Britain’s new Labour government promised to end an “era of politics as performance” in Wednesday’s ceremonial King’s Speech, unveiling a sweeping agenda that targets house building, crime and illegal migration and grapples with a breakdown in trust that was exposed during the country’s general election.
At a grandiose event that brings together Britain’s royal pageantry and political class, King Charles III formally opened a new parliament by reading out the plans of his new Prime Minister, Keir Starmer, whose landslide election win earlier this month brought a 14-year era of Conservative rule to an emphatic end.
They were focused around Starmer’s central pitch of “national renewal,” and included a pledge to nationalize Britain’s railways and tackle a housing crisis by changing planning laws to build more affordable homes.
Starmer also made tough new promises to tackle illegal migration, and more broadly took swipes at the Tory governments that had ruled Britain since 2010, and at the swell of populism that has rippled across the UK and Europe.
“The era of politics as performance and self-interest above service is over,” Starmer declared in an introduction to the agenda, which includes 40 new bills his government will seek to pass. “The fight for trust is the battle that defines our political era.”
His agenda straddles the center ground of British politics that Starmer has sought to lay claim to, pitching the public on pragmatism and including measures crafted to appeal to both older and younger generations. “The snake oil charm of populism may sound seductive, but it drives us into the dead end of further division and greater disappointment,” Starmer wrote.
But while the speech fleshed out much of the growth-orientated vision Starmer pitched during the summer’s election campaign, the question remained of how quickly Britons can expect to see a boost to their beleaguered public services.
Pomp and politics collide
The state opening of parliament is a rare collision of pomp and politics, featuring a series of centuries-old flourishes and conventions that catch even many of Britain’s lawmakers off guard.
The production began when King Charles III and his wife, Camilla, made their way by carriage from Buckingham Palace to the Houses of Parliament, before MPs were summoned by Black Rod – a role established in the 1300s – to watch his speech in the House of Lords chamber.
Starmer and his defeated rival, Conservative leader Rishi Sunak, shared a warm conversation before and after the speech, their roles dramatically reversed after the election on July 4 that saw Labour win a landslide in parliament, although with a modest share of the votes.
Once the speech began, focus shifted to the first Labour legislative plan in a decade and a half. It put at its heart an effort to build, after a decade of stalled growth that had seen housing and infrastructure projects scuppered across Britain.
Starmer also formalized plans to renationalize Britain’s rail network in the coming years, and to create a publicly-owned energy company.
Other parts of the speech continued Labour’s efforts to appeal to traditionally conservative voters who have lost faith in the Tory party after a tumultuous stretch in government.
In particular, Starmer promised a clampdown on illegal migration and small boat crossings across the Channel – an issue that plagued successive Conservative governments and gave rise to a surge in support for Reform UK, a populist anti-migrant bloc that won more than 4 million votes in the election.
The speech pledged extra powers for law enforcement to investigate people smuggling, including stopping and searching at the border, and the creation of a new Border Security Command. It also promised to clear Britain’s vast asylum backlog.
At home, a number of institutions were targeted for modernization – most awkwardly, the very room in which Charles gave his speech. Under government plans, hereditary peers will no longer be able to sit and vote in the House of Lords, in a “first step in wider reform” to the chamber.
A new draft Race Equality Bill will meanwhile make it mandatory for large employers to report ethnicity and disability pay in the same way they currently report gender pay.
And legislation for a long-awaited ban on both gay and transgender conversion therapy – efforts to change someone’s sexual orientation or gender identity – was announced, having been first trailed by Theresa May in 2018 but never brought to light.
Starmer acknowledged a breakdown in belief among the British public that politics can be a force for good – trust in politics is at record lows, studies have suggested, after a lengthy period dominated by scandal in Westminster.
But his agenda will be underpinned by a large dealing of skepticism that Britain’s public services can be revived without a much larger infusion of cash than the government is offering.
Little in the speech focused on Britain’s National Health Service (NHS), or on its social care sector, where the priority will be management rather than new legislation.
Later on Wednesday, the plan will be debated in the House of Commons, the first official session of the new parliament. That will see Sunak, in his new role as Leader of the Opposition, press Starmer on his promises. He is expected to frame his party’s unfamiliar role as an effort to provide constructive opposition on the country’s behalf while acknowledging that the public had felt a yearning for change.