This week's Queen's Speech was notable for its absences. Many of the least popular election pledges – widely blamed for the Conservatives' disaster at the polls – were summarily junked. 

Denounced by Labour as 'threadbare,' Theresa May's programme for the next two years certainly seemed to come from a government with few new policy clothes. Coming the same week as the start of the fractious Brexit negotiations, it's becoming clear that serious structural reform for local government will now be put firmly on the backburner. Any legislation that might attract even a murmur from backbench dissenters is unlikely to be contemplated.