In some quarters a faintly blank look of surprise greets news of the Guardian's republican stand. Why bother? Aren't there more pressing matters? Are there no poor children, disaster schools, desperate estates, over-crowded prisons?As the Queen trots down the Mall today in her gilded coach, the speech in her golden reticule will no doubt touch upon all these things. It may be mildly comic when the world's richest woman intones her government's concern over the plight of her less fortunate subjects. But so what? Is it really worth investing in the huge turmoil of trying to remove the monarchy when so much else presses? Yes, it is well worth it. She must be Elizabeth the Last. The tyranny of the monarchy lies less in its temporal than its spiritual power: it tyrannises the imagination. Its spirit permeates political thinking, poisons the appetite for reform and deep dyes the blood of Britain with fantasies of who and what we are. Unconquered, never, never slaves, we are all subject to Britannia the monarch. As our glorious heritage parades again today through London to open parliament, Household Cavalry glinting in the sun, all this empty pageantry of wigs and ermine, britches and sticks promises a better yesterday. It breathes the glory of Good Queen Bess and Bluff King Hal, the Empress of India still ruling a rosy pink globe, our island story on display. Do the marching bands bring a tear to the eye? This is what we do so well!  These bare ruined choirs signify nothing, I used to think - picturesque, harmless, good for tourism. But the trappings are not trivial. They trap us in an infantile fairyland of imaginary heritage. Bogus history fuels present national delusion. Look no further than here for the reason why this country breeds small-minded bigotry, Eurosceptic xenophobia, union flag-painted brutes rampaging at foreign football matches. Why is this country so profoundly conservative, government pollsters ask? Somewhere the answer lies wrapped in the ermine. It is why this country is a recalcitrant bad neighbour in Europe, why it struts and swaggers brazenly despite an economy, a productivity and a social fabric so profoundly inferior to theirs.  The monarchy explains why this country fell behind the rest of Europe after the war, never modernised, never leapt ahead as Germany rose from the ashes. Instead victory enshrined the bad old ways, without change or introspection. The spirit of unconquered monarchy ossified a pre-war class hatred that stopped modern industrial cooperation for the first 30 post-war years. Complacent trust in tradition let others get ahead while we declined. Modernisation was not in our bones in those key years. The rest of Europe started again,   those minor countries with monarchies beginning modern post-war contracts between people and crown. Here, nothing changed. A one-term 1945 Labour government left landmarks such as the National Health Service, but no fundamental break with the past.  Now Britain's 21st century politics are still held back by empty ideas of tradition. Europe - whatever its future construction and membership - is our only destiny and yet British politicians are unable to play a full part, to engage or even to speak the truth about it to a people besotted with the magic word "sovereignty". Stymied in Europe by nothing but our own bizarre Ruritanian obsessions, things can't go on like this. Year by year it is crippling us. That word sovereignty has to be wrestled to the ground, exposed, redefined and laid to rest with a people that feels it has lost touch with power. It is their sense of powerlessness that makes them misunderstand Europe and panic at "losing" what they have too little of already.  Many regard the monarchy as just the glac&eacute; cherry atop the worm-eaten constitution. Labour has been burrowing away at its foundations, removing props and the whole edifice is tottering. No doubt more props can be found for particular glitches - the West Lothian question, the English parliament question, the House of Lords - but no amount of sticking plaster will patch together those fundamental and well justified fears that power is slipping from the people. Globalisation and worse - the failure of global governance to solve global crises in climate change or trade deals - has inflamed this sense of helplessness. Local government is a vacant lot, Westminster is a one-party state punctuated only by raucous prime minister's questions that shame rational debate. The democratic deficit creates a dangerous cynicism about all politics.   Ironically, the more people disengage from politics, the harder it becomes to persuade them that the constitution matters. Even at the height of debate about a Scottish parliament, very few Scots' pulses raced: Mori found barely 10% put it near the top of their list of concerns. Though if threatened now with losing its parliament, the Scots would rebel, Brave Heart rise from his grave. Powerlessness breeds apathy, but real power excites. So a new constitution for Britain may not burn on all lips in the bus queues. It is a "chattering classes" question for now - "Guardian stuff" nature's conservatives will say. But once offered a fairer distribution of power, people will seize it.  For the next manifesto Labour should promise a great national constitutional convention out of which to forge something better than this. Put everything into the melting pot, all sources of power, toss in the monarchy, Europe, the regions and above all proportional representation: public interest will ignite. Commission a fine preamble to the   first British constitution and begin again. Already Labour's manifesto will promise a new House of Lords and a referendum on PR. Both these raise basic questions. Both require wide and loud debate, opening everything wide.  The people are there already, if asked. A Rowntree/ICM poll in October found 59% wanting PR for Westminster, even more for local government. First-past-the-post has been well discredited in the US. In Britain at the last election the only views that mattered were 168,000 voters in key marginals - 0.5% of those who voted. The rest might just as well never bother - and many didn't. Many disdain the strictly limited party choice on offer. They dislike having candidates foisted on them. They mistrust the vast power in the hands of a prime minister only a minority has voted for. That dangerous disaffection will erupt more often, as over the fuel protests. People who feel denied a voice will become more febrile when they think a government not altogether legitimate - as no doubt George W Bush will discover. Voting systems need to be aired as part of a whole new constitutional settlement.  This is not an abstract issue. Britain now urgently needs an electorate confident enough in its own power to choose to trade some of it with Europe, to multiply its long-term global power. Ironically, the slipping legitimacy of the British system has given us a prime minister with more absolute power than any since the war, yet unable to deliver on his two great projects - Europe and PR. Our essentially two-party system offers no way to build broad based cross-party consent for difficult fundamental change. Lonely as a medieval monarch surrounded by sycophants, British prime ministers become neurotic, prone to cowardice punctuated by bursts of irrational policy-making: the constitution that brought us the poll tax now brings us privatisation of the London tube.  Fine, but leave the Queen out of it, says the palace. However the monarchy is at the very heart of all this. It is not the ornamental cherry but the rotten core of Britain's decrepit democracy. A good constitution does not guarantee a good country - America's fine words are not matched by good governance. But without a new constitution Britain will be unable to shed the baggage of the ages that hold us back and keep us still the barbarian outpost of Europe. <B>Related stories - news</B><BR>  <BR>  <B>Related stories - comment</B><BR><BR>  <BR>  <BR>  <BR>  <B>Related stories - background</B><BR>
