That Alternative Queen's Speech In Full

Here:

1) Face Coverings (Prohibition) – Bill to prohibit the wearing of certain face coverings; and for connected purposes.

Face-covering – not head-covering, but face-covering – is incompatible with the conduct of Western social and cultural life. Halal meat is one thing: if the ancient indigenous Christians of the Middle East eat it (do they?), then there cannot be anything wrong with in principle; and it certainly bears comparison with many of our our food production practices. But animal sacrifice is totally unacceptable. So is polygamy.

There should not be Muslim schools here, where my own Catholic schools have existed since a good thousand years before any other kind did. The public holidays in this country should be Christian festivals rather than pointless celebrations of the mere fact that the banks are on holiday; there is no case for non-Christian festivals to be public holidays in the West.

And mosques in the West must not have domes and minarets, which are triumphalistic manifestations of an Islamised society, culture and polity, and which were in that spirit added to former churches during Islam’s forcible overrunning of the Eastern Roman Empire. How long before our cathedrals, churches and chapels go the same way? It happened in Asia Minor, Mesopotamia, the Levant and North Africa, all once integral parts of Christendom.

We need to re-learn our own patterns of structured daily prayer, setting aside one day in seven, fasting, almsgiving, pilgrimage, the global community of faith as the primary focus of personal allegiance and locus of personal identity, the lesser outward and greater inward struggle, the need for a comprehensive and coherent critique of both capitalism and Marxism, the coherence between faith and reason, and a consequent integrated view of art and science.

The answer to the challenge of the Sunna is Sacred Tradition. The answer to the challenge of the Imamate is the Petrine Office. The answer to the challenge of Sufism is our own tradition of mysticism and monasticism. Liberal Catholics will be the last to see the point. 

2) National Service – Bill to provide a system of national service for young persons; and for connected purposes.

We need universal and compulsory – non-military, but uniformed, ranked and barracked – National Service, between secondary education and tertiary education or training.

As much as anything else, this would send people to university that little bit worldly-wiser, which would not only be good for academic and behavioural standards, but would also drain such swamps as Marxism, anarcho-capitalism, and the marriage of the two in neoconservatism. No one who had been around even a little bit would ever fall for such things for one moment.

Of course, that is also a very good reason for broadening the social and socio-economic base from which students, and indeed academics, are drawn. Instead of “widening participation” by abolishing everything in which one might wish to participate, and then only letting in the offspring of the upper middle classes anyway, on the smug assumption of having done one’s bit. 

3) European Communities Act 1972 (Repeal) – Bill to repeal the European Communities Act 1972 and related legislation; and for connected purposes.

We need legislation with five, and therefore six, simple clauses.

First, the restoration of the supremacy of British over EU law, and its use to give effect, both to explicit Labour policy by repatriating industrial and regional policy (whereas the Conservatives are not committed to any specific repatriation), and to what is at least implicit Labour policy by repatriating agricultural policy and by reclaiming our historic fishing rights in accordance with international law: 200 miles, or to the median line.

Secondly, the requirement that, in order to have any effect in the United Kingdom, all EU law pass through both Houses of Parliament as if it had originated in one or other of them.

Thirdly, the requirement that British Ministers adopt the show-stopping Empty Chair Policy until such time as the Council of Ministers meets in public and publishes an Official Report akin to Hansard.

Fourthly, the disapplication in the United Kingdom of any ruling of the European Court of Justice or of the European Court of Human Rights unless confirmed by a resolution of the House of Commons, the High Court of Parliament.

Fifthly, the disapplication in the United Kingdom of anything passed by the European Parliament but not by the majority of those MEPs certified as politically acceptable by one or more seat-taking members of the House of Commons. Thus, we should no longer be subject to the legislative will of Stalinists and Trotskyists, neo-Fascists and neo-Nazis, members of Eastern Europe’s kleptomaniac nomenklatura, people who believe the Provisional Army Council to be the sovereign body throughout Ireland, or Dutch ultra-Calvinists who will not have women candidates.

And sixthly, since we must, the provision for a referendum on the question, “Do you wish the United Kingdom to remain a member of the European Union?” Not to be held in 2017. Not to be held after some renegotiation. To be held immediately upon the coming into effect of the legislation providing for it. The first five clauses would come into effect at the same time as that, and would not be conditional on any referendum’s outcome.

There might even be a penultimate clause giving effect to the express will of the House of Commons that the British contribution to the EU Budget be reduced in real terms. Again, that would come into effect regardless of the result of any referendum, and in fact regardless of whether or not any referendum were ever even held. 

4) Young Offenders (Parental Responsibility) – Bill to make provision for the parents of young offenders to be legally responsible for their actions.

How, exactly? I mean, this is a good idea in principle. But how, exactly? 

5) Foreign National Offenders (Exclusion from the United Kingdom) – Bill to make provision to exclude from the United Kingdom foreign nationals found guilty of a criminal offence committed in the United Kingdom.

This already happens. 

6) Asylum Seekers (Return to Nearest Safe Country) – Bill to facilitate the transfer of asylum seekers to the safe country nearest their country of origin.

Probably sounds good until you try and do it, and then it costs more than it saves. I could be wrong, but I doubt it. 

7) Prisoners (Completion of Custodial Sentences) – Bill to require prisoners to serve in prison the full custodial sentence handed down by the court.

Always good to see a proposal to repeal a piece of Tory legislation against which Labour voted at the time. 

8) Fishing Grounds and Territorial Waters (Repatriation) – Bill to make provision for the Government to designate certain fishing grounds and territorial waters as sovereign territory of the United Kingdom outside the control of the Common Fisheries Policy.

Somewhat academic in view of 3). But Labour Party policy in the real world. 

9) School Governing Bodies (Adverse Weather Conditions) – Bill to require school governing bodies and headteachers to make provision to keep schools open in adverse weather conditions.

This already exists. It is just not always possible to do. Anyone who doubts that the Tories are now peculiar to the South East need only read the detail of this proposal, I am sure.
 

10) Capital Punishment – Bill to allow for capital punishment for certain offences.

Speaks for itself. Britain to join the select club of countries still practising capital punishment, which is vastly less common in the world than a lot of people think it is. And what charming company those countries are.

11) Government Departments (Amalgamation of Scotland Office, Wales Office and Northern Ireland Office) – Bill to make provision for the amalgamation of the Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland Offices.

Just to prove that the same ideas keep coming round no matter who is in office, yet somehow never quite happen, although no one can really explain either why on the first point or why not on the second. This one has been doing the rounds since the Ice Age. 

12) Residential Roads (Adoption by Local Highways Authority) – Bill to require the handover of residential roads built by developers to local highways authorities within certain time periods; and for connected purposes.

Have to see the detail.

13) Equality and Diversity (Reform) – Bill to prohibit the use of affirmative and positive action in recruitment and appointment processes; to amend the Equality Act 2010 to remove the special provision for political parties in relation to the selection of candidates; and for connected purposes.

The second bit would be especially well-received within certain sections the Labour Party and the trade unions. Others would be livid, but what could  they do? Attempt a second legislative reversal? At some point, they would have to admit that you win some, you lose some.
 

14) Sentencing Escalator – Bill to provide that a criminal reconvicted for an offence on a second or further occasion receives a longer sentence than for the first such offence.

Always good to see a proposal to repeal a piece of Tory legislation against which Labour voted at the time.

15) Leasehold Reform (Amendment) – Bill to amend the Leasehold Reform, Housing and Urban Development Act 1993 in relation to the permitted signatories of notices; and for connected purposes.

Have to see the detail. Leasehold and connected purposes undeniably need work.

16) BBC Licence Fee (Civil Debt) – Bill to make provision to decriminalise the non-payment of the BBC licence fee.

The television license fee should be made optional, with as many adults as wished to pay it at any given address free to do so, including those who did not own a television set but who greatly valued, for example, Radio Four.

The Trustees would then be elected by and from among the license-payers. Candidates would have to be sufficiently independent to qualify in principle for the remuneration panels of their local authorities. Each license-payer would vote for one, with the top two elected.

The electoral areas would be Scotland, Wales, Northern Ireland, and each of the nine English regions. The Chairman would be appointed by the relevant Secretary of State, with the approval of the relevant Select Committee. And the term of office would be four years.

One would not need to be a member of the Trust (i.e., a license-payer) to listen to or watch the BBC, just as one does not need to be a member of the National Trust to visit its properties, or a member of the Royal National Lifeboat Institution to be rescued by its boats. 

17) Smoking (Private Members’ Clubs) – Bill to make provision to allow smoking in a separate ventilated room in a private members’ club if a majority of the members of the club so decide.

There would not be the mood for this that there would have been just after the smoking ban was introduced. This might even be harmless, because no club would vote to avail itself of it. Even any that did would only do so for one last decade now. How the world turns.

18) Margaret Thatcher Day – Bill to make provision that the annual Bank Holiday Monday in late August be known as Margaret Thatcher Day.

The tragedy of this one is that it is probably serious. This is what you have become. But imagine the television programmes for this each year. It almost seems worth it. Almost.

In Britain, with our pointless celebrations of the mere fact that the banks are on holiday, public holidays do not apply to people who are too public in anything other than the schooling sense of the word. Nowhere else on earth is like that, because everywhere else has proper holidays, celebrating specific things that really matter.

Keep Christmas and Easter. And New Year, I suppose. Bring back the real Whit Monday, making it easier to get on with reading and teaching Philip Larkin without having to explain what the title of his best collection means. But get rid of all of the others and replace them with Saint George’s Day, Saint Andrew’s Day, Saint David’s Day and Saint Patrick’s Day.

A heavy concentration in this Islands’ incomparable Spring and early Summer. Something distinctive about each of them: Guinness, leeks, haggis, whatever, although I admit that it is difficult to think what the English one might be. A self-interested basis for popular Unionism in perpetuity. One on 30th November, before which nothing related to Christmas would intrude, just as it does not before Thanksgiving in the United States.

And no excuse for making the common people work on these days anyway because, after all, they do not really mean anything. Each of these really would mean something.  

19) Department of Energy and Climate Change (Abolition) – Bill to make provision for the abolition of the Department of Energy and Climate Change and for its functions to be absorbed into the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills.

The Department for Business, Innovation and Skills is the old DTI, which you always wanted to abolish. (That was also Lib Dem policy for a time. But then, what has not been?) But it is good to see you lining up with pro-nuclear and pro-coal Labour against the catastrophe of 2010, when a Government of that mind was replaced with one whose energy policy was to pay its already wealthy relatives gargantuan sums of money merely in order to host wind turbines.

20) Married Couples (Tax Allowance) – Bill to make provision for a tax allowance for married couples.

Always good to see a proposal to repeal a piece of Tory legislation against which Labour voted at the time. 

21) Foreign Aid Ring-Fencing (Abolition) – Bill to make provision for foreign aid and development not to be linked to a specific percentage of Gross National Income, but to be set yearly, by Parliament, in relation to need.

This would almost certainly change nothing, so why do it? 

22) Charitable Status for Religious Institutions – Bill to make provision for a presumption that religious institutions meet the public benefit test for charitable status.

Always good to see a proposal to repeal a piece of Tory legislation against which Labour voted at the time. 

23) Same Sex Marriage (Referendum) – Bill to make provision for a referendum on whether same sex marriage should be allowed.

Why? What happens when the wrong result results?

24) Wind Farm Subsidies (Abolition) – Bill to make provision for the cessation of subsidies for the development of wind farms.

Quite so. We need that money for nuclear power and for coal, and not dole. It is good to see you lining up with pro-nuclear and pro-coal Labour against the catastrophe of 2010, when a Government of that mind was replaced with one whose energy policy was to pay its already wealthy relatives gargantuan sums of money merely in order to host wind turbines. 

25) Withdrawal from the European Convention of Human Rights and Removal of Alleged Terrorists – Bill to make provision for an application to the Council of Europe to withdraw from the European Convention of Human Rights and to deport alleged terrorists subject to approval by the British courts.

See under 3). 

26) Romanian and Bulgarian Accession (Labour Restriction) – Bill to make provision for restrictions on the residence in the UK of Bulgarian and Romanian nationals to continue.

See under 3), although the idea that anyone is going to come here from Bulgaria or Romania after what the present Government has done to this country is perfectly preposterous, as we shall very soon see. Still, these restrictions would have remained in place, and would in fact have been necessary since this would have remained an attractive destination, if a trade union-based Government had been returned in 2010.

27) BBC Privatisation – Bill to make provision for the privatisation of the British Broadcasting Corporation by providing shares in the Corporation to all licence fee payers.

See under 16), although this would render that academic.

28) Office of the Deputy Prime Minister (Abolition) – Bill to make provision for the abolition of the Office of the Deputy Prime Minister, and its responsibilities to be allocated to other Departments of State.

A mere Cabinet reshuffle could do this.
 

29) Prime Minister (Replacement) – Bill to make provision for the appointment of a Prime Minister in the event that a Prime Minister is temporarily or permanently incapacitated.

This already exists. What do you think would now happen if the Prime Minister were temporarily or permanently incapacitated?

30) United Kingdom (Withdrawal from the European Union) – Bill to make provision for the Government to give notice under Article 50 of the Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union; and for connected purposes.

You have already done this one. 

31) Asylum (Time Limit) – Bill to require that asylum claims in the United Kingdom be lodged within three months of the claimant’s arrival in the United Kingdom; and that persons who have already entered the United Kingdom and wish to make an asylum claim must do so within three months of the passing of this Act.

Worth looking into. Although one cannot help feeling that if this were possible, then it would already have been done. But you never know with this bunch of incompetents. So worth looking into.

32) Benefit Entitlement (Restriction) – Bill to make provision to restrict the entitlement of non-UK Citizens from the European Union and the European Economic Area to taxpayer-funded benefits.

Rather dealt with already.
 

33) Illegal Immigrants (Criminal Sanctions) – Bill to make provision for criminal sanctions against those who have entered the UK illegally or who have remained in the UK without legal authority.

These already exist. 

34) Sexual Impropriety in Employment – Bill to require that claims by employees alleging sexual impropriety be limited to cases where the alleged misconduct is contrary to the criminal law and has been reported to the police.

No. And deeply creepy that you should suggest this. Nasty. Very, very, very nasty. 

35) Collection of Nationality Data – Bill to require the collection and publication of information relating to the nationality of those in receipt of benefits and of those to whom national insurance numbers are issued.

These figures probably already exist in the public domain. In fact, how could they not? 

36) Foreign Nationals (Access to Public Services) – Bill to restrict access by foreign nationals to United Kingdom public services for which no charge is made.

Which ones, exactly? And restrict how, exactly? 

37) House of Lords (Maximum Membership) – Bill to provide for a maximum limit on the number of Peers entitled to vote in the House of Lords, and to provide for a moratorium on new appointments.

Leave well alone... Seriously, not this again. Please, not this again. Do you never learn?

38) Control of Offshore Wind Turbines – Bill to restrict the height, number, location and subsidies of wind turbines situated offshore within 20 miles of the coast.

See above under 19) and 24).

39) Employment Opportunities – Bill to introduce more freedom, flexibility and opportunity for those seeking employment in the public and private sectors; and for connected purposes.

No. We all know what you mean. And picking up nasty little American initiatives two or three years late just makes you look like embarrassing younger siblings. Wholly unfit to hold office in this country or to be in our public life. 

40) EU Membership (Audit of Costs and Benefits) – Bill to require an independent audit of the benefits and costs of UK membership of the European Union.

No point, in view of the above. Having reached 39), you desperately needed a 40). This is it.