The Queen’s speech lays out the bills that the government will be introducing in the parliamentary session, before the Commons starts to debate its contents and moves to a vote to approve it. It is written by the prime minister, although delivered by the monarch, and is usually a relatively dispassionate list of government priorities.
With Boris Johnson currently leading a minority government, it is very possible that the Commons will reject this list and make the resulting vote the prime minister’s eighth consecutive loss since securing the top job.
This makes the circumstances around this Queen’s speech extremely unusual, and with an election likely in the near term, the opposition has said it is essentially a preview of the next Conservative election manifesto and not a meaningful programme for government.
How has that context shaped the language of this Queen’s speech?
