The Queen’s Speech today is meant to inaugurate a new session of parliament that will enable Boris Johnson to highlight his post-Brexit domestic programme and set the parliamentary agenda for the next 12 months. In practice, it will be overshadowed by attempts to find a Brexit deal agreeable to both the EU and MPs and could well be followed by a speedy dissolution, should the opposition finally accede to the government’s request for an early election.

Mr Johnson’s willingness to go to the country will not have been tempered by anything that has happened since MPs last rejected his request for an early election shortly before the party conference season. For, in the meantime, what was already quite a healthy Tory lead in the polls