The King's Speech: Clinging To No.10, Dragging Britain Back To The EU

The King's Speech was a masterclass in misreading the room. While the people are crying out for cost of living support and a fair tax system, our PM has decided what the people really need is the EU.

Sir Keir Starmer, billed as the Chosen King, was sent to us to cleanse the realm after fourteen years of Conservative Party rule. He was sold to the British people as the ‘adult in the room’. A man so serious he probably audits his own dreams, sleeps in his suit, and irons his socks. He stormed the palace with a 172-seat majority, a mandate so big he could have legally declared himself the Duke of Everything and legislated to have all newborn babies in the UK named Keir. On paper, he is a constitutional titan; in reality, he’s currently playing the lead in a Shakespearean tragedy directed by Mr Bean. He’s standing on the balcony of Downing Street, trying to look regal, while his royal robes are accidentally caught in the door and his crown is slipping over his eyes.

To appease his party when he came to power, he tossed 22% pay rises to the doctors and 15% to the train drivers, the political equivalent of a king trying to stop a peasant revolt by handing out his own castle keys, only for the peasants to change the locks and tell him to sleep in the moat. The ASLEF train drivers didn’t just take the gold; they took the gold, thanked him for the tip, and immediately announced more strikes.

As the calls to resign echo through the courtyards, the arrogance of his majority is beginning to creak. He campaigned on ‘ethics’, then accepted enough ‘gifted’ designer clothes and glasses to see the ghost of his own credibility leaving the room. He’s hiked National Insurance on the employers, introduced measures that have crushed the jobs market, and performed more U-turns than a confused pigeon in a hall of mirrors. He had the numbers to build a New Jerusalem; instead, he’s currently tripping over his own sceptre. If this is the ‘adults’ taking charge, someone please bring back the circus; at least they know how to manage the elephants.

Flash forward to today, and the adult in the room is currently trying to keep the room from being repossessed. The local elections weren’t just a loss; they were a high-speed collision with reality that left the Labour Party’s bumper in a hedge and the engine on fire. The public has spoken, and they’ve spent their votes on anyone but the man in the palace, turning to populist parties on the left and right. Starmer is now fighting for his political life with the desperate energy of a man trying to staple a shadow back to a wall.

The palace coup is no longer a whisper in the corridors; it’s a full-blown shouting match. Wes Streeting is currently in the corner, warming up his vocal cords as he resigns from this failing Government. More than 80 Labour MPs, nearly a quarter of his MPs, have officially asked the PM to please take his crown and find the nearest exit. But Keir, ever the defiant prime minister, has responded by clutching his sceptre tighter and using the King’s Speech to announce the European Partnership Bill.

It’s a masterclass in misreading the room. While the people are crying out for a lower cost of living and a fair tax system, Starmer has decided that what the country really needs is a legislative hug for the EU. It’s a bold move to pivot back toward Brussels when the ghost of 2016 is still haunting the corridors, especially considering the 51% who voted to leave in a turnout that made the moon landing look like a quiet night. He’s essentially telling a public that wants change that the best way forward is to hit the rewind button on a six-year-old remote.

For those who believed Brexit was an opportunity to build a laboratory of competition on the edge of Europe, the Dynamic Alignment Trap has officially been set.

At its core, this Bill is an executive power grab disguised as administrative efficiency. By granting ministers the power to fast-track alignment with EU standards through secondary legislation, the infamous Henry VIII powers allow the government to bypass the very parliamentary scrutiny that was supposed to be the hallmark of our sovereignty. This isn’t just about the Safe Pair of Hands adjusting veterinary standards; it is about the erosion of the rule of law. It’s the political equivalent of Mr Bean trying to fix a priceless painting with a felt-tip pen, except the painting is our democracy, and the pen is a permanent ink of ‘made in Brussels.’ When laws are updated by executive powers to match the whims of a foreign trade bloc.

The economic cost of this alignment is a permanent brake on progress. The primary advantage of a sovereign Britain was its potential to diverge from the EU’s Precautionary Principle. A rigid regulatory philosophy that prioritises the status quo over disruptive breakthroughs. By tethering ourselves to EU standards in energy, food, and emissions, we are accepting a regulatory monopoly. We are voluntarily climbing back into a straitjacket, forfeiting our right to be a permissionless economy where startups can test revolutionary technologies that might be non-compliant in Brussels but perfectly safe in London. It’s like being given the keys to a Ferrari and deciding to hitch it to a horse and cart because the neighbours think speed is dangerous.

The Government justifies this reset by citing the billions saved in reduced friction for exporters. But let’s look at who truly benefits from this bill. It is the large, established corporations with entrenched supply chains that crave the comfort of a single, stagnant rulebook. The unseen cost is borne by the domestic entrepreneur and the small business owner, the very people who will never see the light of day because they are crushed by the weight of a regulatory regime designed for a continent-sized bureaucracy they don’t even export to. This is the adults rigging the game for their friends while the innovators are left to starve.

Perhaps most dangerously, dynamic alignment creates a one-way system. Once our institutions are integrated into European systems, the cost of future deregulation becomes prohibitively high. We are entering a state of Shadow Membership, where we follow the rules of a club we aren’t allowed to enter, paying dues to a landlord who doesn’t have our phone number. We are trading our greatest asset, which is freedom, for the static ease of legacy trade.

The arrogance of the majority is not just a political problem; it is a constitutional crisis. Keir Starmer is acting as if a 33% vote share, the lowest mandate in modern history, gives him a divine right to ignore the 52% who voted for sovereignty and the 72% who showed up to demand it. The local elections were a scream for help from a public tired of being ignored, yet the response in the King’s Speech was to double down on a European Partnership that no one asked for.

A large majority is not a license for a four-year dictatorship. The use of Henry VIII powers to fast-track alignment with Brussels is a direct insult to the concept of Parliamentary sovereignty. Laws that govern British citizens should be debated in the House of Commons, not whispered into existence by a minister behind a closed door. If the government is so confident that dynamic alignment is the right path, they should be brave enough to defend it in a full Parliamentary vote for every single regulation they plan to adopt.

You cannot reset a relationship by erasing the democratic decision of the largest turnout in UK history. To pivot back to Brussels through the service entrance, without a seat at the table and without a vote from the public, is a betrayal of trust that will only fuel the fires of populism. The voters didn’t choose Shadow Membership; they chose independence.

Starmer is trying to rewrite the ending of a story the public has already finished reading.

Every element of the European Partnership Bill must be subject to rigorous, line-by-line scrutiny. We need a Sovereignty Lock that prevents any minister from aligning with a foreign trade bloc without a primary legislative vote. If Wes Streeting and the 80 defiant MPs truly want to save the Labour Party, they should start by saving the democratic process from their own leader’s arrogance.

If the UK is to thrive, it must be a competitor, not a client state. Today’s King’s Speech suggests the government has chosen the latter. By walking into the Dynamic Alignment Trap, we aren’t just easing trade; we are putting invisible handcuffs on the British economy. We are ensuring that our regulatory future is written in a language we no longer speak, in a city where we no longer have a seat at the table.

The adults have decided that independence is too much like hard work. They’d rather be the well-behaved junior partners in someone else’s empire than the masters of their own destiny.

Glodi Ntoya is a Leader for Liberty Fellow with Fighting for a Free Future, the Institute of Economic Affairs, and the Adam Smith Institute. He regularly writes on geopolitics and can be followed on X through gNtoya76. You can subscribe to his Substack below.