As notable as what is in today’s Queen’s Speech is what isn’t. Despite repeated promises by ministers, the speech will not include a bill enshrining the government’s commitment to spend 0.7 per cent of GNI on aid in law, nor, to the dismay of public heath campaigners, will there be any mention of minimum alcohol pricing or plain cigarette packaging. Only gay marriage survives as an emblem of Cameroon modernisation.
Conservative MPs attribute this strategic shift to Lynton Crosby, the Tories’ recently appointed campaign strategist, who speaks of scraping the “barnacles off the boat”. By this, the hard-nosed Australian means dispensing with namby-pamby measures of little concern to the average voter (such as minimum pricing and plain packaging) and focusing on people’s core concerns: the economy, immigration, education and welfare reform.
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