IT’S full fat flummery time today in Westminster.
Charlie was there in his bejewelled hat, trying and failing not to look bored and annoyed, the default setting for Windsor’s when they are not out slaughtering wildlife.
This faux medieval pageantry, largely an invention of Victorian antiquarians, is supposed to instil a sense of pride in the continuity of Westminster but all it really does is to underscore just how out of touch and unrepresentative the institution really is.
Starmer's government will do nothing of substance to change that.
There will be a few minor tweaks to the House of Lords.
Hereditary peers will at long last lose their right to influence legislation and life peers will be forced to retire at the age of 80.
But nothing at all will be done to reform the Commons, the patient zero of British constitutional illness.
READ MORE: BBC director-general challenged over 'misleading' SNP headline
The speech contained Starmer's legislative plan for the coming Parliamentary session.
It included commitments to renationalise the railways, introduce a new workers’ rights package, and create a publicly-owned energy firm, or rather, a publicly owned investment vehicle for PFI projects.
The SNP said Starmer’s plans fell far short of what was required to "deal with the major challenges facing the UK", accusing Starmer of being "timid" and throwing away the chance to deliver clear and substantial change.
Reacting to the speech, Stephen Flynn, the SNP's Westminster leader, said: "People in Scotland voted for clear and substantial change at Westminster, and the Labour government was handed a huge mandate to deliver it, so it's bitterly disappointing that they have thrown that opportunity away.
"While some of the small measures announced are welcome, they fail to deal with the major challenges facing the UK.
“There was no plan to eradicate child poverty, no plan to tackle the cost of living and no plan to end Tory austerity and boost NHS funding.”
One thing that was absent from the speech, as Stephen Flynn noted, was any commitment to the abolition of the heinous two-child cap on benefits.
The cap has been widely denounced by anti-poverty charities as a motor for driving a huge growth in child poverty.
Lynn Perry, the chief executive of children's charity Barnardo's, has said the two-child cap is "one of the biggest policy drivers of child poverty".
Even Gordon Brown has slated the cap, saying that it condemns children to poverty.
Despite this Starmer refuses to abolish it, citing the cost, which is estimated to be around £2.5bn and £3.6bn according to the Resolution Foundation, They described this cost as low "compared to the harm the policy causes."
However, Speaking on BBC Radio Scotland this morning, Pat McFadden, the Minister for Mordor, defended the Labour government's refusal to abolish the cap, claiming that it was "open to debate" whether the policy causes harm.
READ MORE: 'Bitterly disappointing': SNP blast Labour's 'timid' King's Speech
Everything is open to debate Pat.
You can debate whether black is in fact white.
On the one side of that debate are those who deal with evidence and common sense, and on the other are self-interested contrarian idiots.
It is difficult to escape the conclusion that the real reason that Starmer is so reluctant to abolish a cruel policy which is objectively the cause of massive suffering, even though it could be abolished at relatively little cost, is because he wants to avoid critical headlines in the vicious right-wing press about how Labour is “soft on 'benefits scroungers”.
In pandering to this vile stereotype, he not only condemns thousands of children to poverty but he contributes to the continuing debasement of standards of behaviour in public life.
The cruel stereotypes of the right ought to be challenged and knocked down.
Starmer appears more interested in enabling them, aided and abetted by yes men like McFadden who are willing to go on the national media and spout intelligence insulting guff like telling us it's open to debate whether a policy which has been proven to cause a huge amount of harm does indeed cause harm.
Next week Pat McFadden will tell us it's "open to debate" whether tossing a plugged-in toaster into your bath water is in fact a deeply stupid thing to do.
The right-wing press seeks to dehumanise SNP politicians
While we are on the topic of the debasement of public life caused by the right wing press.
Kieran Andrews, the political editor of The Times Scotland, saw fit to publish a tweet reading: "Meet the "filth" (failed in London, try Holyrood) as SNP prepares for up to 20 MPs who lost their seats at the general election (and some who didn't) to make bids for the Scottish parliament."
The tweet was accompanied by a graphic showing five former SNP MPs who lost their seats at the recent general election and for some reason, one of the Labour party's new Scottish MPs, Alan Gemmell the MP for Central Ayrshire.
I'm sure he'll be surprised to hear that he's planning to make a bid for a seat in Holyrood.
If Andrews can't even get that simple fact right, it does not bode well for the quality of the piece he was touting.
Andrews is a representative of that right wing anti-independence press which worked itself up into a lather of indignation when some independence supporters on a march carried a banner calling the Tories 'scum', even though there was no evidence that any of them were members of the SNP, far less that the SNP approved of the description.
But it seems it's just fine for the right-wing anti-independence press to call SNP politicians "filth".
I don't recall the anti-independence press in Scotland using this insulting and dehumanising descriptor for Anas Sarwar or Stephen Kerr, both of whom obtained seats in Holyrood after losing seats in the House of Commons.
British nationalist double standards rears its ugly head yet again.
But then it's "open to debate" whether British nationalism in Scotland is hypocritical and quick to employ crass behaviour.
Isn't that right, Pat McFadden?
This piece is an extract from today’s REAL Scottish Politics newsletter, which is emailed out at 7pm every weekday with a round-up of the day's top stories and exclusive analysis from the Wee Ginger Dug.
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