At the beginning of June my wife and I left the capital of the indispensable nation to visit the capital of a country that is, for all but its inhabitants, quite inconsequential in the affairs of the world. So here we are in Cardiff, once a great industrial port but now a sedate and rather handsome service and cultural center for a small nation. Its once notoriously tough dockland area, Tiger Bay, has been innocuously renamed and is now the site of "luxury" apartments and expensive restaurants.
More about Wales presently, but first a word on the "state of Britain" question, for we arrived just as the country's politics entered a very interesting phase. Indeed, in retrospect our first few weeks back in Britain may stand out as a decisive turning point in the premiership of Tony Blair. For him this was a hellish month, when everything went wrong. It started with his being slow-clapped by a normally decorous audience of middle-class women, while delivering an ill-judged, patronizing speech. Then, in rapid succession, came copious evidence of deep divisions and rivalries in his cabinet; utter incoherence in policy toward Europe; adverse public opinion polls; the symbolic fiasco of the opening and then immediate closing of a much hyped "Millennium Bridge" over the Thames; a spectacular display of English soccer hooliganism in Belgium, followed by the early exit of the English soccer team from the Euro 2000 competition; strong popular discontent with the insanely high gas prices (the equivalent of $4.80 a gallon); and substandard performances by the Prime Minister in Parliament, at a time when the leader of the opposition, William Hague, was doing exceptionally well. This dismal succession of embarrassments climaxed with what was in personal terms the worst one of all, the arrest of Blair's son after being found hopelessly drunk on the sidewalk of Leicester Square.
