deal to be gained from it, beyond raising the possibility of "tokenist" squad places for otherwise inferior Scottish, Welsh and Irish players, and creating a false sense of national unity in a political culture which is far more devolved than was the case three decades ago.

Olympic memories

I will doubtless be following the Olympics over the next couple of weeks or so, but I doubt I will see anything that will enthrall me so much as the great athletics performances which inspired me as I was growing up. Thankfully, many of these are now available on YouTube, so here are three of my favourites.

1. "And Viren defends his title wonderfully well." Quite simply one of my favourite sporting moments ever, from the Montreal games. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1H_JzBVqkuI.

2. "Juantorena opens his legs and shows his class." Okay, so David Coleman didn't really say this, but a great performance nonetheless. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MoGaC6KAG1Y.

3. "Akii Bua coming on the inside." Coleman did say this, no fewer than three times as the Ugandan overhauled David Hemery in '72. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wBt4_j3BlgE.

Should China have been given the Olympics?

-----Question Time Review----

Steven Spielberg certainly seems to have concentrated minds. My wife and I have long been expressing our incredulity that China could have been awarded the Olympic Games, but until now it has seemed like we were talking only to eachother. Tonight's BBC Question Time demonstrated otherwise.

The programme was dominated by Melanie Phillips - scarcely surprising as she was the biggest brain as well as the biggest mouth on view. It's a sign of age, I suppose, but I find myself agreeing with her on more and more issues these days, not least on her view that awarding the Games to Beijing was a disgrace, and that the Archbishop of Canterbury is not fit for office. The government representative, Housing Minister Caroline Flint may be better-looking than Phillips, but her leaden asnwers to most of the questions showed she's an intellectual pygmy by comparison. In fact the opposition spokesman, Baroness Warsi, made a far better fist of the "constructive engagement" argument in relation to the Chinese, though she seemed to have little to say for the remainder of the programme.

Of the other panellists, Clive James was amusing in a desultory sort of way, though it was scarcely the cutting-edge humour we might have expected from him a decade ago, and Stephen Lowe, Bishop of Hulme, was clearly there only to put the case for Dr Williams - not the most straghtforward of tasks.

Having given it a fair amount of thought, I just don't buy Williams' argument that he has been misrepresented by the media. As Phillips rightly pointed out, his original comments amounted, in terms, to the advocacy of a parallel system of law to which Moslems could choose to give their loyalty. I have long believed Rowan Williams to be too politically naive to lead the Church of England effectively, but this was not mere naivety, it was wrongheadedness. It's time to bring on Sentamu.