My Government and I…
Tomorrow we hear the Queen’s Speech amid all the trappings of Parliamentary spectacle and tradition. I have at times felt sorry for the Sovereign who has had to read out cringe-making drivel about how everything is being updated and modernised, New Labour weasel words for lack of action and/or functional incompetence.
Clearly the Government thinks that by talking tough about criminality and terrorism, the electorate will overlook their failings. They only have to look across the Atlantic to see that when credibility is lost, the politics of fear do not work. The electorate will not be fooled; an avalanche of recent criminal justice legislation cannot dispel the public’s view that we have the most dysfunctional Home Office ever. To his great credit, David Davis has set down clear lines of rejection of insupportable invasions of our liberties, while pointing out robustly the catalogue of failures associated with this Government. There have been repeated calls for effective border monitoring, the use of intercept evidence and a specific senior Minister for home security – none of this has happened.
For years, terrorist groupings, to the fury of foreign Governments, operated from here without hindrance. The collapse of our asylum and immigration arrangements has meant we have no idea who is here, let alone be able to deport them.
So if, as I suspect, the Government seek to portray the Conservatives as soft and lily-livered, it will backfire. They will personalise their attacks on David Cameron. It will not work.
We will get a flavour of their folly at the State Opening tomorrow.