BritainJun 24th 2017 edition
Thin gruel
A scaled-down Queen's Speech
Meagre fare for the state opening of the new parliament
Jun 22nd 2017
THE Queen's Speech on June 21st ticked almost all the requisite boxes when it came to tradition, even if Queen Elizabeth dispensed with both her crown and the state coach. The Coldstream Guards played the national anthem. Black Rod summoned MPs with his usual three raps on the Commons door to come to the Lords to hear her speak. Dennis Skinner, an ageing Labour MP and republican, interrupted the solemn silence with a loud joke—"Get your skates on, the first race is at half past two," referring to the fact that the queen was interrupting her annual pilgrimage to Royal Ascot to open the parliament. And the march towards the Lords featured an awkwardly taciturn two-step between Theresa May, the prime minister, and Jeremy Corbyn, her Labour opponent.
Yet the event was all rather lacklustre. The queen, wearing a blue hat that looked remarkably like the European Union flag, hardly bothered to show any interest in what she was reading. The speech was one of the shortest on record: if you left the room to make a cup of tea you might have missed it all. And this despite the decision by Mrs May that this should be a "long parliament" and that there will not be another such speech for two years.
The speech lacked substance as well as style, reflecting Mrs May's shrunken ambitions since she lost her parliamentary majority on June 8th. There will be no fewer than eight Brexit bills: a "Great Repeal Bill", which will incorporate existing EU legislation into British law so that it can be retained or rejected in the future, and seven other bills dealing with issues ranging from immigration to the establishment of new regulatory agencies.
But the rest of the legislative agenda will be thin gruel. The government included some unobjectionable measures, such as taking stronger action against domestic abuse and cracking down on fraudulent "whiplash" claims. It ventured a bit of more controversial stuff, but it left out much of the guts of the Conservative manifesto. The government will now "consult" on how to pay for social care. There was no mention of bringing back grammar schools, scrapping the winter fuel allowance, removing the triple lock on pensions, scrapping free school lunches, removing the ban on foxhunting, or entertaining Donald Trump, the American president, to a state visit.
This peculiar speech was shaped by two brutal realities. The first is that Brexit will take up almost all this parliament's energies. Passing even the most vaguely worded legislation through both houses will be a nightmare. Giving precise meaning to that legislation will open up deep divisions over Brexit across the political spectrum, but particularly on the right.
The second is that Mrs May does not have a majority in either house. The government will be able to get its legislative agenda through the Commons only with the support of the ten Democratic Unionist MPs from Northern Ireland. Indeed, Mrs May was trying almost up to the moment when the queen arrived to forge a loose "confidence and supply" arrangement with the DUP under which the party would agree to offer support on vital bills. But, being stuffed with veteran negotiators, the DUP was resisting such a deal in an effort to extract the maximum it could in additional public spending for Northern Ireland. All the while it was complaining that Number 10 is full of political neophytes who cannot even find Northern Ireland on the map.
The subsequent debate was only a little more interesting than the speech itself. Mr Corbyn displayed more pep than he ever did before the election, although he will never be a great parliamentary performer. Indeed, the Labour Party in general had a lot more pep, suggesting just how difficult it will be for Mrs May to command this parliament in the coming months. Mrs May herself was in apologetic mood, to the extent of giving way to as many as 16 interruptions (to Mr Corbyn's six). For her part the queen didn't bother to hang around for the undignified part of politics: no sooner had she finished giving her address than she got into a waiting helicopter and headed for Royal Ascot and the 2.30.
This article appeared in the Britain section of the print edition under the headline "Thin gruel"
More from Britain
Boris Johnson's career of rule-breaking runs into crisis
Britain's energy crisis
Expensive energy is baked into Britain's future
Choosing to look away
Omicron and the logic of testing
Match and dispatch
Non-religious celebrants are leading more of England's funerals
Bagehot
What did you expect from Boris Johnson?
From smashing the political status quo to partying during lockdown
It's not cheap being green
Britain ponders an end to free lateral-flow tests. America is just starting
They could soon get the right to marry people, too
The prime minister, in his own way, is Britain's most honest politician