Star comment: Survival speech for Government by the Queen
Move along now, nothing to see here. At just nine minutes long, Her Majesty might have wondered whether she had lost some sheets.
This was not a normal Queen’s Speech outlining the programme for a new government.
It was a survival speech, with as little in it as possible to give the Opposition a chance to bring Theresa May and her administration down.
This is what it has come to for Theresa May. Her thinking is that when you are already hobbling, there is no point in shooting yourself in the foot.
The focus is on Brexit, and it is coming to something when the Conservatives are relying on an issue of that scale to be relatively uncontroversial and easy to deliver.
As for anything else, the Queen’s Speech was pervaded by fear, with what substance that there was being generalised people-pleasers, and anything that might cause upset and difficulty carefully excised.
The Tory manifesto has within only a matter of a few weeks been transformed into a historical document full of might-have-beens, of academic interest, if it is to be remembered at all.
And so we can see what the next two years or so is going to be like in Parliament. On everything bar Brexit, the Conservatives are going to hunker down in the trenches, their plan being to keep their heads well below the parapet and offer no targets.
It is going to be a ghost of a government, marking time until the Brexit process is complete.
It is a result of Mrs May’s gamble which, had it been successful, would have today cast her in the mould of a brilliant political tactician, and all her MPs would be praising her to the hilt. Instead she has had a very personal failure which has destroyed her ability to govern and put a question mark over her own future, especially if she does not have the deft footwork to build the alliances and agreements she will need in coming months.
Nevertheless, it is pragmatic politics. The Brexit talks in Europe are going to be difficult enough without having to look over the shoulder all the time in case of stirrings of trouble back home.
The last thing Theresa May needs is another election triggered by a defeat on a no confidence motion.
She is leading the exact opposite of a strong and stable government. It is weak and vulnerable.
Mrs May has spoken of humility. And for Tory leaders there can be few more deadly diets than eating humble pie.
