David Vance SubstackRead More
Today sees an important event in the annual British constitutional and political calendar – the King’s Speech. This will commence at 11.30am.
The State Opening has to happen: Parliament has been prorogued and neither House can do normal business until the King reads out the government’s new programme. Civil servants will have spent months drafting bills on welfare, closer alignment with the EU single market and new cost‑of‑living measures, and this package must be presented in some form, whoever is in No 10.
On paper, then, the Speech is the government’s big reset moment after Labour’s disastrous local, Welsh and Scottish results. The problem lies with its credibility.
Starmer’s authority is completely gone: Labour has been hammered in councils, relegated in Wales and overtaken in Scotland. Westminster is openly plotting successors from Wes Streeting to Angela Rayner and Andy Burnham. The probability of Starmer still being Prime Minister by the end of the summer is virtually zero,
A King’s Speech is supposed to signal a stable administration setting out a multi‑year agenda; instead, this one may be read as the last throw of a lame‑duck leader trying to relaunch a premiership his own party that no longer believes in. Its more like a last will and testament.
If Labour MPs move against him in the coming days, as is expected, much of what is announced will either be quietly binned or heavily rewritten under a new prime minister, This means turning todays grand set‑piece into a kind of expensive draft manifesto for a leader on borrowed time. Even if Starmer clings on, every line of the Speech will be read through the lens of “will his successor actually do this?”, which drains it of political force!
It is too late to cancel the ceremony today and the legislative machine has to keep grinding. However the gap between the pomp we see in the Lords and Starmer’s grip on his party is what makes this King’s Speech feel close to pointless!
