The Queen’s Speech appears less of a list of government priorities and more a way to outflank Labour

Editorial: If the latest outlining of government policies is anything to go by, Britain shouldn’t expect the culture wars to end soon

The Queen in the House of Lords chamber during the state opening of parliament on Tuesday (AFP/Getty)

At the age of 95 and in her 67th Queen’s Speech, Elizabeth II is the first monarch to utter the very modern word “gigabyte” from the gilt throne designed in 1847 in characteristically exuberant new-Gothic style by Augustus Pugin.

It was also a characteristically exuberant, boosterish text that Boris Johnson had prepared for her majesty, albeit overladen with tendentious claims and party political bragging. It was indisputably upbeat about “bouncing forward”, as the prime minister likes to say. There was indeed plenty about high-speed broadband, high-speed rail, high-speed planning approval, high-speed skills training, the high-speed new Advanced Research and Innovation Agency (Dominic Cummings’s expensive brainchild), high-speed skills training, and even high-speed buses.

As an agenda for post-Brexit Britain, desperately in need of help as it loses more and more of its key export markets in Europe, it has something to commend. There was no hint in the Queen’s Speech that the current cradle of the coronavirus emergency economic support will be retained beyond the autumn. When the furlough and the other schemes are closed, a boost to infrastructure investment will be needed like never before as unemployment climbs.