Maybe Sunak does have a grand plan. But that king’s speech looked more like an admission of failure | Martin Kettle

This ragbag of unambitious measures bears all the hallmarks of a programme that can be quietly abandoned later

Less than 24 hours after the king’s speech, supposedly one of the most reverberant events in the parliamentary calendar, Wednesday’s political headlines were quickly made elsewhere – by tensions between ministers and police over pro-Palestinian demonstrations, and by the not wholly unexpected resignation of a not widely known and extremely junior shadow minister.

Rishi Sunak is, of course, keen to embarrass Labour over the Israel-Hamas conflict and the protests. The latest iteration of Labour’s internal difficulties over the conflict – extremely unlikely to be the last – will not have been unwelcome to him. But the government’s readiness to switch attention away from its own programme at the start of the last parliamentary session before the general election also tells you something about the bigger picture in British politics.

Martin Kettle is a Guardian columnist

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