Wednesday briefing: What the king’s speech will tell us about Labour’s plans – and the pitfalls ahead

Good morning. Dust off your ermine, folks: it’s king’s speech day. At about 11.30am, shortly after leading the royal procession into the House of Lords and hopping on to his throne, King Charles will set out the new government’s agenda . With Labour’s manifesto plan for mandatory housing targets at the heart of it, it’s probably going to be short on surprises. But it will start to flesh out the detail of how Keir Starmer intends to govern – and whether his party’s swollen backbench numbers might bring headaches as well as parliamentary security.

For today’s newsletter, I spoke to Guardian political correspondent Kiran Stacey about what to expect, and what it will tell us about Keir Starmer’s priorities for the next year. Here are the headlines.

Five big stories

1. Wales | Labour is facing weeks of deadlock in Wales after Vaughan Gething quit as first minister , bringing a turbulent four months of infighting and scandal to an end. While some Welsh Labour figures hope a unity candidate could emerge, Gething’s bitter reaction at being forced out could herald a difficult battle ahead.

2. UK news | An autopsy has confirmed that a body found by Spanish rescuers in Tenerife on Monday is that of the missing British teenager Jay Slater. He disappeared after attending a music festival four weeks ago and was last seen walking alone in a remote area in the north of the island.

3. Prisons | Rishi Sunak was warned by senior civil servants a week before he called the election that he was at risk of breaching his legal responsibilities if he failed to take action over the prison overcrowding crisis , a leaked document reveals. Key aides to Sunak blocked plans to release some prisoners early despite warnings that the system was reaching the point of “critical failure”.

4. Health | Adolescents in the UK get nearly two-thirds of their daily calories from ultra-processed foods , with consumption highest among those from deprived backgrounds, researchers say. But the proportion of teens’ diets coming from UPFs has declined slightly since 2008, analysis of the UK National Diet and Nutrition Survey found.

5. Labour | Senior Labour figures have rejected comments by Donald Trump’s vice-presidential pick, JD Vance, that the UK could become the first “truly Islamist country that will get a nuclear weapon” under the party. The jibe is likely to be embarrassing for the UK’s foreign secretary, David Lammy, who has attempted to build bridges with Vance in recent months.

In depth: ‘Get as much done as you can while your opponents fight among themselves’

Notable partly for the opportunity it provides to watch a man in a crown with a professional commitment to neutrality gravely read out a series of political propositions that he may very well view as insane, the king’s speech is more formally important as the occasion on which the government outlines its legislative priorities for the new parliamentary session – the coming year. “There are two real votes of confidence in a government – the budget and the king’s speech,” Kiran Stacey said. “It’s supposed to show you have parliamentary support for your programme.”

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How does it work?

Written by the government and delivered by the king at the state opening of parliament, this year’s edition is expected to include about 35 bills that will form the basis of Labour’s agenda for its first year in office. It tends to be about 10 minutes long. There is nothing binding about it: the government can still drop or add bills to its programme. But it will set the tone.

This year’s is particularly notable as the first to be given under a Labour government since the queen’s speech in 2009 – and the first year of a parliamentary term is always especially busy: “You get as much done as you can while you’ve got political capital and your opponents are fighting among themselves,” Kiran said.

The contents of the bill will be debated for the next five days and be followed by a vote, which has been won by the government at every king’s or queen’s speech since 1924.

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What are the key bills to look out for?

Most of the flagship policies from Labour’s manifesto are expected to feature, from the reintroduction of mandatory housing targets for local councils to the creation of a new publicly owned energy company and a bill orchestrating the nationalisation of railways within five years. The most prominent bill to be carried over from the last parliament is probably Rishi Sunak’s generational smoking ban, which would raise the legal age of smoking by a year, every year until it is outlawed. Eleni Courea has a full breakdown here .

While the outline of all this will be familiar to anyone who followed Labour’s campaign, there are plenty of significant details that may emerge today, Kiran said – as well as news about which will be subject to consultation and which are expected to be pushed through more quickly. “The devolution bill, for instance – it’ll be interesting to see what kind of powers they expect to devolve. And unlike the Conservatives, they aren’t going to insist that areas have a mayor in place before they get these powers, so we may learn how that will work.

“We’re also going to be looking quite carefully at what they say on workers’ rights, and what the supposed ban on zero-hours contracts will look like in practice,” he said. “And I’m interested to see whether they pick up the baton from the Conservatives on reforms to protect leaseholders and renters. They have said they might go back to some of that and strengthen it , but they haven’t been talking about it very much in recent weeks.”

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Could there be any surprises?

At the Labour manifesto launch, Starmer sought to make a virtue of predictability, as contrast to the more pyrotechnic approach of recent Tory prime ministers: “It’s not about rabbits out of a hat, not about pantomime,” he said . “I’m running as the candidate to be prime minister, not to run the circus.” That will continue to apply today as the government tries to project itself as a diligent and responsible operation with little time for political games.

In any case, Kiran said, “you very rarely get surprises in a king’s speech. That’s because when you’re making decisions about tax and spending at a budget, you can do things at short notice – but if you haven’t prepared the ground for a big piece of legislation, it’s likely to have problems.”

The most likely divergence from the manifesto is, instead, in things that do not make the cut this year. The Daily Telegraph reported on Monday that two changes that would limit access to foreign labour – banning companies that break employment law from hiring workers from abroad, and limiting access to the visa system if they fail to train and recruit British workers – will not be included.

The plan to allow voting from age 16 will not feature either. “The thinking is that this doesn’t help them deliver on their major promises,” Kiran said. “They insist they’re not dropping the idea and they’ll do it before the next election. But there will be others who think they could have got it through now in a fairly straightforward way.”

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How will the Conservatives respond?

The speech will be followed by the first substantive clash between Keir Starmer and Rishi Sunak since they swapped jobs, with Sunak due to lead the Conservative response. “It’s going to be a very strange moment,” Kiran said. “He has to keep it bland enough that all of his party can unite behind it, because he has no mandate to lead any more. I suspect he’ll try not to be too bombastic, but he’ll try to punch a couple of bruises that his whole party is united behind – like the workers’ rights stuff. His problem is that he tried to make those points at the election, and the public has already given their view.”

The truth is that little attention will be paid to Sunak’s response, except the kind of attention other drivers pay to a car crash on a motorway: of much more significance will be whether any of the potential leadership candidates try to set out their stall as robust critics of the government with a clear agenda for opposition.

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What do these choices tell us about Labour’s agenda and the term ahead?

It’s only one bill, but the suggestion that votes at 16 could be dropped seems like part of an attempt to cast Labour’s first moves as being relentlessly focused on stimulating growth – the goal it told voters would underpin everything else it wants to do. In quotes released this morning, Starmer said that he is “determined to create wealth for people up and down the country” and “take the brakes off Britain”.

So expect the G word to feature prominently. But in this piece , former shadow chancellor John McDonnell warns that significant growth will take some time to achieve – and voters expect “significant results by at least the midterm of this government”.

There is unlikely to be any significant shift in how Starmer presents his government’s agenda from the campaign – other than to make the dubious claim that the Tories left the public finances in a worse state than they could have possibly expected.

But in the five-day debate that follows, we will begin to get a sense of the shape of the parliamentary Labour party in the years ahead. “This is when you who belongs to which group, and how powerful they are,” Kiran said. One possible flashpoint, he added, is the prospect of an amendment from Labour backbencher Kim Johnson calling for the two-child benefit limit to be scrapped . “They will see that off given the size of their majority,” Kiran said. “But it will give us a sense of whether there’s appetite for rebellion even at a very early stage – and how Starmer tries to deal with it.”

What else we’ve been reading

• The Labour party was criticised for not focusing on the climate crisis enough during their election campaign. Now they’re in government, Fiona Harvey examines their plans to decarbonise transport in the UK. Nimo

• Kwajo Tweneboa’s Guardian column continues, with the housing campaigner writing on the injustice of council tenants kicked out of their homes immediately after losing a parent. Hannah J Davies, deputy editor, newsletters

• There’s no cure for Alzheimer’s and no certain way to prevent it - but a group of people decided to find out anyway if they had the gene variant that increases the chance of developing the disease. Amelia Schonbek spoke with 10 people about what this information did to their lives, for New York magazine (£). Nimo

• Donald Trump’s vice-presidential pick, JD Vance , was met with condemnation from abortion rights groups. Carter Sherman looks at Vance’s troubling positions on reproductive health, violence against women and birthrates. Nimo

• From hot toddies to tuna via danish pastries, we’re putting miso on just about everything these days. Dale Berning Sawa has everything you need to know about how to use it. Hannah

Sport

Football | Gareth Southgate is stepping down as England’s manager after eight years . The Football Association hoped he would extend his contract after he led the team to the final of Euro 2024 but Southgate decided to seek a new challenge. Read Southgate’s full exit statement here. This picture essay captures his near-decade-long tenure as manager. Ed Aarons has a rundown of the top six contenders who might succeed Southgate . David Hytner writes that Southgate was England’s “perfect ambassador”. And Jonathan Wilson reflects on Southgate’s transformation of the team .

Cycling | Jasper Philipsen won stage 16 of the Tour de France, from Gruissan to Nîmes, claiming his third success in this year’s race. The Belgian sprinter again benefited from a near‑perfect lead-out from his Alpecin-Deceu­ninck teammate, and the world road race champion, Mathieu van der Poel.

Cricket | Mark Wood has been included in the England team for the first Test of the post-Jimmy Anderson era. Wood replaces Anderson, who was involved in England’s training ahead of the second Test against the West Indies, and will share the new ball with Chris Woakes.

The front pages

“Turmoil for Labour in Wales after Gething resigns as first minister” says the Guardian’s splash headline this morning. The Daily Telegraph has “Johnson asks Trump to stand by Ukraine”, while the Financial Times has “Trump’s choice of Vance as deputy fuels European fears for security ties”. “Dear Gareth” – the Metro turns its front page into a farewell letter to Gareth Southgate, while the Sun says “Thank you, Gareth … for everything”.

“Reeves pushing for Brexit reset to help boost UK economy” – that’s the i , while the Daily Mail says “PM: Only debate will be ‘how not if’ we build” and the Times’ take is “Locals will lose right to block new homes”. The Daily Express is looking for something else from the new government: “So how exactly will you stop the boats, Sir Keir?”. “Strictly new regime” – change is afoot, says the Daily Mirror , after the BBC show’s “scandal fallout”. Oh – “afoot” – we see what we did there.

Today in Focus

The king’s speech: how radical will Labour be?

The Labour government gets its first chance to set a legislative agenda with the king’s speech at the state opening of parliament. Jessica Elgot examines how radical it will be

Cartoon of the day | Martin Rowson

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The Upside

A bit of good news to remind you that the world’s not all bad

Savor, a California-based startup that is backed by Bill Gates, has been using a complex thermochemical process to create dairy-free alternatives to ice-cream, cheese, and milk . The company has announced an animal-free butter alternative that will, it says, have a significantly lower carbon footprint.

The synthetic butter, which the startup claims tastes just as good as dairy butter, could come in at less than 0.8g CO2 equivalent per calorie, compared with animal-based unsalted butter with 80% fat, which has a standard climate footprint of 16.9kg CO2 equivalent per kg. Bill Gates has said: “The process doesn’t release any greenhouse gases, and it uses no farmland and less than a thousandth of the water that traditional agriculture does. And most important, it tastes really good – like the real thing, because chemically it is.”

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