The lords and ladies started filing into the upper chamber two hours before proceedings were due to start. A riot of scarlet and ermine. No dressing-up box left unturned. Old costume tiaras from Claire’s Accessories dusted down. Apart from one woman sitting near the throne who appeared to have a vegetable garden growing out of her head. They do things differently in the upper chamber.
Most of all there was the sense of entitlement. There wasn’t a man or woman in the Lords who had a moment’s doubt they deserved to be there. The great and the good. The chosen ones. Some are born great, some achieve greatness, others have greatness thrust upon them. All forms of greatness were found here. Even the youngest peer, Charlotte Owen. No one still knows why she was made a baroness. But ours is not to question the righteous order of things. Merely to bow low. We are not the chosen ones. Silence is all that is required from us.
To while away the time, many peers riffled through the programme for the first king’s speech in 70 years. It would be an unforgivable faux-pas to confuse the Rouge Dragon Pursuivant with the Maltravers Herald Extraordinary. The running order was listed as Preliminary Movements. Mmm. That could have been better phrased.
Just before 11.30am, the king and queen entered the chamber, attended by any number of eight-year-old pages. One of whom had been awarded a medal. I guess it must have been his 10-metre swimming badge. Then there was the sexy equerry. The breakout star from the coronation. Still wearing his favourite kilt. I guess it’s in his contract.
Charles and Camilla sat down on their thrones, the king’s slightly higher than the queen’s (heaven forbid that anyone may ever appear taller than the monarch), and Alex Chalk, a hopeless justice secretary but a fantastic Disney cartoon lord chancellor, handed over a copy of the king’s speech. The longest in words since 2005, but with the fewest number of bills. The new reign was to be marked by waffle and filler. The Golden Sunak age.
“My government,” Chas droned. He had been practising this. How to get just the right level of boredom. The top notes of dissent. The total disengagement. Anything to make it clear that he distanced himself from almost everything in the speech. That the Tory government did not speak for him. It was just his luck that his second prime minister – remember Liz Truss? – should be a populist deadbeat. Out of touch with the country. His mother had warned him to be careful what he wished for.
Then we got down to the nitty-gritty. Rishi was going to take the difficult but necessary decisions. That’s one of Sunak’s easiest tells. He always says that when he means the exact opposite. Growth was really kicking off. The only trouble is that it was kicking off in all the other G7 countries. In the UK, not so much. The government would be taking advantage of Brexit. Once it had discovered any advantages.
Energy security. Chazza spat out the words. For the green king, this really hurt. Having to talk a load of bollocks about British fossil fuels for British homes while pretending he still gave a toss about the environment. Charles may not be the brightest royal, but this was an insult to his intelligence.
On we moved to education. This was a joke. There was no chance of any of this happening because the Tories were going to lose the next election. Smoke-free world. Nice try. But he was looking forward to 40-year-olds getting arrested for selling snouts to 39-year-olds. Then some nonsense about housing. Anything to allow Tories with second and third homes to kick out their tenants. The usual nonsense about being tough on crime. Reheated stuff all of it. Shame the Conservatives don’t seem that keen to deal with the sex offenders in their own party. More like a Tory rapist MP of the week competition.
There was no mental health bill. Of course there wasn’t. Rish! has always rather thought that mental illness is a personal defect. People should just pull themselves together. There was also no room for a law banning seven bins. Almost as though there never was a seven-bin policy. And nothing on Suella’s brainwave to treat rough sleeping as a lifestyle choice. Though there might be later. Come the next election dozens of Tory MPs might be at risk of becoming homeless.
A few hours later the Commons was full as parliament began its debate on the king’s speech. As is customary, proceedings began with two lighthearted speeches from government backbenchers to propose the motion. This is one ritual parliament could usefully dispense with as the speeches are invariably not that funny and are more self-conscious than self-deprecating.
The two unfortunates chosen this year were Robert Goodwill and Siobhan Baillie. Neither exactly set the Commons alight with their brilliance. Goodwill happily heralded his imminent retirement by running through his limitations while Baillie seemed to devote most of her speech to lamenting what had been left out of the king’s speech. There again she is odds on to lose her Stroud seat at the next election. So call that hello and goodbye from her.
Keir Starmer began in a similar vein. Mostly by mocking Sunak. The prime minister hates this more than anything. He demands to be taken seriously. The man who is always right. You could see him getting twitchy. The Labour leader reiterated his support for Ukraine and Israel before going on to the general economic miserabilism of the Tories. The king’s speech had given no one any hope. All that Rish! could guarantee was that everything would get worse.
Not that Sunak saw it that way. He thought we had never had it so good. Couldn’t understand why people weren’t more grateful to him. He did also praise the brilliance of Goodwill. An MP so talented Rishi had removed him from government and chucked on the backbenches. Time and again, the prime minister proves himself to be a politician who is crap at politics.
Halfway through, Chris Bryant stood up to intervene. Did Sunak agree with the home secretary that homelessness was a lifestyle choice? Bizarrely, Suella shook her head at this. A Pavlovian denial. Rish! ummed and ahed. Too weak to slap his home secretary down. Too weak to back her. A man with no real authority. Over his party or the country. His MPs looked miserable. Well they might. We, and they, have another year of this.
A year in Westminster: John Crace and Marina Hyde live in London and online
On Monday 11 December 8pm–9.30pm GMT, join John Crace, Marina Hyde and Pippa Crerar for a livestream discussion on another year of anarchy in British politics. Book tickets here or at theguardian.live
