The Queen may have to deliver another speech before long – and not for the Tory party

In the past, Britain’s political parties have recruited some unlikely personalities to front or appear in their party political broadcasts: John Cleese (SDP/Liberal Alliance); Martin Freeman (Labour); Sean Connery (SNP); and, most disturbingly, an endorsement from Jimmy Savile for the Liberals (it was the Seventies).

Never before, however, has a reigning monarch been co-opted. But such has been the fate of Elizabeth II in the 67th year of her reign. It is some small mercy she was not required to utter the phrase “get Brexit done”, but otherwise she was reading from a script that may well have had something to do with Dominic Cummings. A new low.

The Queen’s Speech is only the latest piece of Britain’s constitutional furniture to be upended by the Johnson government. Usually, the speech arrives after a general election, not before. It presents a programme for a government endorsed by the electorate, not seeking to win an imminent contest. This was electioneering, and the palace ought not to have agreed to it – but then again, it has bigger battles to fight and win with Mr Johnson than this.

And so the nation is presented with 26 bills, few of which will see their way onto the statute books during what is left of this parliament. In any case, relatively few of them deserve to. Left over from the previous, prematurely prorogued session is the Domestic Abuse Bill, long overdue for approval; few would doubt the merits of new laws to regulate building standards (a too-late response of the Grenfell disaster), improve mental health care, or bring in statutory targets to improve air quality and reduce the use of plastics.

The Brexit legislation is a known quantity – entirely dependent on the shrinking chances of an acceptable deal being agreed both by the EU and the House of Commons by Saturday. The routine pledges on law and order and immigration wouldn’t make much difference to the many other “crackdowns” promised by governments of all colours.

By far the most pernicious proposal is the Electoral Integrity Bill, which would, if anything, undermine the integrity and legitimacy of British elections by suppressing voter turnout and rigging elections in the Tories’ favour. The pilot schemes tried thus far proved a deterrent to turnout, plainly discriminating against sections of the electorate who possess neither a passport nor a driving licence.

It is difficult to believe that a democracy with such a proud history of extending the franchise as Britain could be about to rob as many of its poorer citizens of their birthright, but so it would seem. Maybe it is one of the government’s clumsy “dead cat” ploys.

The best that can be said of the Electoral Integrity Bill is that it stands as a very stark warning of just how extreme and dangerous a Johnson government with anything like a working majority would be – an administration literally pledged to diminish democracy.

In a curiously phrased remark, with a crafty use of tense, the Queen was pushed to the very edge of truthfulness by stating: “My government’s priority has always been to secure the United Kingdom’s departure from the European Union on 31 October.” This allows, just, for the near certainty that Her Majesty’s government will not be able to deliver that priority on the due date, even if a Brexit deal were signed off immediately.

Indeed, there are diminishing signs that that will happen. Michel Barnier continues to unpick the contradictions and complications in the UK proposal, mercilessly exposing the fact that it has embedded in it a useful unilateral exit clause for the UK – one that would necessarily clash with the terms of the Good Friday Agreement. As it stands, it does not offer the European Union nearly enough reassurance about the intentions of a post-Brexit Britain.

In particular, the well-justified suspicion that the UK is about to try some retaliatory undercutting of the EU makes the Johnson proposals unacceptable in Brussels. Were the EU to agree to them, and were the UK to aggressively attempt to unfairly out-compete the EU, then the latter would feel justified in levying tariffs to even up the playing field – thus negating the free trade agreement. The European Commission is far too experienced in trade matters to be blindsided by such an obvious try-on.

Just as well, then, that in a few weeks’ time this Queen’s Speech may be replaced by another one from a different prime minister or a different party. For the piece of legislation most urgently required is the only one that can end the Brexit trauma with a full democratic mandate: a Referendum Bill that will put the Johnson deal (if it exists) or a no-deal Brexit to the people, with the option to Remain in the EU.

More and more MPs are reluctantly bowing to the logic that a general election is the wrong question: like this Queen’s Speech, it would be an utterly futile affair.