Gordon Brown might as well have told the Queen to stay at home to today.

I remember helping a previous government prepare a Queen’s speech or two. There was long confidential discussion about which matters needed legislation, and what could be fitted into a legislative year. There was departmental comment on their parts of the draft speech, to make sure it reflected the balance of the government’s work in the year ahead. Only a relatively few people knew what was in the whole speech, as keeping it secret until the Queen delivered it was a crucial part of the ceremony and a courtesy to the Queen. On the eve of session the Cabinet and the Speaker were invited to hear a private reading of what the Queen would say. Proper discussion of the measures in it was reserved for the press on the day and the day after the speech was delivered, and for the subsequent week long debate in Parliament. Ambassadors and other important dignitaries came to Queen’s Speech day because it represented an important day in the year, when the government set out its full programme and intentions for the year ahead, including the diplomatic engagements and State visits, so there was something new to fill the telegram or email when reporting back to their home country or institution.

Today we are going to hear a speech which has been given once by the Prime Minister as a draft Queen’s speech, and then fleshed out in a series of initiatives and press interviews in recent days. There may or may not be a "suprise" or "lollipop" as one commentator put it in today’s version. That is a matter for Labour’s news management. Nothing can restore the dignity and importance of this speech, or the importance of the Queen’s speech debate in the House, because most if not all of it has been given out in advance and chewed over by reporters and commentators.

It is all part of Brown’s passion to centralise everything around himself, that he had to deliver the Queen’s speech first. It shows how he does not value Parliament, that this week Ministers and others briefing for the government have guaranteed most of the important ideas in the Queen’s speech have been discussed without Parliament having the chance to join in, as we have been locked out for the week.

Today the Opposition should highlight the constitutional outrages of the Brown regime. The debate gives us the chance to demand a Bill for a referendum on the EU constitutional Treaty, and a referendum on Scottish independence and or on justice for England within the Union settlement. It allows us to complain long and loud about the further sidelining of Parliament, the short hours and the numerous holidays, the endless spin and the use of legislation as an elaborate press release to fill the newspapers with a sense that the government is "doing something" about problems it has allowed to get out of control.

Brown’s advisers may at last be grasping that treating every Parliamentary occasion as a chance to bash the Tories lets the public down. The first task of a government should be to set out its intentions to Parliament, and defend its actions and its plans in the House. Of course a sensible government sets out what it thinks is wrong with the Opposition, but only after it has carried out its constitutional duty and explained its own position and how it wishes to respond to the problems of the naiton. Too many Ministers in the current government follow their master’s lead, and just think Parliament is the place to recite long worn out and tired anti Tory soundbites. I do hope they surprise me today with something better, but I doubt it. Don’t expect any vision for the future of the UK. Just expect more short termism, and a continuing guerrilla war against the Opposition.

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