THE BEAST THAT DID NOT ROAR

I almost feel sorry for them.

One of the more colourful characters of the State Opening of Parliament, Dennis Skinner, abstained from his now traditional quip at the summons from Black Rod for the Commons to go to the House of Lords for the Queen's speech. Nothing. The beast fell silent.

Then, processing between the two houses, the normally amiable cross house relations were also silent at a leadership level. Harriet Harman, labour's leader, while there is no leader, had nothing to say to David Cameron, and they walked side by side in silence from one chamber to another.

It is as though these silences are symbols of an enforced humility, based on the trouncing Labour got in the election, and their rudderless current state.

Maybe they even mean more. Perhaps the gestalt of the twenty first century is so suited to self direction and optimistic self confidence that there really is no place left for the gloomy pessimisms and state dependencies of socialism. Its more egalitarian ideals seem so long forgotten, so deeply tarnished by its historical global practice that, perhaps, we could persuade ourselves it is gone forever. We can but hope, I suppose.

My take on the silence is that it is symbolic only of shorter term adjustment within the Labour party to its current malaise. It has lost its credibility. It has lost its appeal. It has lost its rationale. But with spin, which will spin it away from its socialist roots these may be regained. In pragmatic terms, though, with an apparent economic resurgence starting and growing, with trade union reform inevitable, with boundary changes highly likely, Labour looks like it has a mountain too great to climb in any short term.

Labour voices may be back. But not for a while.