Evening Standard comment: The challenge facing a weak administration

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No carriage, no robes, no crown — the dressed-down ceremony for today’s Queen’s Speech seems wholly appropriate for a Government that has just received such a dressing down from the people. Gone are all the pretensions for a great programme of domestic reform or economic renewal. This is a Government that is just about managing. There are a few sensible measures, such as on domestic violence and insurance reform, but any administration could have introduced them. There is a mass of complex legislation for Brexit, which no previous government contemplated. The Queen’s Speech spells out the daunting scale of what is required — from recreating a customs regime to recreating co-operation on nuclear safety. We can only imagine what the country could be achieving if it weren’t consumed by all this.

The “centrepiece” is described as a Great Repeal Bill, presented as if it were rolling back years of European red tape. In fact, it imports all that red tape into law — a Great Regulation Bill. It follows a pattern this Government has established of telling little white lies. Who really believes Donald Trump’s state visit was cancelled because of his concern about the public reaction rather than the Prime Minister’s? Who now thinks the deal with the DUP was only delayed out of respect for the tragedy at Grenfell Tower? Who today falls for the idea that you have to make Labour’s Keir Starmer a member of the medieval Privy Council to have a modern conversation about the terms of Brexit? As if the Rt Hon Diane Abbott can be trusted with the nation’s secrets but not a former Director of Public Prosecutions. Enough of this nonsense. We need a different approach.

Compromise

This Government is one of the weakest in our history, and it has one of the biggest undertakings of the modern age: disentangling us from over 40 years of lawmaking with our near neighbours. It should acknowledge the scale of the task and the impossibility in this parliament of achieving it alone. It needs to compromise and make allies. The DUP has demonstrated just what an unreliable partner it will be. Its MPs were not elected to prop up a Tory Government but to get results for their community. These experienced deal-makers will take every opportunity to extract their pound of flesh. Every bill, every amendment, every opposition motion, will depend on a daily coalition deal. It makes the whips the most powerful ministers in this Government.

In the face of this dawning reality the Prime Minister promises humility. If that had been her approach these past 11 months perhaps she might have avoided this humiliation. But from the first day of her coronation as Tory leader last July, Mrs May behaved as if she had a mandate to undo the work of the previous government that she had been part of. She also interpreted the close result in the EU referendum — 17 million votes for Leave against 16 million for Remain — as an emphatic vote not just for Brexit but for a hard Brexit, leaving all economic and security arrangements with our closest trading partners. Those who questioned this interpretation were dismissed as Quislings.

Now it is her Government that is on the receiving end of the electorate’s will — and the Conservative Party, which looked set for ascendancy 12 months ago, fears for the future. It is caught in the Brexit wringer, losing support among urban voters, working people, students and ethnic minorities. Its strategy appears to be — to borrow an old analogy — a combination of John Travolta and Mr Micawber: staying alive and hoping something will turn up. That is not a plan for success.

It will take a new approach to Brexit, a new effort at co-operation and — before long — new leadership to have a chance of turning things around. That’s the only way to stop Jeremy Corbyn and the hard Left reaching No 10, which would — as is evident from their alarming calls for extra-parliamentary action — make a bad situation much worse.

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