FROM showpiece to sideshow – that is the reality of the Queen’s Speech delivered yesterday with all the usual pomp and ceremony.

Her Majesty’s glittering carriage rolled down The Mall in the normal way and the door of the Commons was once again slammed in Black Rod’s face, to remember those deadly disputes with Charles 1.

But the list of Bills she read out from the goatskin text will not determine whether the next Parliamentary session is one of triumph or disaster for Gordon Brown.

The reason, of course, is that politics over the next 12 months and more will be all about jobs lost, homes repossessed and lives ruined.

In a single word: recession.

To realise just how much the world has changed at Westminster, we need only look back to the headlines when the Prime Minister presented his ‘draft’ Queen’s Speech, back in May.

Rushed forward by two months, in a hopeless attempt to avoid defeat in the Crewe byelection, the big message was “people power”

in schools, hospitals, police stations and town halls.

Parents were promised new rights to information on their child’s progress, hospitals were to be docked funding if patients criticised the care and chief constables would answer to directly-elected representatives.

There was a savings scheme for the lowpaid, flexible working rights for parents and pledges of help for first-time buyers. Yes, there were some back in May.

Undoubtedly, all these measures remain important – and were included in the real Queen’s Speech – but they are not in the headlines today, because they cannot compete with economic meltdown.

Instead, the headlines focus on help for desperate homeowners facing repossession – not first-time buyers – which did not require the presence of Her Majesty, because it is not even in the Queen’s Speech.

There were just 15 pieces of legislation unveiled yesterday, the smallest number since Labour came to power and little more than half the total last year.

No, the next election rests on whether the public trusts Messrs Brown and Darling to get it through the crisis that will probably still be raging in 2010 – or, more likely, punishes them mercilessly for their part in it.

Within weeks, Barack Obama will be unveiling his own “fiscal stimulus” package next to which Britain’s will be a very small hill of beans.

Sure enough, Alistair Darling has already admitted he may have to pump in billions more to get the economy moving – marking out Budget Day in March as the next crunch point, not yesterday.

All in all, this Queen’s Speech was mainly for the tourists.

HE used to be the MP for Darlington and now represents leafy Sevenoaks, in Kent, but his postbag is largely the same, it appears.

In a profile in the House magazine, Conservative MP Michael Fallon said: “In the same way that I saw in Darlington in the mid- 80s, there’s a lot of anxiety about job prospects.”

Mr Fallon also makes clear that he has not forgotten his Darlington years, which were cut short by defeat to Labour’s Alan Milburn in 1992.

He added: “I married there, both my children were born there, it’s still the first football result I check on a Saturday – part of me remains there.”