As a piece of political symbolism it could hardly have been bettered. After a miserably damp morning, the sun came out over a leaf-strewn Whitehall just as the Queen - and Prime Minister Tony Blair - emerged from Downing Street to greet the people. But where, exactly, were they?The people themselves, it transpired, had largely decided to give the golden wedding celebrations a miss. Maybe it was the day - a grey Thursday in November. Or perhaps it was the rain, which blew in soon after the Queen and the Duke of Edinburgh emerged from their Rolls-Royce and vanished with a wave into Westminster Abbey.Or maybe it was the institution itself - battered by scandal in recent years and now largely revered only by a diminishing generation of oldies. For them at least, the memories of November 20, 1947 - when the royal wedding threw a splash of colour over the monochrome canvas of postwar Britain - still had a resonance.While the mood was ostensibly one of cultural retrospection, there was also a radical whiff in the air. The Queen herself - a mobile lavender blue suit and a bobbing hat - appeared to be in good spirits. All her family, save for the Duchess of York and the infirm Duchess of Gloucester, turned up at the Abbey for a service to commemorate the century's most durable public alliance.Inside, the congregation belted out Praise, My Soul The King of Heaven, a hymn chosen by the Queen for her wedding service half a century ago. Many of them were Europe's surviving royals, who arrived at the Abbey in coaches which bore the droll company name Windsorian. They listened as the Archbishop of Canterbury, George Carey, praised the Queen for her ``courage, sacrifice, and tolerance''. Outside, on the pavement, a four-deep crowd of foreign tourists, royal nutters draped in Union capes, and pensioners shuffled patiently beneath their brollies.Why were they here? ``To stop Rupert Murdoch from becoming president,'' one of the crowd, Gay Fearn, replied. Though the day groaned with history, the Queen used her wedding anniversary to stress her desire for change. There was, for example, the walkabout which in new Britain has become a potent symbol of popular consent. At 11.45 a.m. the Queen emerged from the Abbey's Great West Door and set off to say hello to the modest crowds.She wheeled along Storey's Gate, past Methodist Central Hall, and towards her waiting Rolls, chatting and collecting bunches of flowers. Prince Philip, meanwhile, did the other side of the road. At times the line grew embarrassingly thin.And then there were the speeches. While Blair delivered a surprisingly reactionary eulogy to both the monarch and the institution she represents, the Queen announced the royal family was ready to ``read'' public opinion. This meant, above all, being willing to change. Though how exactly the royals propose to modernise themselves remained opaque, the Queen was in no doubt that change they must. (The venue, the Banqueting Hall in Whitehall, was a trifle unfortunate: Charles I was executed there in 1649.)Blair, meanwhile, took his audience on a nostalgic trip back to his boyhood in Durham and recalled how he waved a flag at the Queen. ``My generation pays tribute to you today with every bit as much force as older generations do,'' he gushed. ``I am as proud as proud can be to be your prime minister today, offering this tribute on behalf of the country. You are our Queen. We respect and cherish you. You are, simply, the best of British.''He described the Queen as ``unstuffy, unfussy and unfazed by anything - with a keen sense of humour and a mean ability for mimicry''. Blair described his weekly meetings with the Queen as ``a little awesome'', and added jokingly: ``There are only two people in the world to whom a prime minister can say what he likes about his cabinet colleagues. One's the wife, the other's the Queen.''Earlier in the day, following a reception at Downing Street, the People's Prime Minister and the People's Monarch emerged for a walkabout in an autumnal Whitehall. No one could remember the last time the Queen had gone for a public stroll with the PM; the latter's imperative, clearly, was not to upstage Her Majesty. In the end, the Blair hovered four paces behind the Queen, as she cut efficiently in the direction of Trafalgar Square. Tony shook a few hands, but gave the impression he was doing so with the deepest reluctance. Cherie and Philip, meanwhile, worked the other side of the street.The Tony and Liz show, though, clearly has a long way to run. While the Queen was said famously to detest Margaret Thatcher, she clearly has a mutually admiring rapport with her ideological son, now installed in Downing Street.
