Thursday, 22 June 2017

Dress down speech day


When #MrsMe announced her snap election it was accompanied by a date for the state opening of Parliament, that event where the Commons shows its superiority by refusing to let the Queen's messenger Black Rod through the door for - ooh - several seconds before being ordered down the corridor to stand away from the seated baronry while Her Maj reads a list of the government's proposed bills for the coming year.


Black Rod, about his business

That date was 19 June, which was a problem.  The Queen was already booked for an event at Windsor Castle that day, to formally invest new Companions of the Order of the Garter then host a lunch for them and the other surviving holders.  Affairs of state eh?  Add to that the Trooping of the Colour the weekend before and there was just too much going on.

So the Queen's diary was hacked about - cancel the Garter thing on Monday, do the Queen's Speech thing, but the horses won't be available for rehearsals so it would have to be a cut down ceremony - no horses, no coaches, no great gold-embroidered gowns, no crowns.  Though the crown would still be there, on a cushion, driven in its own car, with escort, and never put on before being driven back.  At least the rest of the week would be available for Ascot.

Then came #MrsMe's less than brilliant performance at the election, and talks with the DUP on a not-coalition, and Monday was looking difficult, so some poor flunkey had to be dispatched to inform the Palace that it would definitely be Wednesday.  Definitely.  (And Wednesday came, amid laments from the DUP that they were being taken for granted, and simultaneous comments that the UK government doesn't seem to have much idea of how to go about negotiations.  That augurs well.)

And there still is no deal.  "Sod it,"  I imagine the monarch hissing,  "it's Wednesday morning or never.  Then I'm orf to Ascot and they can whistle if they need me."  Then, after a good Tuesday at the races, husband Philip falls ill and she goes into Take your Child To Work Day mode.  "Charles, your father's acting up again.  Get your good suit on, you're coming with me."

Various people had a chuckle about the EU flag motif on the royal hat (they're flowers if you look closely) to such an extent that Nigel Farage felt duty bound to reprimand a Belgian upstart.





The speech itself is rarely interesting - dead, rather than deathless, prose - "My government will do this... my ministers will do that..." - but this time there was the added frisson of trying to guess which bits of the Tory manifesto were being discarded at DUP request, and which because she couldn't even get them past her own party.  The manifesto they were backing ardently until 12 days ago. Whoever wielded the pruning shears, there wasn't a lot of the document left in terms of bills which, for the planned two-year session, really indicates the overpowering (not to say deadening) effect Brexit is expected to have.

What was first introduced as the Great Repeal Bill is now simply labelled Repeal Bill.  There are rules against aggrandisement and policy promotion in bill titles, so they'll have to come up with a less chest-beating name for the final article.  My money's on European Communities (Withdrawal) Bill though I'll always know it as the Great Copy And Paste Bill, since it implements or reimplements a vast array of EU directives and regulations so that our rules are basically the same on Brexit Day as they were the day before.

Always the bridesmaid, never the bride


The proposed bills can be seen in all their sketchy glory in the document which accompanied the speech, but a few points should be made about the Repeal Bill:
  • In the introduction to the Repeal Bill are the words "The Bill does not put any constraints on the withdrawal agreement we will make with the EU and further legislation will be introduced to support such an agreement if and when required".  Does this recognise that all options remain open at the negotiations or just that this bill, like all the Brexit laws, can't really be finished until the withdrawal agreement, or even a later trade deal, is signed?
  • The bill is intended to ensure that the UK Parliament (and where appropriate devolved legislatures) will be free to make any future changes to our laws.  Subject, of course, to any agreement we've reached, to maintain our standards and regulations in line with EU developments post-Brexit.
  • This will be the main bill which creates powers (we're assured they'll be temporary but they will be extensive) allowing government to change parts of the legislation after it is passed.  This is called secondary legislation and it's controversial because it is subjected to little parliamentary scrutiny.  This bill, however, also allows such changes to be made to any other laws which are found not to operate "appropriately " once we have left the EU.  This is big, the kind of "Henry VIII clause" which the Lords in particular have campaigned against.
  • Finally, it's possible that this and perhaps other bills will impinge on powers devolved to the Scottish and other national assemblies, and will therefore require one or more Legislative Consent Motions from Holyrood, Stormont and/or Cardiff Bay.  This is seen by some, of course, as "The SNP can block Brexit", but is part of the asymmetric, uncodified constitution we've saddled ourselves with over the centuries.

At the end of the day, the government wouldn't field a minister for Newsnight on BBC2, perhaps recognising the disastrous failures of Boris Johnson earlier on Radio 4's PM and Channel 4 News (presented here with characteristic completeness by @imincorrible).





Johnson had a mild toasting on subsequent programmes but I'm not putting a penny on him suffering the same 24-hour, top-item-in-every-bulletin savaging that befell Diane Abbott and Jeremy Corbyn over their various fluffed interviews.


Things already negotiated

#MrsMe's Brexit is driven by her obsession with immigration and her fixation on the talismanic net immigration figure of 99,999 per year.  There's no denying that immigration was a big public issue before the referendum and remains a significant concern  now, though perception of how many immigrants there are is rarely accurate.

From a 2014 survey

The EU principle of Freedom of Movement of people is most often blamed, though net migration from outside the EU (which has always been under UK control) is usually at least as great - significantly so for the latest annual figures.



The Freedom of Movement rules allow a host country to require incomers from any other EU country to return home if they have not found work.  UK government after government has chosen not to enforce this rule, though they have never told us.  This thread of tweets gives the best introduction to the rules I've seen.




Finally, remember David Cameron?  Remember the deal he came back with last February, with its rather complex "emergency brake" on Freedom of Movement?  One part of that negotiated deal often overlooked was protection of non-eurozone countries from developments tailored for the eurozone.  A single non-euro country could force a debate of proposed eurozone laws which might disadvantage those which don't use the single currency.

This was seen as a very useful protection by other countries - Denmark and Sweden for example - but like all the other features of the agreement it ceased to be available to any country when the UK referendum vote went in favour of Leave.

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