LONDON -- Tuesday was one of those quaint ceremonial occasions that cling like barnacles to the slow-moving body of the British ship of state: The queen announced the next year's legislative program.
"My government will . . .," the queen kept saying in her high little voice, and we all go along with the fiction that the government belongs to her, and makes its account to her, not to us, the people.
It has been clear for a long time that Prime Minister Tony Blair's government does not feel accountable to the left -- insofar as a "left" can still be said to exist in Britain.