A paper-thin Queen’s Speech
Lloyd Evans 5:12pm
Even before the Queen had trundled back to Buckingham Palace, Mandy had let the cat out of the bag. Speaking on BBC News he said of the Gracious Speech, ‘All these laws are relevant … and achievable. It will be for the public to decide whether they want them or not.’ There you have it. The greatest power in the land admits the Queen’s Speech is Labour’s manifesto.
The response to the Gracious Speech is an enjoyably ragged parliamentary occasion, full of ancient traditions and even more ancient jokes. Frank Dobson proposed the Humble Address and spoke with pride about his Holborn constituency where the anti-Apartheid movement had been born. He met Mandela briefly after his release from prison and encountered him a second time when, as newly elected President of South Africa, he addressed a joint meeting of parliament. Mandela tapped Dobson on the shoulder. ‘You do remember who I am, don’t you?’
Seconding the Humble Address, Emily Thornberry announced how pleased she was to have been abused by Quentin Letts in the Daily Mail. It proved she’d arrived. He called her ‘scrumptious’ and ‘very county’. But Ms Thorberry corrected that impression and recalled her family’s eviction from her Guildford home by ‘bowler-hatted bailiffs’. Her single mother struggled on benefits and later became a Labour councillor – unusual in Tory Guildford – but the Conservatives were good enough to name a street in her honour. ‘Thornberry Way runs from the sewage works to the dump,’ she smiled. ‘Thanks.’
Over to Dave. He called the Gracious Speech ‘a Labour press release on Palace parchment.’ It was full of glaring omissions. No immigration bill. No sign of the promised regulations ‘to transform the culture of Whitehall’. And no mention of the NHS. This led Dave to deduce that ‘the NHS is not a priority for this government.’ That made Labour MPs very cross indeed. One leapt up and dared Dave to match Labour’s guarantee that cancer patients will be able to see a consultant within two weeks. Dave wriggled out of that one without quite making the pledge. He was then asked how he planned to maintain the army’s strength. This was bizarre. Labour MPs were acting as if Dave were installed in Number 10 and he had popped down to the house for his first PMQs.
Dave moved to Gordon’s record on employment. ‘The only jobs he has created are for his cronies,’ he jeered. He poured scorn on the ‘government of all the talents’, many of whom have taken ermine and moved to the Lords. ‘Never have so many stoats died in vain. Forget about jobs for the boys, it’s stoats for the goats.’
The most embarrassing omission in the government’s programme was the Kelly report. Cameron challenged Brown directly. ‘If he brings forward legislation to implement the rest of Kelly we will help take it through parliament.’ Brown stared down and pretended to fiddle with his papers. Dave tried again. ‘No one will understand why this vital work isn’t being done in this parliament.’ Would the Prime Minister accept Tory help? Afraid not. Gordon suddenly discovered he had something of vital importance to whisper into Batty Hattie’s ear. Dave swung a spotlight onto this Olympic display of dithering. ‘They’ve run out of money, run out of time, run out of ideas. And, we’ve just seen from the Prime Minister, they’ve run out of courage as well.’
Brown managed to raise the tone from low political knockabout to the loftier region of international relations. Afghanistan was on his mind. President Karzai had offered 5,000 troops (he didn’t specify ‘extra troops’) to hold ground recovered from the Taleban. And Karzai would soon introduce ‘an anti-corruption task force’. That sounds ominously like a new way to collect old protection money. Within NATO, Brown was pressing for ‘fairer burden sharing’ between the allies. Slovakia would shortly announce a doubling of its troop deployment.
When he moved on from the Queen’s speech, Brown relaxed a little and had some partisan fun with Dave’s proposals on inheritance tax. Labour rallied behind him, cheering with wild desperation like drunken sailors being kicked out of a party.
When Nick Clegg stood up there was an unseemly exodus from the chamber. The monarch, he said, had been asked to give ‘a fantasy Queen’s speech’. He questioned the need for yet more laws from a government which has already put over 500 measures on the statute book. ‘Legislation is Labour’s comfort blanket.’ Their proposals were full of superficial gestures. One example, a new measure against child poverty which ‘sets a target but doesn’t put a penny in the pockets of a struggling family.’ In the end, this was a Queen’s Speech written not on parchment but on rice paper.
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Frank P
November 18th, 2009 5:25pm Report this commentI thought Evans had found a better 'ole.
Vulture
November 18th, 2009 5:28pm Report this commentKeats' chosen epitaph was 'Here lies one whose words were writ on water'. Bruin's will be: 'Here lies one whose words were writ on s**t'.
JohnOfEnfield
November 18th, 2009 5:34pm Report this commentBrown looks & acts & speaks like a loser.
Please will he hurry up & call a General Election & then lose.
Dungeekin
November 18th, 2009 5:34pm Report this comment'Queen's Speech Promises 'Guaranteed Rights''
In the last Queen's Speech of the current Labour Government before the General Election, Labour have offered the British public a series of new guarantees. aimed at improving public services.
In a speech redolent with the solemnity of the occasion and the somnolence of the drafter, Her Majesty said that the Government would introduce a series of guaranteed rights, ensuring that the electorate were fully aware of what these rights were.
Speaking after the Speech, Eminence Grise & Deputy Prime Minister Lord Fondlebum said, "it is right as a socially-conscious Party delivering fair democratic choice to the British people that we offer socially-conscious democratic guarantees of democratic rights and social choice in the interests of fairness. Democratically and socially . . er. . unlike the nasty Tories, who are all Bullingdon toffs even though they've got a smaller net worth than I have.
"Therefore, with the implementation of the bills in today's Queen's Speech, we are giving the British Public the guaranteed right to a good education for their children, the guaranteed right to see a specialist within two weeks of diagnosis, the guaranteed right to community-based care if you are elderly, and the guaranteed right not to be flooded out of their homes when it rains. All these are guarantees, which is important. And democratic and socially conscious and all that."
Lord Fondlebum added, "however, it is important that the British people also understand that in the cause of socially-conscious democracy, they won't actually GET anything different than the usual tax-and spend rubbish they've had for the last ten years. They'll still be dead long before they get any treatment for their ailments, we'll still nick their house when they get old and their children will still grow up illiterate, brainwashed and with a poor Third from a university staffed with Guardian readers. But the important thing is they'll get the guaranteed right to all these things, which sounds good in the run-up to an Election, doesn't it? Much better than the nasty Tories".
Martin Sheehy
November 18th, 2009 5:42pm Report this commentDid I get it wrong? Does this article say that Lord Mandelson is ' the greatest power in the land '?
Ruth
November 18th, 2009 7:47pm Report this comment‘Thornberry Way runs from the sewage works to the dump,’ she smiled. ‘Thanks.’
It sounds good doesn't it but just look up Thornberry Way, Guildford and you'll see that it does no such thing! Typical Labour lie, absolutely typical. Not just a lie but a really, really easy one to fact check. Why do they do it?
jon dee
November 18th, 2009 8:24pm Report this commentRumours that certain " influential " Labour backbenchers along with their front bench allies could scupper Kelly's recommendations.
Brown's cowardice and U-Turn, while true to character, gives them an added incentive to grab what they can while it's available.
Poor taxpayers can only look on helplessly, despite the efforts of Cameron and Clegg.
Roy Simpson
November 18th, 2009 8:38pm Report this commentBEIJING, Nov 18 (Reuters) - President Barack Obama gave his sternest warning yet about the need to contain rising U.S. deficits, saying on Wednesday that if government debt were to pile up too much, it could lead to a double-dip recession.
Are you listening Gordon Brown? If the Obamamessiah says so it must be so!
strapworld
November 18th, 2009 8:47pm Report this commentIt is unravelling already. The FREE care for the elderly will be paid for by stopping the disability payments to the elderly! 10p TAX? This is going to split the Labour ranks- just watch.
Beer Moth
November 18th, 2009 9:38pm Report this commentI'm sure I heard talk that one of the aims that Labour have announced, is to halve the national debt within 4 years.
This has confused me, since, for the last 6 months and more, it has been widely reported that all this money we have given to the banks, is going to take generations to pay off.
I would be very grateful if one of our monetary-savvy colleagues here could put me right:
Is it a) 4 years will see half of it paid, or
b)My grandkids will still be getting the bill, or
c)Both are complete bollocks?
Frank Leader
November 18th, 2009 9:46pm Report this commentMandelson and Straw dressed in ermine. It could almost be a case of Vermin dressing in Ermine.
DJT
November 18th, 2009 11:24pm Report this commentIf you go to http://www.emilythornberry.com/ (still on Google as her "official site") you get a picture of Dr Zoidberg holding a book on "Diseases of the Claw and Egga Sac"
2trueblue
November 18th, 2009 11:25pm Report this commentI thought that they were going to abolish child poverty..... what has been going on for 12.5yrs? It has increased in their time. What else can they screw up begore they leave?
AAE
November 19th, 2009 12:02am Report this comment2trueblue - with regard to child poverty - the left enact socialism behind a seemingly unarguable screen. There is no absolute level for poverty, but it is measured on a sliding scale as a percentage of average income and is more to do with attempted wealth redistribution than children. It's a big subject, but the best thing for children would be to teach them to read and write maybe. In a country primary school in N. Ireland, we all managed that by the age of 5 . . . . . . . But of course like you, I wonder how could so much bad and so little good be done in 12.5 years. Doesn't say much for the press or the opposition.
Amadeus Plonquer
November 19th, 2009 12:48am Report this commentI thought Her Majesty looked far from being 'paper-thin'. Indeed we should celebrate her robust health and rejoice that, having the genetic make-up of her gracious mother, she will indeed live long.
Or perhaps you meant the Queen's paper-thin Speech?
Frank P
November 19th, 2009 9:24am Report this commentRoy Simpson
I think Obama was merely parroting what Hu Jintao had just whispered in his ear. America has now ceded its hegemony to the Yellow Peril; he was there with the begging bowl and got the bum's rush.
Nicholas
November 19th, 2009 9:24am Report this commentEnacting legislation to halve the deficit in 4 years does not gel with Brown's position on the debt, where he has poo-pooed Tory plans to reduce the budget.
No, it is contrived to force the Tories close to the end of their first term to either break the law or having to cut savagely in order to meet the target and then being accused of cutting public services.
It is the most spiteful and cynical piece of proposed legislation amongst many nasty pieces of legislation. I hope people can see through this, especially the lazy media, but I'm not holding my breath.
It seems that much of New Labour's term in office has been spent more on attempts to discomfort the Tories and the right (Neathergate, etc) than governing the country in the best interests of the people. They have thrown their manifestos out of the window, legislated on the hoof and compounded the nation's problems. They really do deserve to go under - in a very big way.
Roy Smith
November 19th, 2009 9:38am Report this commentWhat a pity the Queen doesn't see fit to break out of her doleful act and find something funny and smart to say at the expense of some of the real power brokers pulling at the bit. Also perhaps something serious to say about the iffy management of her Kingdom.
Frank P
November 19th, 2009 10:16am Report this commentNicholas
As we keep saying - scorched earth! I'm sure the main perpetraitors have got their nest eggs sorted and will wallow and wait for the next opportunity to rise like zombies. But the Long March will continue; there is little prospect that CMD will bark "About Turn!" With America at its weakest since the Depression and a Marxist puppet in the Shite House, the EUSSR project is a done deal. How China and Russia on the one hand and Islamic creep on the other will react to all this, in the shifting geopolitical tectonics, should be an interesting last chapter for my generation. God alone knows what it means for succeeding generations, but that's for them to sort out. It was good while it lasted.
Wily Trout
November 19th, 2009 1:12pm Report this commentThe elderly usually have to take that dreaded final step into care because of double incontinence, which is terrible for their relatives to manage in the home. You would have thought Brown could understand this, as incontinence has been such a predominant feature of his handling of the economy.
Archie
November 19th, 2009 5:45pm Report this commentI must say that Her Maj looked rather less than thrilled to bits to be there! You don't suppose she's finally rumbled the fact that her once glorious realm is going down the toilet....and fast?
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