It is very hard to explain how bad the Queen's Speech was.
The general presumption is that the government is competent. As a result anyone marking its efforts has a starting expectation that they will give a mark a bit above average, rather as I have an expectation that any student will get a mark of 62 until I have read the first sentence or two of what they put in front of me. Only yesterday that myth was shattered.
The speech opened with a lie. It was said that the cost of living crisis was at the epicentre of the government's concerns. But despite the fact that a recession was coming, growth (without any consideration of the environment) was promised, as were tax cuts and reduced debt. The impossible was promised without explanation. Rarely does anyone set themselves up to fail so badly.
As for the rest, the question to be asked is why the Tories are so keen on power if there is so little that they want to do with it? Levelling up is about the ability to rename streets. There was nothing on the environment. Many bills were so weak, or limited in scope it will be hard to find five MPs willing to debate them.
But that, I have to keep reminding myself, is the point. The Tories do, in reality, have a number of unspoken goals.
They want to make parliament irrelevant.
They want to alienate people from elected power.
They wish to detract people from their real agenda.
Their real agenda is to exercise unaccountable power for the benefit of their friends. Running an irrelevant parliament provides the cover for that.
If we assume this to be the goal and that the legislative programme is to be seen as nothing but a distraction then yesterday's speech makes complete sense.
We have a government intent on destroying democracy that is going to strangle it by the encouragement of growing indifference to its fate. In that context this was a perfect Queen's Speech.
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I think your conclusions are entirely accurate Richard.
Some years ago at a local level, coming across a bloc of Tories seemingly doing everything they could to prevent the institution we were all supposed to represent from succeeding and serving the needs of the local population, I used to wonder what motivated them.
As far as I could tell it was a conviction that they, their friends and the Tory party were Britain. Nobody else counted. They knew best. The rest of the population were either a mis-guided rabble or the enemy within.
They had the perfect mixture of ignorance, greed and lack of any sense of honest intellectual enquiry that throughout the ages has produced incompetence and misery for anybody that they have power over.
Now these people are our government.
The only note of optimism I have to offer is that I have noticed over the last ten years a distinct increase in the number of people that recognise the severity of the problem and given that you cannot solve a problem until you genuinely understand it, then that is a source of hope.
The Quockerwodger said we can’t spend our way out of this, we will get out of it by growing the economy. And how do you grow the economy if the government doesn’t increase its spending, Joe and Jane Public are reducing theirs and companies are not investing?
Another Quockerwodger promise that will become a lie.
Craig
Hello Richard.
I wish that BBC radio Scotland’s John Beattie, (Drivetime show 5pm last night) had considered, questioned and asked opinion on what you say are the government’s three goals.
Instead he asked one guest, a woman from the SNP, what she would have the government do – ‘borrow more or tax more?’. Both these points make the public feel the government can’t do anything without the public eventually becoming poorer from it. I despair that the host of a current affairs and news programme is still not entirely understanding this stuff. I know you’ve been on his show, so there’s really no excuse.
So the government doesn’t have to work hard to destroy democracy when the media do not ask the right questions of it or generally hold it to account.
Maybe I should buy ‘money for nothing and my tweets for free’ and the deficit myth, and send both to John Beattie.
🙂
Your hypothesis about why the Tories want to be in power looks on the money, as it were. It is more than unfortunate that the general public don’t seem to get this. If they did, they might be less sanguine about them being in power and begin blaming Johnson for their general plight.
You’re one of those people who support the BBC right?
The idea that licence payers should elect the Board and so have some democratic say in the size and scope of the service and what it costs is one that you reject, even though it would make the BBC democratically accountable to those who pay for it.
This argument that you make about democracy doesn’t wash I’m afraid.
The BBC is answerable to parliament
Do you have a problem with parliamentary democracy?
If so, why?
And do you demand a vote at Tesco because you shop there?
I’ve been insulted by a lot of Tory statements over the years but to hear Boris saying that they need to grow the economy first in order to help people was not only the biggest moral cop out I’ve ever heard but the biggest load of testicular material too.
Any one knows that if you are are to grow anything – a product or service (and what is an economy except a collection of services and products?) you need to INVEST hard cash.
When I worked in retailing, if Cadburys brought a long a new chocolate bar they would tell retailers how much the marketing support would be and where it would be delivered (print media or TV etc). That’s how you grow a product and an economy. You invest and support.
Obviously with a ‘fuck business’ attitude, these simple precepts are beyond them.
We may accuse Labour of managerialism (and quite rightly) but it’s certainly not something you could aim at the Tories who are the complete polar opposite.
All I see is neglect. All they know is how to destroy. They’re hell bent on it aren’t they?
I honestly think, like the American right that they are now so consumed by hatred, that they can’t see any further than “us and them.” They’ve used the politics of division for so long now, that they’ve become a reactive spinal column attached to a amygdala without any careful thought involved in any of the decisions they are making.
Logic can’t win at this point – rather I think it needs appeal to the decent and empathetic emotions of the British people, from Labour and protest groups. Not a dull technocratic, artificial narrative which will do nothing to correct this mallaise. Time to start thinking hard about how we can save our democracy.
There is a possible (if perhaps improbable) alternative reason. Perhaps cabinet is so divided that they cannot agree on anything apart from the ideologically right wing things?
One of the first components of our management training is project management, to my mind one of the most important disciplines. When I look at the Cabinet, there appears to be no-one with this skill.
The result? A flat souffle with a lot of hot air that rapidly vanishes.
We have now reached the point where Johnson remains in power because the Conservative Party claims we can’t change PM during the Ukraine crisis (the deeply ignorant, at best Andrew Bowie MP claiming this morning on BBC Radio Scotland GMS that “1945” establishes the precedent not to remove Johnson now; foolishly ignoring that the Conservatives quickly removed Chamberlain for Churchill in 1940: ignorance does not do Bowie’s position justice. But let that too typical Conservative folly pass).
The Ukraine is currently trying very hard to fast-track its EU membership application, doing while fighting a European war of survival against a brutal enemy. This should lead all Euopeans to encourage unity throughout Europe, and all the support we can provide the EU in this critical crisis. So what does Johnson do in response to the Ukraine crisis? Deliberately pick an existential fight with the EU over the NI protocol.
Could someone explain to me why the public should not draw the obvious conclusion from this cavalier, cynical British approach to geopolitical diplomacy, to Europe and the Ukraine; and conclude that treaty obligations, diplomacy and national security are all far less important to the Conservative Government, than the narrow, parochial electoral interests of the Conservative Party and the neoliberal clique currently running it?