The Queen’s speech on Tuesday was aimed at reviving Boris Johnson’s besieged government amid a deep crisis in the cost of living and the Tories’ congestion, still divided over his future.
But if the preliminary briefing is something you have to go through, it’s an administration with some fresh suggestions.
The Fire of Bureaucracy is certainly not revolutionary: Gordon Brown had a review of the Hampton and the Better Regulation Task Force; George Osborne had his own “hotbed of bureaucracy,” not to mention the “Challenge of Bureaucracy.”
With the benefit of retrospective, most such efforts are considered worthy, but gradually.
Of course, free from the shackles of the EU, the government has more opportunities to make regulatory changes; but the examples given by Boris Johnson during the holiday campaign – the size of olive oil bottles and fish packaging – underscore the modest scale of what is likely to be possible. Such changes would also almost certainly be clouded by the post-Brexit border bureaucracy.
Some bills will introduce important but long-promised changes, such as reforming the school funding formula or ensuring that the Company House, the official register of companies, fights fraud.
Other plans, such as the equalization bill, which gives local authorities the power to force landlords to rent out empty shops and take control of empty buildings, seem modest, but are clearly designed to ensure the changes that Red Wall voters can to hope to see if they want to stay with Johnson in the next general election.
Meanwhile, a new British rights bill allows the government to maintain one of its favorite cultural wars – the battle against the “leftists”, while the privatization of Channel 4 would cheer up the party’s right.
But the overall meaning, as with the plans discussed to tackle the cost of living crisis, which includes two years of maintenance, belongs to a government that is looking for ideas.
Part of the difficulty for an administration that has never had a major leadership goal outside of Brexit and keeping Johnson in power is knowing what her constituency is.
As a result of Friday’s local elections, the Tories received a kick from the Liberal Democrats in the south, amplifying the warning signal sent by the by-elections in Chesham and Amersham last year.
So the list of expected accounts seems to be permeated by the contradictions of attempts to keep the north and south, the red wall and the blue wall on the side.
Hence the softened planning reform discussed by Michael Gove over the weekend: the unrestricted approach of his predecessor, Robert Jenrick, aimed at depriving Nimbies of their rights and dramatically increasing housing, has disappeared.
Instead, local authorities will obviously be given more freedom in pursuing housing goals; and Gove was full of soothing talk of conservative developments in the small town, such as Prince Charles’ favorite, Poundbury in Dorset.
While Conservative campaign sources continue to deny that the fall election is a long way off, there is a hint of Linton Crosby’s notorious advice to David Cameron to “get the crabs off the boat.”
The ban on goose liver and fur has apparently disappeared – there is no employment bill that would strengthen workers’ rights, but it may not be easy to include in the equalization issue.
Much time will be devoted to legislative issues and bills carried over from the last parliamentary session – including animal welfare and online safety.
It remains to be seen whether Johnson can create a coherent account of the pomp and ceremony on Tuesday. But as with Rishi Sunak’s spring statement, there is a clear risk that the main impression will again remain of a government that has failed to grasp the scale of the current crisis.
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