THE official reason for the scaled-back version of the Queen’s Speech this week was that the close proximity of the State Opening of Parliament and the Trooping of the Colour meant there was no time for rehearsal.
But the relative lack of pomp – a car rather than a carriage, no horses or page boys – also serves as something of a symbol of what is really going on in Theresa May’s government.
This was a state opening of parliament that was, just like Mrs May’s programme for government, stripped down and diminished. Most of the manifesto promises for change at home were gone; almost all the grand policies were ditched, the ambition cut down by the realities of the disastrous General Election. For a Prime Minister who once thought she could be all powerful, it must have been a pretty sobering experience.
However, reduced though her plans for government are, in other respects it looks like Mrs May has not learned the lessons of the election at all. Of the 27 bills unveiled in the Queen’s Speech, eight are devoted to Brexit and every indication is that this still means hard Brexit - this despite the fact the PM has now conceded that the Scottish Parliament may have the power to block the Brexit legislation. Given the position of the Scottish Government on the issue, it is another sign that a hard Brexit, or possibly any kind of Brexit at all, is dead.
On the economy too, there are bills in the Queen’s Speech that fiddle round the edges but there is absolutely no indication of an end to the austerity policies that helped galvanise young voters at the polls and increase support for Jeremy Corbyn in large parts of the UK. That there is great anger and discomfort over austerity and Brexit were the two main messages of the General Election, and yet in those areas Mrs May appears to be not for turning.
If there was any good news to be found at all, it was in what was left out of the speech, chiefly any mention of a state visit by Donald Trump. But the greatest potential trouble is on Brexit, with the constitutional uncertainty growing and economists laying out this week just what a hard or chaotic Brexit could mean for the economy: the pound dropping even further, falling wages and more businesses leaving the UK. And yet the Government still appears to believe that no deal is an option even though the London School of Economics suggests that leaving the EU without one could reduce UK income per capita by up to 10 per cent.
The Queen’s Speech would appear to suggest that, despite everything, Mrs May is still blind to these risks and believes that she can still resist the pressure for a softer style of Brexit.
However, the truth is she will have to accept the hard version of Brexit she favoured is over and has no prospect whatsoever of being implemented. She may not be willing to accept that fact now, but perhaps the prospect of a vote on the Great Repeal Bill at Holyrood will change her mind in time. Mrs May once thought she could impose Brexit without any form of consensus, but those days are gone forever.
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