The Spectator

At the state opening of Parliament, the Queen said, ‘My government is committed to creating safe and secure communities, and fostering a culture of respect.’ For the next 18 months 45 Bills were scheduled. An Identity Cards Bill would be introduced; Sinn Fein said this would undermine the rights of Irish citizens in Northern Ireland. Other Bills would progressively criminalise smoking in public places, and create offences of corporate manslaughter and incitement to religious hatred. A Commission for Equality and Human Rights would be given powers to counter discrimination on grounds of age, religion and sexual orientation. There would be no Bill on the reform of the House of Lords, but a joint committee of MPs and peers would be set up to review its workings.

Labour won a majority of 67 in the general election, securing 356 seats (of the 645 contested), 47 down, with 9,556,183 votes, 35.2 per cent of the total; the Conservatives won 197 seats, 33 up, with 8,772,598 votes, 32.3 per cent of the total; the Liberal Democrats won 62 seats, 11 up, with 5,982,045 votes, 22 per cent. The United Kingdom turnout was 61.3 per cent and the swing from Labour to Conservative was 3 per cent. In England more people voted Conservative than for Labour. Mr Michael Howard said he would resign as leader of the Conservative party ‘sooner rather than later’ leaving by Christmas after a new leader was elected by new rules. Among his shadow reshuffles, he chose Mr George Osborne, 33, as shadow Chancellor.

Britain held a general election, except in South Staffordshire, where the death of the Liberal Democrat candidate after ballot papers had been sent out required the holding of a by-election later. More than five million requests for postal votes had been met. The Conservatives had hoped that the result would be unexpected in the same way as that in 1970. The degree to which Mr Tony Blair was sweating prompted speculation that he would retire from domestic politics early on health grounds. Campaigning in Huddersfield before the election, Mr Blair said of David Blunkett, the disgraced former home secretary: ‘That is one of the most special people I have ever worked with in my life and I want to see him back where he belongs as soon as possible.

The Mail on Sunday claimed that before the war on Iraq, Lord Goldsmith, the Attorney General, had warned Mr Tony Blair, the Prime Minister, in a 13-page letter that it was questionable whether Britain could legally attack Iraq under UN Resolution 1441. A nine-paragraph summary of the Attorney General’s advice, containing no such caveat, was later published by the government, but it has refused to publish any fuller advice. Mr Michael Howard, the leader of the Conservative party, said that Mr Blair had ‘told lies to win elections. And he’s only taken a stand on one thing in the last eight years — taking Britain to war. And he couldn’t even tell the truth about that.

Kamel Bourgass was sentenced to 17 years in prison for conspiring, with one named fellow terrorist and others unnamed, to cause a ‘public nuisance’, a common law offence said by the Crown in this case to have involved plotting to use poisons to cause ‘disruption, fear and injury’. Bourgass, an Algerian, had been an ‘illegal absconder’ since August 2001 when his application for asylum was rejected. Unknown to the jury, he was serving a life sentence for the murder with a knife of Detective Constable Stephen Oake during an anti-terrorist operation in Manchester two years ago. Inflation rose to 1.9 per cent.

In the Conservative manifesto, six pledges designated as ‘the simple longings of the British people’ appeared in facsimile handwriting: ‘more police, cleaner hospitals, lower taxes, school discipline, controlled immigration and accountability’. Details included an undertaking to match Labour spending on the NHS, schools, transport and foreign aid, while spending 1 per cent less in total each year. Labour gave six ‘pledges’ of its own: an inflation target of 2 per cent and mortgages as low as possible; a million more homeowners by the end of the Parliament; a million more people helped by the New Deal; 300,000 apprenticeships to be created; minimum wage to rise to £5.35 per hour; education spending to rise to £5,500 per pupil a year by 2008.

The wedding of the Prince of Wales and Mrs Camilla Parker Bowles was suddenly postponed for a day because it clashed with the funeral in Rome of Pope John Paul II on 8 April. The Prince of Wales was to represent the Queen at the funeral, and the Archbishop of Canterbury, who was to perform a service of dedication for the couple, also wanted to go to the funeral, as indeed did Mr Tony Blair, the Prime Minister. Mr Blair said that he was postponing an audience with the Queen for a day as a ‘mark of respect’ for the Pope; after the delayed audience he announced that Parliament was to be dissolved and a general election held on 5 May, as everyone had expected. The Grand National was postponed from 3.45 to 4.10 because of the rescheduling of the wedding.