NEARLY A THIRD of the worlds population will watchPrince William marry Kate Middleton in Westminster Abbeyon April 29, or so reports in the British press predicting atelevision audience of more than 2 billion would have usbelieve. Th e souvenir tea towels have been printed, the mugsglazed, and a national holiday declared. For a whole day, Britainwill play the game the world loves us for: royal Lilliput.Could this be the biggest role left to us?Britain no longer exists. It is a trace of what itused to be, Muammar Gaddafi said recentlyin one of his rants, and though this was in oneway a speech too soon (a few of the missilesthat hit Libya were British), there are many inBritain who would forgive the colonel hisanalysis. Th e country is facing the biggestsqueeze in living standards since the 1920s.Government budgets have been slashed in everydirection. Th is year hundreds of thousandsof public-sector workers will get the sack,while infl ation, tax increases, and a steep reductionin welfare benefi ts will eat into thehousehold incomes of nearly everyone else. Awhole range of public institutions, from militaryairfi elds to public libraries, are closing orbeing sold off . What remains of the BritishNavy has been deprived of its last aircraft carrier(the HMS Ark Royal, now for sale on theMinistry of Defences version of eBay).Th e country is used to the idea of nationaldecline: declinism became a feature of Britishhistorical study many years ago?the U.S. isjust now catching up. Public fears over the nations capabilitydate back to at least the Boer War. Today, however, thecountry is fi lled with a sense of foreboding that I cant rememberparalleled in my lifetime. Two decades, the 1970sand 80s, are often invoked as specters . Th e political right,which includes the coalition government, invokes an era oflabor strikes ending with an IMF bailout when it says wemustnt go back to the 70s. Th e left counters with a warningagainst the 80s, when Margaret Th atcher remade Britainas a largely postindustrial society, privatiz ing swath s of theeconomy, abolishing union power, and wiping out manufacturing.But the events of neither decade threatened Britainsidea of itself so completely as the debt exposed by the bankingcrash and the present governments policy to restore economicconfi dence by slashing public programs.
