That may be why there has been no media bandwagon, hailing the comeback of Cool Britannia.

BBC: British stars lead Grammy charge

Before and for a while after the 1997 election he was a useful totem for New Labour in its efforts to show itself the party of "cool Britannia".

BBC: Labour pop guru turns on Blair

The Conservatives in the Lords were not pleased but in the age of Brit Pop, Cool Britannia and Sporty Spice the party couldn't openly defend the hereditary principle.

BBC: Democracy Live site links

Even the icons of "Cool Britannia, " the Spice Girls, pulled their sequin outfits out of the closet for a reunion performance of their song "Wannabe, " sung atop lit-up London cabs.

WSJ: Menu

Does this signal the end of Cool Britannia?

ECONOMIST: No thirst for Hirst

"There was this feeling that Britain rocked again - but that was the problem, it became so quickly caricatured with terms like Britpop and Swinging London and Cool Britannia that it ended very quickly, " Dower said.

BBC: Britpop boom and bust laid bare

The collective outpouring of grief that followed the death of Princess Diana in 1997 is now looked back on by many with bemusement, as is the brief "Britpop" moment of the mid-1990s, dubbed "Cool Britannia" by Vanity Fair magazine, which soon lost its lustre, exposed as a feeble parody of British music's 60s heyday.

CNN: Olympics 2012: A spectacular triumph for London

The reason for an apparent backlash against the government was that Tony Blair had been more concerned with presenting his government as "'cool Britannia' - it's trendy Britain, it's young Britain, that he's fighting the forces of conservatism, that it's a young nation, that he wants pop stars at Number Ten, that he can't be bothered to turn up to the 60th anniversary of the Battle of Britain".

BBC: Going for grey