On this anniversary of Elizabeth II’s death, we are still in the legislative session commenced with the Queen’s Speech of May 2022 – one monarch and two prime ministers (and several cabinet ministers) ago.
This, by itself, illustrates the drift of the current government. Neither Truss nor Sunak when they commenced their premierships signalled a new legislative programme. Instead they carried on with what was, in any case, primarily a gimmicky pick-and-mix miscellany of poorly conceived legislative proposals.
And so we are are still, in one sense, in the age of Johnson. And he is now not even in parliament, let alone the head of a government pushing through his last legislative package.
The knock-on effect of this is, as my Substack has previously averred, that the government is running out of time before the next election to pass legislation – especially anything fundamental or controversial. Many will think this a good thing, but it is not the sign of a government with direction or drive.
We are one year on from one thing, sixteen months on from another thing, and still perhaps a year away from that one thing, a general election, that can bring about any meaningful change.
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There are some horrifying new proposals to further screw the disabled over which a lot of people will breathe a sigh of relief over them not happening for a while, seems like a lot of benefit changes are just made by SI, there is a consultation about this one.
Isn’t the grim truth of the matter that Parliament, far from being ‘sovereign’, is now supine? And what does it say about our much vaunted sovereignty that one of the central planks of the Online Safety Bill simply collapsed after pressure from the big tech companies? The Bill certainly bears out your point about “poorly conceived legislative proposals” (and that’s putting it politely), but can you imagine the EU caving in like this (although, of course, they wouldn’t have dreamed up such an ill-thought-out measure in the first place, much of which was designed in response to campaigns mounted by the client press).
The online Safety Bill did not collapse under pressure from big tech companies. It is collapsing under the weight of reality. Regardless of how often politicians and campaigners claim that it is possible to have secure communication which is insecure, this remains a contradiction in terms.
In my view, it’s a consequence of both. I entirely agree that the Bill is massively ill-conceived – but that hasn’t stopped other equally ill-conceived measures becoming law in the past, with all the negative consequences that experts in the field (not wanted on board, of course) have predicted. I’m absolutely opposed to the vast power that the big tech companies have arrogated to themselves, but if they’ve played a role – even a minor one – in mitigating this madness, then I’m grateful.
I strongly suspect that Sunak will hold until the very end.
I recall Sir Michael Fraser’s comment on the situation in early 1964 (when Alec Home held on until the end) “It would have been very difficult for CCO/CRD to have advised a spring election – it was and is our role to win elections, not to advise on when to loose one.”
Also Macmillan to Callaghan – early Autumn 1978: “You socialists have made it impossible for ordinary people to enjoy properly staffed country houses, chauffeurs and all the other things you enjoy as Prime Minister. The electorate are fickle and you should enjoy things as long as you can.”
And as I read this, I hear callers on 5-Live moaning about how unappealing and boring Starmer is. It seems that the CONservative’s press friends have been able to repeat the saying enough times that people are beginning to believe that all politicians are useless and that nobody cares about or is excited by Starmer.
And yet the polls show he will get into power with a landslide.
I think we are a lot less than sixteen months away from an election, which will probably be in May or June 2024. Normally a good time for a Tory election, it might be called then simply to avoid the embarrassment of presenting a very thin King’s Speech next year. They will no doubt hope inflation will be reduced to close to the target 2% to declare the cost of living crisis over.
Do the Tories actually want to win? I doubt it. Labour will inherit the wreckage and be very limited in their options to make significant changes and they could soon become unpopular as a result.
All very difficult. I suppose a good punishment would be to let the Tories win the next election whenever that is. But that punishes the populace as well and gets us no further.
Government seems like a complicated machine that is stuck and won’t go and the repairs are unpleasant, vote losing and expensive. Then the tools at hand are not much good, rhetoric and reports and studies and phony arguments when what is needed is a good lump hammer.
In short, the market will not provide, the technocrats have no viable solutions anyone can afford and Mother Nature is breathing her hot breath down our necks. Meanwhile we are generating a job market where folk need £90k+ to buy a matchbox and not do anything very useful.
“… what is needed is a good lump hammer.” For no particular reason I see many black shirts, and the gutters of Whitechapel foaming with much blood. But Im sure I’ll get over it.