Queen's Speech: Weakened Prime Minister's homage to humility
Spaceports, electric car chargers and ending landlord fees - what remained domestically was uncontroversial.
Friday 23 June 2017 09:24, UK
This was a tale of two Queen's speeches.
A domestic speech which was a homage to humility. The Prime Minister gets the message sent by the electorate on dementia taxes, winter fuel allowances, grammar schools, fox hunting bans and free school lunches.
The domestic manifesto agenda is banished to the bottom of the CCHQ agenda where it will be buried under some piles of used Strong and Stable banners.
"I hear you, I get it, I asked for my own mandate but I did not get it," was the message.
What remains in the speech in domestic terms is cross-party, or uncontroverisal, or preferably both. Spaceports. Electric car charger ports. High Speed Two. Ending landlord fees.
But then there is a Brexit Queen's Speech. This contains laws underpinning moving the UK out of the Single Market, the Customs Union, replacing EU law with UK law by incorporating the whole cannon.
On that, the manifesto plan is preserved intact and remains identical, with the same mandate as expressed in the election.
The truth is, on Brexit, a number of things were suggested by different parties. None won a majority.
Technically a majority of the population voted for party manifestos ending free movement, maintaining the exact same benefits as the Single Market, unilateral rights for EU citizens in the UK, and ruling out No Deal.
But the PM specifically made almost the entire estate of her campaign to increase her majority greatly to increase her mandate for her approach to Brexit in negotiations with Brussels.
By her own measure she not only failed to strengthen her hand, she weakened it considerably.
The real question being asked privately by an important number of Tory MPs is whether Mrs May is really learning the right lesson from the election.
The Conservatives failed to advance in any of the UK's great cities. The party fell back in Bristol, London, Greater Manchester, Oxford and the M4 corridor.
It lost out in the share of the vote not just with new young voters but with all the under 45s.
In the much vaunted home of the so-called Erdington Tories, Birmingham, Mrs May failed to pick up a single seat, not even Birmingham Edgbaston, in a city that voted Leave.
Much was said about the survival of the Labour Party after the election. A party dependent on the over-55s, and incapable of winning in major cities, should be activating its survival instincts.
And the approach to Brexit played a part in these areas and demographics, if not everywhere.
Elsewhere though, the Leave focused campaign, failed (with four exceptions) to make headway in the Labour northern heartlands.
Not all Leave voters are Brexit-obsessive. The Queen's Speech is precisely what would have been written about Brexit had she received the expected landslide. Nothing has changed.
And that is even to assume that what the PM wants is the determining factor.
Clearly the EU has won the early skirmishes in the negotiation. But the power here now resides in the House of Commons, not in the Cabinet Room or even in the No 10 study.
Passing eight complex Brexit Bills from customs to immigration to data protection would have challenged even a governing party with a reasonable majority.
There are reasons to think it will be impossible for a minority Government, irrespective of DUP support.
One answer is the perceived overriding mandate from the referendum one year ago.
And yet Parliament is now sovereign, after being elected after the referendum, to take on the job of interpreting this mandate for itself.
That will start with the debate on the Queen's Speech itself over the next week.