The Queen’s Speech appears less of a list of government priorities and more a way to outflank Labour

At the age of 95 and in her 67th Queen’s Speech, Elizabeth II is the first monarch to utter the very modern word “gigabyte” from the gilt throne designed in 1847 in characteristically exuberant new-Gothic style by Augustus Pugin.

It was also a characteristically exuberant, boosterish text that Boris Johnson had prepared for her majesty, albeit overladen with tendentious claims and party political bragging. It was indisputably upbeat about “bouncing forward”, as the prime minister likes to say. There was indeed plenty about high-speed broadband, high-speed rail, high-speed planning approval, high-speed skills training, the high-speed new Advanced Research and Innovation Agency (Dominic Cummings’s expensive brainchild), high-speed skills training, and even high-speed buses.

As an agenda for post-Brexit Britain, desperately in need of help as it loses more and more of its key export markets in Europe, it has something to commend. There was no hint in the Queen’s Speech that the current cradle of the coronavirus emergency economic support will be retained beyond the autumn. When the furlough and the other schemes are closed, a boost to infrastructure investment will be needed like never before as unemployment climbs.

Obviously, there were telling omissions. Perhaps some constructive ideas about social care will in due course be floated, but the lottery and the injustices of the present system of long-term care look to be left in place, frankly for want of political courage. Almost two years after the prime minister famously stood on the steps of Downing Street claiming to have a “plan” (though not “oven-ready”), there is still no sign of any such thing.

Similarly, the legal confusions about workers’ rights will be left to fester even though the government has been promising to strengthen and clarify the rights of vulnerable workers since Theresa May commissioned the Taylor Review four years ago. The Conservative Party still seems allergic to workers’ rights, and has perhaps not changed as much as some seem to suppose.

Whatever its merits as an agenda of white papers and bills for a busy government, though, the 2021 Queen’s Speech is much more than that. It is also a web of carefully lain political traps for the Labour Party to merrily blunder into, proving, according to the Tory spin, that Sir Keir Starmer and his friends are just the kind of soft, liberal “woke”, unpatriotic people that Mr Johnson claims them to be in his slapstick speech making.

Every measure seems designed to push the Labour Party into a corner, and into the sort of position that looks bad to middle England and the kind of socially conservative, traditionally minded Leave-inclined voters so numerous in the red wall seats and beyond. Usually, crime bills are the most effective in this cynical exercise, as was found during the last parliament when Labour went about its legitimate business of contesting and scrutinising legislation and was rewarded by being painted as the friend of the felon. So it will no doubt prove again. 

Thus, the asylum bill is designed to leave Labour “on the side of” the kinds of people that make sections of the electorate anxious for risking their lives crossing the Channel just for a chance of a better life and to escape war, persecution and poverty. The Judicial Review Bill will be similarly crafted to demonise the courts, including the Supreme Court, and metropolitan “lefty lawyers” (such as Sir Keir Starmer QC), who have nothing better to do than pursue “vexatious” cases against service personnel and frustrate the democratic will of the people by striking down the laws passed by the Commons and the “people’s government”, laws which just happen to take human rights away. It is surely only a matter of time before Priti Patel recycles that famous line about the judges being “enemies of the people”, again to predictable outrage but the quiet approval of the “left behind”.

As it happens, the Judicial Review Bill appears an act of spite for the Supreme Court’s role in Brexit and for ruling unlawful the prorogation of parliament last year, but its current and future constitutional expediency is just as clear – it will be useful to clip the Supreme Court’s powers ahead of any future judicial challenges over Scotland’s right to self-determination, the Good Friday Agreement or Brexit. 

The Electoral Integrity Bill will introduce voter ID and could suppress the vote of some, but will leave Labour, again according to the Tory spin, on the wrong side of history. It will be straight from the Donald Trump playbook. The Draft Victims Bill is a blatant attempt to ally Labour with the rights of criminals, though Sir Keir dodged that one by offering cross-party support to the measure.

The Draft Online Safety Bill seems a good way to push Labour into appearing to be the defender of criminals. It is only a small wonder that some stray line about the invaluable role of the monarchy wasn’t included, just to get Jeremy Corbyn to stand up in the House of Commons, now of all times, and demand the immediate establishment of a socialist republic and to turn Windsor over to the homeless.

The Queen’s Speech was, then, a kind of plan for our culture wars, a way to outflank Labour on the traditional battlegrounds of the economy and social justice, and instead lead them onto the battlegrounds of Britain’s ever more bitter culture wars. It is a strategy that has served the Conservatives well, electorally, but hasn’t done the country very much good. Given that the prime minister is thought to want to beat Margaret Thatcher’s 11 years in power, and will shortly win back the right to play politics with the timing of a general election, and the weakness of the opposition parties, perhaps Britain shouldn’t expect the culture wars to end soon.