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.
May 14, 2026
I wonder if you have run the notion that boosting trade with the EU won’t boost growth past any of the economics fellows at All Souls?
Reply They know my views. They do not write about that topic. Pity you cannot be bothered to follow the argument or see from the data how joining the Customs Union hit our growth rate.
May 14, 2026
The trouble with socialists/communists is that they are always right and ordinary people always ring. It is pointless trying to engage with them or debate. Their minds are closed, hermetically sealed. And the outcome is always the same: dictatorship, poverty and oppression. The only difference, potentially in UK this time, is that the Islamist allies of the Left takeover as they did in Iran in 1979.
There is one new law we really do need and that is one whereby ordinary voters can force a government to hold a general election. The Dissolution and Calling of Parliament Act 2022 does not require a general election following dissolution. It dissolves parliament automatically after five years but leaves the government in office. So the situation in 2029 will be Starmer’s Gang, perhaps with a different communist leader, still in office but no MPs. I repeat, zero MPs, ie, no opposition, no holding ministers to account. There isn’t even a law in Britain saying there must be a national parliament. It is an unwritten constitutional practice. That is all.
May 14, 2026
The worst Bill and the centre of the economic and constitutional struggle is the EU re set Bill
Well hopefully Starmer will be gone very soon, and when ever a General Election is called be it Tories or Reform they have in there manifesto and pledges to the voter to over turn anything this liebour government do in the next few months of there survival about the dreaded EU
May 14, 2026
It is telling when a recently elected government who claimed their ambition was to bring about change, ends up giving the King a speech to read out that is focused entirely of their standard no change position.
Labour came to office with no new ideas and have ensured their lack of innovation was progressed. They have managed to change one thing though. The country no longer believes Labour is capable of changing anything.
The growth in state spending, no change. The growth in Public sector scale and cost no change. The ongoing illegal immigration from continental Europe, no change. The increasing level of taxation each and every year, no change. The expansion of the benefits class, no change. The submission to international institutions we have zero influence over, no change.
I can feel a song coming on. No change..