What a mess! The PM agrees to a short meeting on King’s Speech day with his Health Secretary. Someone tells the Times Streeting will call a contest today. We read he did not want to go public yesterday to overshadow the Speech, yet someone in the know tipped off the papers to ensure the Speech was overshadowed. There was no early or any denial from Streeting which any loyal Cabinet member would immediately put out.
So the King read out a turgid long list of lifeless Bills, many of them repeats of old themes whilst Ministers had their minds on questions of whether to run, who to support, how to keep their jobs.
Many of these Bills if pursued are troubled. What can another Steel nationalisation Bill do to correct the folly of the last one that failed to agree transfer of the plant from the Chinese owners or agree to who has to pay off old debts?
What will a new Water Regulator do differently to the current one? Why cant the government just issue better instructions to Ofwat? Why persist with widely loathed digital ID, a solution in search of a problem? What will be yet another Criminal Justice Bill?
The worst Bill and the centre of the economic and constitutional struggle is the EU re set Bill. Based on the wrong notion that we could boost trade with the EU to boost growth, it will lock us into more bad laws, put up energy prices and taxes, invite in many more young people in need of jobs and hones we do not have, and put up spending to give them money we cannot afford.