London Daily

Focus on the big picture.
Tuesday, Oct 07, 2025

Queen’s speech preview shows a government scrabbling around for ideas

Queen’s speech preview shows a government scrabbling around for ideas

Analysis: List of expected bills appears shot with contradictions, trying to keep red wall and blue wall onside
Tuesday’s Queen’s speech is meant to be a relaunch for Boris Johnson’s beleaguered government, against the backdrop of a deep cost of living crisis, and with Tory backbenchers still divided about his future.

But if the advance briefing is anything to go by, this is an administration with little fresh to offer.

A “bonfire of red tape” is certainly not revolutionary: Gordon Brown had the Hampton review and the Better Regulation taskforce; George Osborne had his own “bonfire of red tape”, not to mention a “Red Tape Challenge”.

With the benefit of hindsight, most such efforts are widely viewed as worthy, but incremental.

Of course, freed from the shackles of the EU, the government has more wriggle room to make regulatory change; but the examples given by Boris Johnson during the leave campaign – the size of olive oil bottles and the packaging for fish – underline the modest scale of what is likely to be possible. Such tweaks would also almost certainly be dwarfed by post-Brexit border bureaucracy.

Some bills will enact crucial but long-promised changes, such as reform of the school funding formula, or ensuring Companies House, the official register of companies, combats fraud.

Other plans, such as the levelling up bill, giving local authorities the power to force landlords to rent out empty shops and take control of empty buildings, appear modest, but are clearly designed to deliver the changes “red wall” voters may hope to see if they are to stick with Johnson at the next general election.

A new British bill of rights, meanwhile, allows the government to keep one of its favourite culture wars, the battle against “lefty lawyers”, burning brightly, while Channel 4 privatisation would cheer the party’s rightwingers.

But the overall sense, as with mooted plans for tackling the cost of living crisis that included two-yearly MOTs, is of a government scrabbling around for ideas.

Part of the difficulty, for an administration which has never had much of a guiding purpose beyond Brexit and keeping Johnson in power, is knowing what its electoral constituency is.

In Friday’s local election results, the Tories received a kicking from the Lib Dems in the south, amplifying the warning signal sent by the Chesham and Amersham byelection last year.

So the list of expected bills appears shot through with the contradictions of trying to keep north and south, red wall and blue wall, onside.

Hence the toned-down planning reform mooted by Michael Gove at the weekend: gone is the no-holds-barred approach drawn up by his predecessor, Robert Jenrick, that was intended to disfranchise Nimbies and lead to a drastic increase in housebuilding.

Instead, local authorities will apparently be given more latitude in applying housing targets; and Gove was full of soothing talk of small-c conservative developments such as Prince Charles’s favourite, Poundbury in Dorset.

While Conservative campaign headquarters sources continue to deny that an autumn election is even a remote possibility, there is also a whiff of Lynton Crosby’s notorious advice to David Cameron to “get the barnacles off the boat”, too.

Gone is the ban on foie gras and fur, it appears – and gone, too, the employment bill that would have strengthened workers’ rights, but perhaps couldn’t be easily shoehorned into the theme of levelling up.

Plenty of legislative time will also be taken up working through bills carried over from the last parliamentary session – including on animal welfare and online safety.

It remains to be seen whether Johnson can fashion a coherent narrative out of Tuesday’s pomp and ceremony. But as after Rishi Sunak’s spring statement, there is a clear risk that again, the main impression is of a government that has failed to grasp the scale of the crisis at hand.
Newsletter

Related Articles

0:00
0:00
Close
Three Scientists Awarded Nobel Prize in Medicine for Discovery of Immune Self-Tolerance Mechanism
OpenAI and AMD Forge Landmark AI-Chip Alliance with Equity Option
Munich Airport Reopens After Second Drone Shutdown
France Names New Government Amid Political Crisis
Trump Stands Firm in Shutdown Showdown and Declares War on Drug Cartels — Turning Crisis into Opportunity
Surge of U.S. Billionaires Transforms London’s Peninsula Apartments into Ultra-Luxury Stronghold
Pro Europe and Anti-War Babiš Poised to Return to Power After Czech Parliamentary Vote
Jeff Bezos Calls AI Surge a ‘Good’ Bubble, Urges Focus on Lasting Innovation
Japan’s Ruling Party Chooses Sanae Takaichi, Clearing Path to First Female Prime Minister
Sean ‘Diddy’ Combs Sentenced to Fifty Months in Prison Following Prostitution Conviction
Taylor Swift’s ‘Showgirl’ Launch Extends Billion-Dollar Empire
Trump Administration Launches “TrumpRx” Plan to Enable Direct Drug Sales at Deep Discounts
Trump Announces Intention to Impose 100 Percent Tariff on Foreign-Made Films
Altman Says GPT-5 Already Outpaces Him, Warns AI Could Automate 40% of Work
Singapore and Hong Kong Vie to Dominate Asia’s Rising Gold Trade
Trump Organization Teams with Saudi Developer on $1 Billion Trump Plaza in Jeddah
Manhattan Sees Surge in Office-to-Housing Conversions, Highest Since 2008
Switzerland and U.S. Issue Joint Assurance Against Currency Manipulation
Electronic Arts to Be Taken Private in Historic $55 Billion Buyout
Thomas Jacob Sanford Named as Suspect in Deadly Michigan Church Shooting and Arson
Russian Research Vessel 'Yantar' Tracked Mapping Europe’s Subsea Cables, Raising Security Alarms
New York Man Arrested After On-Air Confession to 2017 Parents’ Murders
U.S. Defense Chief Orders Sudden Summit of Hundreds of Generals and Admirals
Global Cruise Industry Posts Dramatic Comeback with 34.6 Million Passengers in 2024
Trump Claims FBI Planted 274 Agents at Capitol Riot, Citing Unverified Reports
India: Internet Suspended in Bareilly Amid Communal Clashes Between Muslims and Hindus
Supreme Court Extends Freeze on Nearly $5 Billion in U.S. Foreign Aid at Trump’s Request
Archaeologists Recover Statues and Temples from 2,000-Year-Old Sunken City off Alexandria
China Deploys 2,000 Workers to Spain to Build Major EV Battery Factory, Raising European Dependence
Speed Takes Over: How Drive-Through Coffee Chains Are Rewriting U.S. Coffee Culture
U.S. Demands Brussels Scrutinize Digital Rules to Prevent Bias Against American Tech
Ringo Starr Champions Enduring Beatles Legacy While Debuting Las Vegas Art Show
Private Equity’s Fundraising Surge Triggers Concern of European Market Shake-Out
Colombian President Petro Vows to Mobilize Volunteers for Gaza and Joins List of Fighters
FBI Removes Agents Who Kneeled at 2020 Protest, Citing Breach of Professional Conduct
Trump Alleges ‘Triple Sabotage’ at United Nations After Escalator and Teleprompter Failures
Shock in France: 5 Years in Prison for Former President Nicolas Sarkozy
Tokyo’s Jimbōchō Named World’s Coolest Neighbourhood for 2025
European Officials Fear Trump May Shift Blame for Ukraine War onto EU
BNP Paribas Abandons Ban on 'Controversial Weapons' Financing Amid Europe’s Defence Push
Typhoon Ragasa Leaves Trail of Destruction Across East Asia Before Making Landfall in China
The Personality Rights Challenge in India’s AI Era
Big Banks Rebuild in Hong Kong as Deal Volume Surges
Italy Considers Freezing Retirement Age at 67 to Avert Scheduled Hike
Italian City to Impose Tax on Visiting Dogs Starting in 2026
Arnault Denounces Proposed Wealth Tax as Threat to French Economy
Study Finds No Safe Level of Alcohol for Dementia Risk
Denmark Investigates Drone Incursion, Does Not Rule Out Russian Involvement
Lilly CEO Warns UK Is ‘Worst Country in Europe’ for Drug Prices, Pulls Back Investment
Nigel Farage Emerges as Central Force in British Politics with Reform UK Surge
×