Corbyn is primed to play politics after an embarrassingly threadbare Queen's Speech for Theresa May

May mishandled negotiations with the DUP, arrogantly assuming on the morning after her election disaster that a deal would easily be done. She should have known that a hardline party like the DUP would play hardball. Now the clock is ticking on whether this speech will manage to get through Parliament

It wasn’t supposed to be like this. No amount of window dressing by Theresa May could disguise a threadbare Queen’s Speech which symbolises her lame government.

The speech will be remembered for what was not in it – May’s backward-looking plan for more grammar schools; ending the triple lock which ensures the state pension rises by at least 2.5 per cent a year; scrapping winter fuel payments for better off pensioners; reforming how much people pay towards their social care; ending free school lunches for five- to seven-year-olds and the most retro policy of all, lifting the ban on fox hunting

All these measures were in the Conservative Party manifesto. Officially, Downing Street insists that the Government is “reflecting” on them, to see whether the parliamentary arithmetic adds up. In other words, they have been ditched, and the manifesto has been shredded.

Inevitably, the legislative package was dominated by eight measures on Brexit. But after throwing away the Tories’ majority in the unnecessary election, May could not even present these from a position of safety, let alone strength. Her failure to secure a “confidence and supply” deal with Northern Ireland’s 10 Democratic Unionist Party (DUP) MPs, under which they would support the Tories in key votes, leaves May even more exposed.

She has mishandled the negotiations, arrogantly assuming on the morning after her election disaster that a deal would easily be done. She should have known that the hardline DUP would play hardball, and should have made more at the outset of the DUP’s bottom line – to stop Jeremy Corbyn becoming prime minister.

Now the clock is ticking towards the crucial vote on the Queen’s Speech on Thursday next week, enhancing the DUP’s clout in the talks as it tries to squeeze a reported £2bn for the province out of a reluctant Treasury.

Even if a deal is reached, the Government will have to live from hand to mouth in the Commons. We can expect plenty of dramatic knife-edge votes on the Brexit legislation, sometimes late at night, sometimes with sick MPs forced to go through the division lobbies – a rerun of the minority Labour government of 1974-79.

May, who briefly ended the Tories’ long civil war on Europe after last year’s referendum, has now reignited it. She will be the rope in a tug of war between her party’s re-energised pro-Europeans and the Brextremists who will threaten to topple her if she dilutes her hard-Brexit approach.

With bills in the Queen’s Speech on highly sensitive areas such as customs and immigration, May must perform a constant high-wire act. She cannot even be sure whether her Cabinet shares her Brexit vision. Liam Fox, the International Trade Secretary, won his battle for a bill allowing “an independent trade policy” but the plan for a long transitional period, set out by the Chancellor Philip Hammond on Tuesday, will command Commons support and could delay trade deals with non-EU countries for years.

There may be no majority among MPs for hard Brexit; there will certainly be no majority if the Prime Minister tries to walk away from the EU negotiations without an agreement. Her “no deal is better than a bad deal” mantra might apply to the DUP talks, but on the Brexit negotiations it is dead; MPs would send her back to the Brussels table.

To make matters even worse, the House of Lords, which would have swallowed its doubts about hard Brexit if May had enhanced her majority, will now feel no such constraint. Peers will certainly get their teeth into the Repeal Bill, which would allow ministers to change some EU laws without full parliamentary scrutiny.

Ministers are reaching out to Labour in the hope that consensus on some aspects of Brexit will ease the parliamentary pressure on them. Labour won’t admit it publicly, but it will be unable to resist the temptation to play politics in the hope of forcing a government defeat and another election.

No doubt the Tories will accuse Labour of undermining the national interest at a critical time. They won’t admit it publicly, but they would almost certainly be playing politics if the parties’ roles were reversed. We can hardly blame Corbyn for wanting another election.

“We are going to see Brexit through,” May said in her introduction to the Queen’s Speech, perhaps revealing that the maximum she can expect is another two years in Downing Street. Her promise to show “resolve and humility” is a bit late after her disastrous initial response to the Grenfell Tower tragedy. Many Tory MPs believe she can show the first quality but has been exposed as lacking the second. Humility cannot be easily scripted if it does not come naturally.

May’s position as she asks the Commons to endorse the thin gruel of this Queen’s Speech is perilous. Tory MPs do not want a general election, fearing a Corbyn win – words I never thought I would write, but now true. But if they judge that May is tarnishing the Tory brand, they will not hesitate to force her out well before the end of this two-year parliamentary session.