Debate on the Address

I harbour no ill will toward the hon. Member for North Durham (Mr. Jones), but listening to parts of his speech I found it easier to understand why the north-east rejected the regional assembly. Leaving that aside, I am sure that we can make up over a drink in the Members’ Bar. The hon. Member for Banff and Buchan (Mr. Salmond) made some telling points. He used the word ““groundhog”” and there is a sense of ““Groundhog Day”” about today. The Queen’s Speeches of the past few years have all had the same texture and the same feel. Here let me pay a genuine tribute to the Prime Minister: his enthusiasm every Session for what he must realise is a speech that, in a way, exists to repeat the failures of the previous Queen’s Speech is quite remarkable. His air of get up and go on the morning that we open the new Session of Parliament is probably the reason why he has lasted so long—indeed, today I almost had the sense that he wants to continue. There was a frisson that suggested that this would not be his last Queen’s Speech after all.