It took the Queen only eight minutes to read the speech Gordon Brown’s advisers had prepared for her and even she looked bored by the end of it. The Prime Minister may have waited ten years for this chance to set the parliamentary agenda, but one searches this Queen’s Speech in vain for any sense of direction or drive. It was a compendium of mainly old policies, in which a wider ‘vision’ was always difficult to discern. Instead, it was a speech remarkable for what it did not contain.
Gone is the sense of adventurism. Under Tony Blair, the Gracious Speech gave notice of his next series of battles with his party. One could look at his proposed Bills, and pencil in the date of impending backbench rebellion as he pursued his strategy of pro-market reform of the public services. Especially towards the end, there was a palpable sense of urgency, and a sense of a man who knew the clock was ticking. Mr Brown, by contrast, seems remarkably happy with the status quo. He is proceeding with a leisurely, almost glacial pace.
Take, for example, the numbers of Bills laid before parliament which involve the year 2020. This, we learn, is when 500,000 new apprenticeships will be set up, and when Britain’s carbon dioxide emissions will be down by a quarter, and when the promised three million new homes will have been constructed. With stunning arrogance, this assumes a seventh-term Labour government, still running along the direction which the Prime Minister laid out on Tuesday. The idea, presumably, is that Britain would by then be celebrating a near quarter-century of Brownite policies.
Meanwhile, back in 2007, a more immediate challenge beckons. It was widely expected that the Queen’s Speech would set the parameters for a straightforward confrontation between ministers seeking to increase the number of days a terrorist suspect can be detained without charge, and those who think 28 is plenty (or too much).
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