Chris Mason

bit practiced maybe maybe maybe but you know to deliver a sort of one-liner three words and get it just right uh yeah i thought i was i thought it was a decent uh a decent gag that and then the other kind of tradition of that is when the mps all then trooped down the corridor and all eyes were on keir starmer to see like just how he would look as like a person in the midst of all of this and

And then further down the line, people were looking to see where Streeting was behaving as he was mingling with his colleagues, both in the cabinet and the back benches, and also his opposite numbers.

What was your take on the walk of, not the walk of, what could we call it?

Yeah, we're constantly looking for clues.

Then we get onto the actual substance of what would be the substance of this day if it was normal political times, which is the sovereign reading out the 30-ish pieces of legislation that the government is going to try and pass in this session of parliament.

Faisal, it comes with a huge big briefing pack of what all the bits of legislation are.

Should we talk about some of the things the government wants to do?

What caught your eye from the bundle?

Some will say, well, the actual economic impact right now will be... So this is the legislation that will have to go through Parliament, which will then allow ministers to implement what they end up agreeing with the EU as part of their quote-unquote resets.

They're giving themselves the tools to then sort of graft on extra things that they negotiate in future years.

The sentence that caught my eye in that section of this big King's Speech document, in that bit about the EU alignment, is the sentence saying, oh, and the mechanisms by which the UK will shape these bits of EU rulemaking.

And I thought that was really intriguing because will that be a sort of classic thing you've got to do in Britain to make it look like we've still got some sovereignty here, even though the rules are being made in Brussels?

Or actually, are we going to see something quite innovative about how the UK and the EU will work together on these things in future, the sort of which would never have happened in the Brexit era, but maybe could happen now in this new world where actually they both feel they have to get closer together?

Some cooperation might get dialed down now.

Yeah, Chris, what's your take on the huge big pile of new laws that we got?

Faisal, another sentence that jumped out at me was the legislation about energy security and renewable energy.

And it said taking a more strategic approach to energy infrastructure, which made me think, oh, is that overriding the planning system to get pylons and things built?

I'm just... It adds to sort of the surreal nature of this whole King speech, because first of all, there's your point, Faisal, of, well, there is a chance that someone else will be the Prime Minister who then has to

pass all this legislation and maybe it doesn't chime with what they want to do.

That's completely theoretical at the moment.