Editorial Comment:
AQueen’s Speech and all the pomp and ceremony that attends it is normally the centrepiece of the parliamentary calendar. Today’s State Opening, the first for two years after the longest unbroken session for centuries, feels almost like an adjunct to the real political drama, as indeed it is. Her Majesty will be reading out the Government’s programme for the next 12 months with no real expectation on the part of her ministers that any of the proferred legislation will be enacted.
Jeremy Corbyn has called the decision to hold a Queen’s Speech with Brexit unresolved and a general election on the horizon a “stunt”, and there is something more than partisanship in this observation. The event is not supposed to be used as an opportunity for the Sovereign to set out a party’s manifesto ahead of an anticipated poll but a realistic legislative agenda for the next 12 months.
When the Queen says today that “my Government will” introduce this statute or amend that law, everyone will know the chances of it doing so are vanishingly small. Amid all the defections and suspensions of Conservative MPS, Boris Johnson is at least 40 votes short of a majority and could well lose the main division on the Queen’s Speech, the first prime minister to do so in almost 100 years. The last occasion in January 1924 prompted the resignation of Stanley Baldwin.
It is at least arguable that the Government should have waited until the Brexit imbroglio had reached some sort of resolution before beginning a new session. On the other hand, the country craves an end to the uncertainty and a return to the normality that a Queen’s Speech signifies. The programme of 20 or so expected Bills will be heavily dictated by the exigencies of Brexit but it also presages reforms in the public sector, notably health, social care and education. An unexpected policy change will foreshadow an end to the fixed-term franchise model of rail privatisation that has maintained for more than 20 years. A shake-up of this unwieldy and discredited system is long overdue. It is disappointing, however, that promised legislation to protect members of the Armed Forces from vexatious prosecution has been omitted.
But the reality behind today’s announcements is that, until there is a general election, a new Parliament and a conclusion to Brexit, the current political paralysis will continue.