There wasn’t much pomp around today’s Queen’s Speech, despite the fact that this second speech of the autumn is the one that will actually get delivered. With a majority, Boris Johnson is able to say confidently that his government is going to introduce all the policies listed in the Speech and that they will pass too.
This means that the government can transmit its key messages for the voters it has just won over without fear that its own MPs will scupper those policies before they have a chance to be implemented. In his introduction to the speech, Johnson writes: ‘I am humbled by the trust millions of voters placed in this government last week. The work to repay that trust starts here.’ And it’s a weighty list of policies, too. After getting Brexit done, the priority is the NHS, with the government enshrining in law the funding increase for the health service, reforms to make the NHS safer, as well as reform of the Mental Health Act, and a rather wishy-washy promise to ‘seek cross-party consensus on proposals for long term reform of social care’ to ‘ensure that the social care system provides everyone with the dignity and security they deserve and that no-one who needs care has to sell their home to pay for it’.
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