Post by Admin on Oct 14, 2019 23:36:51 GMT
The pageantry may be over, but the UK's bumper Brexit week has only just begun.
After making Queen Elizabeth quite literally hoof it over to the Houses of Parliament and read out his plans for the forthcoming legislative session, Boris Johnson needs to get back to the real task in hand -- getting a Brexit deal.
Such a pivot would not ordinarily be required on the day of a Queen's Speech.
Normally, the event heralds the start of a parliamentary term, setting forth a year's worth of important legislation that will shape the future of the country. But Johnson leads a minority government that's at least 40 shorts vote of winning anything in Parliament, and soon enough there will need to be an election to break the logjam.
The point of Johnson's Queen's Speech wasn't to kick off a program of governing, but to tease Brexit-weary voters and show them what life might be like after Brexit, if only the Prime Minister had a majority to get on with it.
Conservative Brexiteers, the Northern Irish unionists that are meant to support him, the official opposition Labour party in London and EU officials who have been briefing against him from day one, could separately or collectively scupper his plan at any stage.
And each time Johnson fails to clear a fence, his authority at home is eroded a little further. Monday's Queen's Speech will have been more about optics than anything else. Johnson needs to look like a man who is fighting to get Brexit done and has a plan for what to do next. Whether he gets to do any of that or not is, at this point, not really up to him.
After making Queen Elizabeth quite literally hoof it over to the Houses of Parliament and read out his plans for the forthcoming legislative session, Boris Johnson needs to get back to the real task in hand -- getting a Brexit deal.
Such a pivot would not ordinarily be required on the day of a Queen's Speech.
Normally, the event heralds the start of a parliamentary term, setting forth a year's worth of important legislation that will shape the future of the country. But Johnson leads a minority government that's at least 40 shorts vote of winning anything in Parliament, and soon enough there will need to be an election to break the logjam.
The point of Johnson's Queen's Speech wasn't to kick off a program of governing, but to tease Brexit-weary voters and show them what life might be like after Brexit, if only the Prime Minister had a majority to get on with it.
Conservative Brexiteers, the Northern Irish unionists that are meant to support him, the official opposition Labour party in London and EU officials who have been briefing against him from day one, could separately or collectively scupper his plan at any stage.
And each time Johnson fails to clear a fence, his authority at home is eroded a little further. Monday's Queen's Speech will have been more about optics than anything else. Johnson needs to look like a man who is fighting to get Brexit done and has a plan for what to do next. Whether he gets to do any of that or not is, at this point, not really up to him.
