The UK is agog with modernisation. The dissolution of the House of Lords, devolution and a potentially Parliament-trumping Bill of Human Rights, no British political institution appears to be sacrosanct. Nonetheless, as the following paper argues, it as yet unclear whether such modernisation will affect deep-seated historical trends within the British polity, trends which stubbornly survived even the 'constitutional moment' of the post-war creation of a democratic welfare state, and which continue to perceive of the individual Briton's relationship with the British State (that is, British citizenship) in implicitly hierarchical terms. The modern Briton is no 'fellow-traveller' in a state constituted exclusively for its needs by its citizenry. Rather, the 'British subject' retains a feudal flavour, still linked, by simple virtue of common law and the constitutional 'non-definition' of modern British citizenship, to an outmoded monarchical Sovereign. And yet, such antiquinarianism may also bear the seeds of...