Parliament was diminished and trivialised under Conservative rule. Now it has a shot at rehabilitation
Parliament’s summer recess hasn’t put politics on hold, but the return of MPs to Westminster this week marks a gearshift in the operation of the new Labour government. The king’s speech in July set out an ambitious programme to change the way Britain is run: a new wave of devolution; new structures for the delivery and ownership of public services; new workers’ rights; and more.
This could be the most consequential session since the battle to settle the terms of Brexit. In their final years in power, the Conservatives ran out of ideas and were too divided to develop policies of substance. Parliament was underemployed or kept busy with ill-drafted bills conceived more as glorified campaign slogans (“stop the boats”, for example) than as practical statutes.
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