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LONDON — King Charles III unveiled the new U.K. Labour government’s packed policy agenda Wednesday. It’s not going to make everyone happy.
In a moment of traditional and sometimes surreal British pomp and ceremony, Westminster witnessed the first king’s speech under a Labour government since 1950. The speech, delivered in the House of Lords by monarch Charles, set out the legislative agenda for new Prime Minister Keir Starmer’s government.
Starmer’s agenda features big ticket items including a shakeup of planning laws to trigger housebuilding and infrastructure investment, the establishment of a publicly-owned energy company and a plan to bring failing privatized railway networks back into public ownership.
But amid Labour glee, plenty of MPs in Starmer’s newly-enlarged party will be smarting at the items missing from his first legislative pitch — be they existing party policies, or other issues they wish Britain’s new center-left government was prepared to adopt.
Defense spending hike
Starmer has long promised an increase in U.K. defense spending to 2.5 percent of GDP — as more NATO countries call for allies to step up spending in the face of a belligerent Russia.
But Starmer has refused to put a timetable on that spending pledge and said on his way to last week’s NATO summit that he would only do so when his government could afford it, and after a review of defense strategy has been conducted.
Therefore while the king’s speech did include a commitment to a “strong defense based on” NATO values, it did not include Starmer’s defense spending pledge.
An AI bill
Labour’s manifesto promised to support the development of the Artificial Intelligence sector and to introduce regulation on companies developing the most powerful AI models. But some expectations of an explicit AI bill in the king’s speech did not come to pass.
Instead, the king nodded to the government seeking to “establish the appropriate legislation” to regulate the AI sector, stopping short of introducing a specific AI bill.
Translation: the legislation ain’t ready to go yet.
Gender reform
Amid the thorny debate about balancing transgender rights and the pushback from so-called gender critical activists, Labour promised during the election campaign to “modernize, simplify and reform” the process behind legally changing gender.
The aim was to reform the current “outdated” process, without introducing full self-identification for transgender people.
That pledge to overhaul the Gender Recognition Reform Act did not make it into the king’s speech as a new bill, however, and was not mentioned at all.
Votes at 16
Starmer’s manifesto included a commitment to extend the vote to 16 and 17-year olds in all elections.
But Starmer has since admitted that this policy isn’t much of a priority — and it did not make it into the king’s speech.
End the two-child benefit limit
The first big row of Starmer’s premiership is likely to be on welfare — after his government refused to scrap a controversial Conservative welfare policy.
Labour opted not to scrap the two-child limit on benefits — sometimes referred to as the two-child benefit cap — in the king’s speech, and has said only that it would like to do so once there is fiscal room. The cap prevents parents from claiming welfare for a third child.
A series of Labour MPs— joined by Scottish nationalists and other smaller parties — look set to rebel against the government if the Commons speaker grants a vote on the cap.
Abolish the House of Lords
As recently as 2022 Keir Starmer promised to abolish the House of Lords. Many on the left and across his party have long wished to replace the unelected second chamber with an elected legislative reviewing body.
But Labour later rowed back on that promise, and is instead currently seeking reform rather than abolition.
As part of that reform agenda, the king’s speech committed to “modernize” the second chamber by removing hereditary peers — a small group elected to the chamber by their peers from a narrow pool of the U.K. aristocracy. They currently make up 92 of the 775 total seats in the Lords.
Rejoining the EU
Keir Starmer wants a closer relationship with Europe. Some want him to get very close.
Party figures as senior as London Mayor Sadiq Khan have called on the U.K. to at least consider the benefits of signing up again to customs union or single market membership — while opinion polls show that there are plenty across the U.K. who like the idea of rejoining the bloc.
That’s something Starmer isn’t prepared to countenance. Instead, the king’s speech says his government will seek to “reset the relationship with European partners and work to improve the United Kingdom’s trade and investment relationship with the European Union.”
Britain’s arch-Europhiles will have to keep dreaming.
