Republicanism: the new Labour cause that suddenly dares to speak its name? Forget it - that was Alistair Campbell's message yesterday as Downing Street moved to close down the furore over the "Sophiegate" tapes.
"The stuff" of recent days had not changed the Prime Minister's view of the monarchy one bit. No, the official spokesman insisted, Mr Blair had no plans to change or modernise it. The question of which or how many royals should benefit from the civil list payments was essentially "a matter for the queen".
Where, barely a week ago, ministers had appeared relieved by the sudden outbreak of royal indiscretion, Mr Campbell dismissed coverage of the taped conversation between the Countess of Wessex and the phoney sheikh as a passing media frenzy.
"My sense of this is that the story's dying on its feet," declared the spokesman, with clear intent that it should. "The Prime Minister and the government's view is that our job is not to feed a media frenzy."
Courtiers might well have wished Mr Campbell and the government had arrived at this conclusion just a little earlier. Conscious of the impending general election, the palace might also have viewed the Downing Street disclaimer with more than a touch of scepticism.
Sunday's broadsheet newspaper headlines certainly suggested relations between Downing Street and Buckingham Palace were under severe strain. Ministers were reportedly outraged that revelations about the countess's business partner threatened to undermine the government's latest anti-drugs initiative. Royal aides were equally furious that the government appeared deliberately to fan the flames of the Sophie affair.
And the Observer authoritatively quoted a "senior Downing Street source" expressing astonishment at the way the palace had handled the PR disaster, saying: "If they carry on like this then the public has questions to ask. In the end it will get the whole issue of reform of the monarchy back on the agenda."
Referring specifically to Mr Blair's presumed private support for a smaller civil list, Downing Street sources reportedly said: "We must have a debate. The public will lead it. We will not force the issue."
By yesterday morning the debate was at full throttle, led by the chief cheerleaders for a second Blair term at the influential Sun newspaper. The paper which authoritatively told the nation the election would be postponed until June 7th yesterday exclusively revealed that Tony and Cherie Blair had pulled out of a royal dinner date with the Countess of Essex.
It would indeed have been "a hideously embarrassing affair" given that we now know Sophie thinks the Prime Minister "ignorant of the countryside" and considers his wife "even worse, she hates the countryside. She hates it!"
More importantly, the paper's editorial ventured that Prince Charles's own plan for a downsized monarchy might just save the crown but for a generation at the most. "After that, all bets are off. This is our country. Why do they have a right to be heads of it?" it asked.
This might have proved a bit too strong for Mr Blair, seemingly something of a pro-monarchy minority in a government suddenly widely described as the most republican since that of Oliver Cromwell.
However, Downing Street's attempt to cool the situation yesterday did not quite lift the suspicion that ministers and loyal backbenchers had enjoyed a surprising amount of latitude as the latest royal crisis built to its climax.
True, Mr Blair had distanced himself from Kim Howells after the Consumer Affairs Minister declared: "I've never understood the attraction of royalty. They're all a bit bonkers. Think of George III. They even made a film about him. They choose very strange partners. They're not managing the modern world very well."
But there was no public rebuke for Mr Howells, or for two cabinet Ministers, Mr Stephen Byers and Ms Margaret Beckett, for their barely-coded rebukes of the countess. Nor were more overt attacks on the monarchy confined to the traditional left.
The Welsh First Minister, Mr Rhodri Morgan, still believed a "third way" was possible between old-fashioned royalism and republicanism but feared the latest controversy had dealt a blow to the modernisation process needed to save the monarchy. "I must admit that the Sophie Wessex escapade has set that back by perhaps 10 years," he told the BBC yesterday.
And a Blairite moderniser, Mr Tony Wright, chairman of the Commons Public Administration Select Committee, has called on Mr Blair to actually lead the debate, saying: "If we don't have something like a select committee or a commission on the monarchy, it will be the end anyway."
Mr Blair, it is said, will simply ignore such calls; not least, perhaps, because Tony Benn has cheerfully and very precisely spelt out where the debate might ultimately lead.
Typically eschewing the personalities, the veteran republican said: "It's very unfair to blame the royal family. They didn't pick the job." However, Mr Benn insisted it was wrong that he should be forced to tell a lie (by swearing allegiance to the queen) in order to take his parliamentary seat.
And he said Britain needed an elected head of state, not least to check the power of a prime minister to pack the House of Lords with placemen or to take the country to war without reference to parliament.
WE MAY be sure none of this features on Mr Blair's agenda and that the assorted unnamed sources have it right; the government will watch this debate driven by the media and hope the royals get the message.
But precisely what message, demand depressed traditionalists, dismayed to find the royal residences already flooded with sunlight and much of the magic long departed? And post-Tony Blair, with Labour rampant in late second or early third term, a successful referendum behind it, those pound coins melted down at the royal mint and the sovereign's head nowhere to be seen on the face of the new European currency?
That was the nightmare vision Conservatives insist William Hague was trying to evoke with his depiction of Britain as a "foreign" land after a second Blair term. As Queen Elizabeth contemplates her golden jubilee, she and her successors might suddenly find it not so improbable.
Frank Millar is London Editor of The Irish Times