Can the Tories bounce back before the next election?

When David Cameron was prime minister, the Tories flirted with the idea of a Queen’s Speech with no bills in it at all. The aim was to show that more legislation was not the answer. This idea was quickly abandoned on the grounds that it would make the government look like it was out of ideas. This week’s Queen’s Speech contained 38 bills. Yet little of the proposed legislation will have made a difference to the most significant challenges facing this country by the next election.

The biggest issue for Britain, the cost-of-living squeeze, won’t be solved by legislation: inflation can’t be brought back to its two per cent target by a bill. But even so, the point of all these bills seems unclear. The legislative programme adds up to less than the sum of its parts and that’s because, post-Covid, the government hasn’t yet settled on a new raison d’être.

Levelling up is meant to be the defining purpose of this government, and there is duly a levelling up bill. It contains some sensible measures, including a plan to revive high streets by allowing councils to auction off the leases on shops that have been unoccupied for some time. But this bill won’t be transformative. There is a lack of urgency here. There’s no plan, for instance, to rapidly improve transport links from the most deprived towns to thriving cities nearby.

The Queen’s Speech may not change much, but that’s not to say Westminster itself isn’t in a state of flux. It is a sign of how centralised this country has become that so many in Westminster regard the principal function of local elections as offering a sign as to what might happen at the next general election.