The Queen’s Speech will be just a holding statement, as Whitehall waits for Gordon

There is something comically surreal about the ten-year plans Tony Blair has commissioned across his Cabinet. A Prime Minister who will not last another ten months is asking his Cabinet to agree a strategy in four areas of policy. No one engaged in the process is in any doubt about its futility. Soon Gordon Brown will be prime minister and his own, deeply personal strategy will be the only one that matters. All activity until then is hopelessly cosmetic.

It is in this spirit that ministers are preparing for the Queen’s Speech on 15 November. There was a time under this government when this event would fizz with Blairite energy, as Her Majesty was asked to read out plans for an inordinate amount of legislation, knowing, as we all did, that it could never be fitted into the parliamentary timetable. Now there are barely enough ideas to fill the speech. Each Whitehall department knows that anything substantial will be completely revised when the Chancellor takes over.

‘We are between bookends,’ one Cabinet member told me. ‘The last Labour conference was the end of Blair. The next conference will be the start of Brown. But this leaves us in a strange interregnum.’ The same mood pervades the Ministry of Defence, the Foreign Office and the Department of Health. Officials know the old policy has gone wrong, and strategy needs to be revamped. But until Mr Brown is installed in No. 10 it is not worth having a debate about policy, let alone wasting energy drafting prospective legislation. Whitehall is becalmed.

The main exception is the Home Office, which is being reformed by John Reid, who believes his agenda will somehow be Brown-proof. His boisterous confidence means the Home Office is virtually the only department which is humming with activity.