King’s Speech

Lord Howell of Guildford Excerpts

Thursday 21st May 2026 Lords Chamber

[Lord Howell of Guildford (Con)]

My Lords, it is a pleasure to follow the noble Baroness, Lady Northover. I believe long ago we were in the same Government, but I cannot quite recall which Government it was. We have had some very fine speeches both today and throughout the six days we have been debating the King’s Speech. A couple stick in my mind. The noble Baroness, Lady Manningham-Buller, reminded us that we are all under attack by Russia, on all sides and in every way, at all times—and she should know. Then there was the noble Lord, Lord Hennessy, who in his last Lords speech—sadly—warned against us sinking into a vortex of pessimism and despair. How right he was.

At the end of the last century, many of us used to visit Japan a lot on delegations and so on, and they always arranged for us to see the Prime Minister of the day. We used to smile a bit, quite politely and privately, that it was always a different person—a constant rotation of Prime Ministers. I suspect the Japanese are laughing at us a bit now, because we too are caught in this whirligig of instability, and instability at the political centre affects everything else: the confidence and attitudes of investment and business and future prosperity. Why are we caught in it? There are all sorts of explanations, but I will add three in my five minutes.

First, any Government now face a far more informed electorate—maybe for better, maybe for worse. I suspect mainly for worse, but in vastly greater quantities than ever before in history. Every grievance becomes turbocharged. Every minor, unfiltered and unedited view is promoted through a massive world system of electronic information. There are 37 million devices in the UK alone—not counting wired telephones—that can be tuned in to any ministerial statement. Everything can be and is challenged, and it becomes a permanent maelstrom of debate.

We have created an entirely new information network, and I am not sure that some in the media or those in political circles have quite adjusted to this huge revolution and its effect on everybody. That, incidentally, is why some of us fought 10 years ago to set up an International Affairs Committee. It did not exist and we had to fight very hard.

Secondly, in this digital, hyperconnected world, most of the root causes lie outside our national government reach. That is not a very popular view, but it is so. Whether it is security and safety, cost of living, funding shortages all round, trade, local government and those potholes of course, interest rates and the bond market, or energy independence, which is largely a chimera—these are all matters that are only partially under our home Government’s control. They are certainly not in control of the root causes of them.

Thirdly, in 1945, liberally minded visionaries built a new world order out of the rubble of the Second World War. All the institutions they created then served us well, but they are all in trouble. They are supposed to be the rule-makers and the fora where there are referees, without which chaos and a world without rules develops. We need a new Bretton Woods, new trade rules, a new International Maritime Organization, a new health organisation and, of course, a new, unblocked United Nations. Where are these visionaries today? They are certainly not in Washington. Where are the Trumans, the Marshalls, the Keyneses, the Dexter Whites and the other figures who built this world order almost 100 years ago?

Mentioning Keynes allows me just a few seconds to share sadness that we no longer have Robert Skidelsky with us, who was a great biographer of Keynes. Of course, not everyone agreed with him—certainly not on Ukraine, where the robots are winning and not losing.

All this is ignored or barely reported in the press. We need the spirit of 1945 all over again, but many times over and many times more ambitiously. Without that, we can all attack the nearest targets and have a bit of an inter-party battle and so on, but we will remain the plaything of past economic fantasy theories, being swept along in a rudderless craft—a world without rules—which is absolutely fatal to a country such as ours. I refuse to be a pessimist. We must listen to the warning of the noble Lord, Lord Hennessy. We ignore these facts of our totally altered world at our peril.