There was a hole in the heart of the King’s Speech – and it hits 670,000 children

“Rebuilding our country will not happen overnight,” Keir Starmer said in his introduction to the King’s Speech today. But many of today’s proposals are from the “no cost or low cost” list Labour drew up in opposition, and there’s a problem: will voters really notice a difference? We know too many children’s life chances are being scarred by rising poverty and too many arrive at school not ready to learn.” It is odd that this government can promise to raise defence spending to 2.5 per cent of GDP – a when, not an if – and yet can’t commit to scrapping the indefensible two-child limit. The fear lurking behind today’s pomp and ceremony is, as one told me: “What on Earth will we do in the next King’s Speech if we don’t get higher growth?” A new study of previous Labour governments suggests the party’s economic record is better than it is given credit for. But ominously, Malcolm Petrie, director teaching at St Andrews University, writes: “The plans of Labour governments have always been predicated on economic growth, which removes the need for difficult decisions on fiscal and monetary policy – when that growth doesn’t arrive, the problems are often insurmountable.”