Instead it will pay lip service to climate change, the continuation of a Daily Mail law-and-order agenda and the next obsessive wave of privatisation of our public services. Gordon Brown will make supportive noises off, seeking to demonstrate prime ministerial breadth, and John Reid will relish a fresh assault on civil liberties as he positions himself for a potential populist leadership bid.

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We are after all at war. Thousands are still dying in Iraq and Afghanistan, and as a result Britain has become a terrorist target. Today's speech could demonstrate to the world a radical break from our recent record of military aggression by admitting that Iraq and Afghanistan have been disastrous mistakes and appealing to the world via the UN to assist us in withdrawal. We could use this opportunity to break publicly from Blair's military alliance with Bush and carve out a new international role for Britain as a promoter of peace, focused on conflict prevention and conflict resolution. Our first venture could be to link up with European partners to promote a genuine new Middle East peace initiative. Blair's Guildhall speech is too little, too late, from someone who lacks the international credibility to lead a fresh initiative.

A powerful way to re-establish credibility would be to announce the scrapping of Trident, saving £76bn over 30 years. As the second-biggest arms exporter, Britain should be moving to withdraw from the arms trade and launch a massive skills-conversion programme.

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The Queen's speech could assist in developing a new politics to restore confidence in the political process itself. Again, political decision-making can be transformed through simple steps, such as restoring effective cabinet government, abolishing prerogative powers over war, promoting more unwhipped votes in parliament, capping party election expenditure, and reducing the voting age to 16. People need to know that they can influence national and local decision-making. This means giving councils the power to provide whatever services the local community wants and the freedom to raise its local funds by restoring the ability to set council tax and business rates. And if democracy is valued in the community, why not at work? Company-law reform is needed to introduce industrial democracy into major companies.

Finally, if at long last the government acknowledges that climate change is the priority issue for this Queen's speech then it should at least contain an effective bill introducing individual and household carbon emissions allowances, company and industry allowances and annual carbon-reduction targets of 3% for the country overall. As long as those on low incomes are protected, people will accept the need to levy environmental taxes on activities such as aviation to encourage behavioural changes. But any revenues must be diverted into investment in alternative sustainable-energy sources.

A "more of the same" Queen's speech will be seen as an irrelevance to most of the population. People are not only willing to accept a radical break with current policies and political practice, they are increasingly demanding it.