Business unusual
WESTMINSTER in the record-breaking high heat of midsummer. The elderly Queen opening parliament for the 64th time in this longest of royal reigns.
A crowded and noisy Commons chamber, with the party leaders straining to make their points across the despatch box.
The unwary, catching the event on the television news afterwards, may have got the impression that this was all very familiar, that the 2017 Queen’s speech marks the resumption of British political business as usual. Yet the unwary would be very wrong. British politics was radically recast on June 8. The new political landscape is different in almost every way bar the names of the two main party leaders. The Conservatives are in office but not in power.
Labour is in one-more-heave mode for the first time since the 1990s.
In this hung parliament, shaped by what is now a minority government, this was a Queen’s speech from a humbled Tory party under a leader whose authority has suddenly drained away.
Everything about the first day of the new parliament underlined the fragile conditionality of the new order.
The queen dispensed with the usual robes and symbols, sporting instead a hat that echoed the European flag and set Twitter chirping.
The speech was short, and would have been lightweight, especially for a mooted two-year session, were it not for the Brexit legislation that bulked it out.
Peggy Lee’s song Is That All There Is? came irresistibly to mind.
Tory MPs, still shocked at the loss of their majority, managed to do their collective duty by rallying behind Theresa May.
The prime minister was careful and conciliatory – her tone set by a striking apology for central and local government’s lamentable response to the Grenfell Tower fire.
The queen’s speech revealed a government without a clear mandate.
It is frightened of taking sensible action on both Brexit and public spending.
Its programme poses an unanswered question: What is the point of this?
Unless Mrs May can supply a better answer than she offered today, it looks a doomed enterprise.