A collection of sops
'Parliament cannot go on legislating forever,' Palmerston said, but of course he was wrong, as the Queen's Speech annually reminds us. Modern governments would feel their lives empty if they could not Put forward every year a set of legislative proposals, some useful, some foolish, some just pointless. A future Conservative Government could do worse than consider a Queen's Speech which contained no promises at all of future Bills, but rather a list of existing Acts which would be repealed. Such a list should not be difficult to draw up. As it is, we look forward each November to further legislative proposals of which the one thing that can infallibly be predicted is that the Bills will be badly drafted, ill considered in Parliament, and will make life that much more complicated for the British people. , The Queen's Speech contains few surprises. It can nest be described as a collection of sops. The one goal O n which this Government's sights are set is its own survival, and to that end dollops of baksheesh are distributed to those on whose co-operation survival depends: the Nationalists, the Ulstermen, the Left. There are incidental and real benefits promised. The intention to replace Section 2 of the Official Secrets Act, although itself a gesture to the Left, is welcome. A More daring and confident Government might have repealed the whole Act and replaced it with something much simpler to deal with plainly treasonable or disloyal actions by State employees, but this is a start. Just as Welcome is the introduction of a Public Lending Right for authors although given the time-scale, the Parliamentary situation, and the Government's likely scale of priorities it would be a rash man who bet money on n-k becoming law within the year. Then we come to the sops. The Nationalists are sweetened with early dates for the referenda on the Scotland and Wales Acts, with further powers for the Scottish and Welsh development agencies, and even With grants for bilingual education in Wales. That Mould keep the SNP and Plaid Cymru sweet, or at least quiet, until the summer. Ulster is promised at last an additional number of MPs, which on balance we welcome, though the prospect of more Ulster Unionists and, undoubtedly, a few extreme republicans in the next Parliament must cause mixed feelings. The principal sop to the Left is the proposed additional finance for the National Enterpnse Board. It would be exaggerated to call that a calamity: just a useful reminder to Mrs Thatcher that one of her first actions in power should be to abolish the NEB. Beyond that there is little to frighten the electorate. On the contrary, there is much that is characteristic of the Prime Minister's cunningly adopted new persona of bluff, no-nonsense Uncle Jim, well aware that a good deal of the progressive nonsense of recent years is widely unpopular and keen to dissociate himself from it.. 'New opportunities for citizens to take part in the deci sions that affect their wonderful words! will be provided, which means in practice that it will be easier for council house .tenants to repair and improve their houses (with public money, of course); that local government will be Made in practice more democratic (and the wretched Conservative Local Government Act of 1972 certainly provides plenty of scope for improvement); and that 'the consumer voice in relation to nationalised industries' will be strengthened. This is not a Queen's Speech which it is easy to condemn in detail: indeed some of its provisions are welcome. It is anything but a plan for radical action, and naturally enough it makes no reference to certain questions, notably the European Monetary System, which are of critical importance in the coming year but at the same time the source of bitter dissension within the Government's ranks. But then radical action is not to be expected of Mr Callaghan. Tory propagandists would like naturally enough to depict this, like other socialist governments, as a dangerous force of heedless change. In truth it is decay, not change, which all around we see in the declining months of this administration. The Queen's Speech is all tootypical in its vagueness, its i incoherence and above all n its flavour of unprincipled cynicism. Students of the art of political survival must congratulate Mr Callaghan on his skilful balancing trick. All the same, the act is a dispiriting one to watch and we hope that it does not last much longer.
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