SIMON EMMETT . net

This week we will see the last Queen’s speech of this parliament, and hopefully it will be the last by Gordon Brown. However, with just six months left of this parliament it will pretty much sum up the Labour party as a whole.

The speech will not contain any new ideas, or even new direction. Worse still is that many pundits, and bloggers are already predicting that this speech is solely designed as the firing of the starting pistol for a general election campaign. The speech, it is rumoured, will contain a string of announcements that are not there for the good of the country, but to try and divide the conservative party.

Is that really how a government should act? Instead, of coming up with a legislative programme to help get this economy out of the mess; protect the National Health Service from the funding crisis that has caused services to be cut; to get the unemployed back into work; and improve our public services, we will just have a freebie election broadcast for the government. Mind you that is probably because the Labour party run their funding like the economy, and cannot actually afford to pay for an election broadcast.

One line that Gordon Brown consistently uses is that “the Conservatives have no policies”, but what he will show in the announce ment of his government’s legislative programme is just how much Labour have not got a clue at how this country works. I will give one example.

One of the flagship proposals will be the attack on the banking sector. Yes, the sector that the government’s spin masters will have you believe caused the credit crunch with their multi-million pound bonuses, and reckless behaviour. Well, the government seem to believe their own spin with this, completely forgetting what actually caused the credit crunch, so that they can “punish the bankers” in a popularist policy. The fact is that credit crunch was caused by people borrowing too much an defaulting their loans. The credit boom had been fuelled by government pressurising the banks to lend more!, and by setting up the tripartite monitoring system t hat completely failed to keep a lid on it. Banks and financial institutions had been collapsing for the best part of a year before the trading on the market started to crash. But, in the governments eyes they admit it was their pressure, or their failed system that was at fault. No, of course not, they are just trying to paint a picture of someone else being at fault, at pushing through a policy that matches their spin.

Like I said, this will not be the Queen’s speech of a government that wants to change Britain for the better, and deal with the issues facing the country, it will simply show that Labour just want to stay in power, and will penalise any sector to divert blame from themselves.

So, if Gordon Brown does want to use this speech to fire that starting pistol, then why not actually call a general election! Then we will see just how much meat is in his policies.