Yes, Sunak’s King’s Speech plans are dire – but Starmer will have to up his game

The leader of the opposition’s rebuttal to the King’s Speech was savage. Now, Keir Starmer must come to terms with the public spending wasteland he seems likely to inherit, says John Rentoul

Keir Starmer with the prime minister, Rishi Sunak, ahead of the King’s Speech (PA)

The King’s Speech is just like all the Queen’s speeches that went before it. Journalists try to find a theme, or anything new, in the random list of bills presented to parliament. “It’s always a struggle, isn’t it?” one editor commiserated with a colleague in the press gallery.

The government always presents a set of bills that have emerged from vicious inter-departmental warfare up and down the length of Whitehall as if it were a coherent plan for the future.

And the opposition always says that the government has run out of ideas. And Keir Starmer did it well today. He recycled the greatest hits of opposition slogans from the ages. “Their mortgage bombshell.” “He raised taxes 25 times himself.” “The broken promises of the last 13 years.” The King’s Speech, he said, was a “missed opportunity”.