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All politics, Victor Serge once observed, is merely concentrated prediction. In that light, I thought that some readers of the Turtle might be interested in a brief confession: I was wrong. Just three years ago, I predicted on this website that never in my lifetime would England win a world cup, neither at football, nor at cricket, nor -- and here was the gamble -- at Rugby Union. My reasoning went something like this. All real sporting excellence depended on a culture of longing, a feeling of need rooted in long-term processes of national and also individual oppression. In such a context sport could offer the mirage of some brief reversal, the symbol if not the reality of liberation.

The last three years have witnessed enough examples of this process at work to show that it can happen. I think of Senegal against France, the West Indian victory over Australia at Port of Spain, Liverpool in their derby victories against Man U. Even the last rugby world cup was not immune from the phenomenon, as Samoa and Wales took the upper hand against England. So how then did England, the most boring club in the competition, escape South Africa, France and Australia, while scoring barely a try, and win?

The science behind England was an art of defence. Members of the squad made this very point, repeatedly in interviews. The skill that they brought was a mastery of tackling. By reducing every other team's chances of scoring, by kicking for possession, by taking penalties with all the joyless efficiency of a human metronome, then eventually England would have to win.

England against Australia was always going to end in home defeat. The greater interest was to see whether those teams that played an expansive style might beat England. France were defeated by an extraordinary day of rain which made handling impossible. And while I still like to think that New Zealand should have beaten England, this possibility died in the rival semi, when a team that had played all year with panache - simply died of nerves.

Most newspapers interpreted the England victory as a sign of some kind of national revival. If '66 won the election for Wilson, then Wilko could surely repeat the trick for Blair. Knighthoods were promised, a month of celebrations. An Evening Standard poster went up in pubs all round London. Even the Guardian dedicated its first two pages to 'our' triumph.

In a passage somewhere the socialist historian Ian Birchall remarks that what was at stake in the social conflicts of late 1970s Britain was not simply the question of whether the far-left or the far-right would gain most momentum. This contest was merely a shadow of a grander battle of ideas and symbols. At stake was the question of what sort of society Britain should become -- a place of "Bob Marley, Viv Richards and kebabs", or one in the image of "Cliff Richard, Trevor Bailey and pies and mash". Birchall was writing of course before Tony Blair's summer holiday with Cliff -- the moment, surely, which did more than any other to end the myth of Cool Britannia -- but the point remains.

If only William Hague or Iain Duncan Smith had still been leading the Conservatives, then they would have relished in this team of bald, forty-something management consultants taking on the world. It was indeed the mirage of a national liberation, but a revolution of the farmers, the police and Southern England against the wild, the poor and the young. As it was, we had Blair to orchestrate the enemies of exuberance. Which he did without shame.

So we lost this round, Turtlistas, but we'll be back -- Anyone But England!