Boris Johnson has been PM for nearly two years — so why did the Queen’s Speech feel empty?

Boris Johnson has faced two huge challenges since he became prime minister nearly two years ago. He faced a parliamentary deadlock over Brexit and no sooner had he broken it he was plunged into the Covid-19 crisis. So he has excuses for a Queen’s Speech with almost nothing in it. But they are excuses.

One of the qualities of a successful government is being able to do more than one thing at a time. Which is why it was so disappointing that there was nothing in the government’s legislative programme on social care, or on levelling up, its latest vogue slogan.

When Johnson stood on the threshold of No 10 he seemed to recognise that his government had to do more than sort out Brexit; that was why he said he had a social care plan ready to go. As soon as the black door closed behind him, though, he was surrounded by officials who told him what an excellent plan it was and how brave he was to propose it. It hasn’t been heard of since, and it wasn’t in the Queen’s Speech today.

As for “levelling up”, a phrase that seemed to go down well in the general election, and which everyone agrees has to be delivered in a tangible form to convince new Tory voters that they made the right choice – that will be in a white paper just as soon as Neil O’Brien, the bright, policy-rich MP, has written it.

So the government hasn’t even started doing two of the most important things it wants to do, and we are almost halfway through what used in normal times to be a full parliamentary term. Perhaps that is why the Gracious Speech was so full of trivia and cheap gestures.

There is no use, I suppose, in saying that Johnson should have set up a delivery unit two years ago. It was better late than never that the prime minister got Sir Michael Barber into Downing Street to advise on setting up a unit to do what Sir Michael did for Tony Blair – namely to focus on progress-chasing while freeing the prime minister to deal with crises. The unit is only now being set up, and its permanent head, Emily Lawson, won’t even take charge until she has finished overseeing the vaccination programme at the NHS.

It is telling that even starting on the big policies has to wait for the pandemic to be over, when coronavirus did so much to expose the weaknesses of our social care system. The pandemic could have been used as an opportunity to rally a consensus, and possibly even to make the case for vast public spending on social care – although that is where it starts to get tricky and you can see why a solution has not been forthcoming. The argument that spending a gazillion on furlough means you can spend a gazillion on social care cuts both ways: many voters may think that once you’ve spent the first gazillion you haven’t got it any more and just hope that they or their parents won’t actually need help with getting dressed when they are older.

As for “levelling up” it was interesting to see that Rachel Wolf, one of the authors of the Tory manifesto, which uses the phrase 11 times, wrote yesterday: “Truth be told, levelling up is a poor slogan. It has never done very well in our focus groups – people find it confusing and then, when it’s explained to them, mildly irritating.” People outside south-east England “find the idea that in four years they’re suddenly going to become London and the south east bizarre … it’s not what they want, and they don’t think it’s credible”.

She proposes more specific policies, each with clear tests for whether they have been achieved: better high streets; less crime; local training for local jobs; and higher school standards. Neil O’Brien, who was appointed last week as No 10 adviser in charge of “levelling up”, could do worse than copy and paste her article, add a couple of appendices, and publish that as the white paper next week.

But even then, it will take years to make a measurable difference on the kinds of indicators suggested by Wolf.

The next election is probably three years away, but Johnson may want to have the option at least of going to the country early as soon as the new constituency boundaries take effect in July 2023, which are likely to add something like 30 to his majority before a single vote has been cast.

My guess is that he will still be promising a social care plan by then, and “levelling up” will have been renamed as a project for his second full term. He reminds me of a character in an old-fashioned manual of moral instruction I read as a child, which featured a child called Jess Goingto. “When are you going to publish the social care plan and level up the country, Boris?” “I’m Jess Goingto.”