Rishi Sunak has pushed the King’s Speech back for a reason

A little procedural change, slipped out quietly by Rishi Sunak on Thursday, has delivered an insight into his plans for the next general election.

The King’s Speech setting out the government’s agenda for the coming year – the first to be delivered by Charles III in his own right, after he stood in for his mother last year – has been put back from springtime to the autumn of 2023.

Downing Street aides say that this is because they have a packed schedule of legislation to get through in a limited time (with the unspoken implication that a lot of that time was wasted during the two leadership battles of 2022, when government business almost ground to a halt).

But this seems somehow hard to square with the glacial pace at which some bills – on levelling up, strikes or online safety – are proceeding through parliament, or the fact that others, like the Schools Bill or Bill of Rights Bill, have been dropped or kicked into the long grass.

Meanwhile, bold ministerial pronouncements about action on small boats or restrictions on public sector strikes always seem to conclude with a promise that tough measures are being considered for inclusion in legislation at an unspecified point next year.

As chaos mounts around them in this new winter of discontent, ministers are in fact largely sitting on their hands and hoping they will still be standing when the storm blows itself out.

Since the autumn statement, what Sunak and chancellor Jeremy Hunt are actually aiming for on a policy level is quiet. They believe that their repudiation of Trussonomics and submission to the iron rule of Treasury orthodoxy in November has done enough to calm the markets and shore up the pound.

And for all the pain of inflation and rising interest rates over the months to come, they believe that if they hold their nerve their economic rigour will deliver dividends towards the end of 2023 – particularly if the war in Ukraine also ends.

Why launch a whole new raft of Sunakite policies in the spring, when strikes may still be raging and the cost of living crisis will be inflicting maximum pain on voters?

Far better to let parliament occupy itself with the remnants of the agenda under Boris Johnson back in May, making concessions when necessary to keep his party onside, and then use the autumn to set out his stall for the election in six months’ time.

By autumn – so the PM’s thinking goes – the light at the end of the tunnel will be visible, the recession will be nearing its end and he will be able to relaunch the Conservatives as a new party under new management looking to the future.

The first King’s Speech will be a bid to draw a line under the horrors of the current period and present Sunak as the right man to take the UK forward. The PM may find, however, that voters are not so ready to draw a line as he is.

Yours,

Andrew Woodcock

Political editor