A typhoon is blowing through government

In the latter part of the 19th century, our legislators realised that government was seriously lagging the monumental changes to the Britain outside SW1. Britain had revolutionised but government was stuck in the past. Actually it was originally, from 1858, just SW. That postal coding in itself was one of the tsunami of reforms, legislative clearing-out, organising and administrative innovations that brought Whitehall into line with a world of trains, post, telegraphs, new towns and cities and the popular press. It all meant that the cobwebs of governance that had accumulated through centuries had to be swept away. The Palace of Westminster itself was rebuilt, and a rank of grand new Portland stone facades hubristic with Imperial pride thrust their chests out onto Whitehall. That's the scale of change it felt like yesterday - no wonder Corbyn looked so glum! Momentum is now definitely owned by the Conservatives (sorry, Owen) and when the great flywheel of state reaches speed, inertial forces will take the nation forward with stunning power. This session of Parliament may last little more than a year - by the Spring of 2021 the government aims to have enacted

• European Union Withdrawal Bill
• Agriculture Bill
• Fisheries Bill
• Trade Bill
• Immigration Bill
• NHS Funding Bill and NHS Long Term Plan
• Medicines and Medical Devices Bill
• Health Service Safety Investigations Bill
• Social Care Reform
• Education reform
• Broadband legislation
• Air Traffic Management and Unmanned Aircraft Bill
• Airline insolvency legislation
• Railways minimum service legislation
• Rail reform and High Speed Rail 2 (West Midlands - Crewe) Bill
• National Security and Investment Bill
• Science, space and research framework
• English devolution
• Employment Bill
• Housing and renters legislation
• Building and fire safety legislation
• Crackdown on terrorists
• Sentencing reform
• Serious violence measures
• Online Harms Bill
• Police powers
• Helen’s law
• Domestic abuse and divorce reform
• Extradition, foreign offenders and espionage legislation
• Victims’ law and Royal Commission
• Environment and animal welfare bill
• Climate change Bill
• Constitutional reform
• Armed forces maintenance

That's quite some programme.

Only one face looked less than ecstatic on the government benches - JRM. He looked in fact as though he'd been given advance warning that he was unlikely to survive on the Treasury bench beyond the February big Cabinet reshuffle. Or perhaps he was merely confused by all the novel regional voices behind him, some of which he could not perhaps quite understand.