IT is richly amusing that Theresa May was forced to humanise her legislative programme by, of all people, the Democratic Unionist Party (DUP) MPs, led by the redoubtable Arlene Foster. The DUP has been portrayed by almost everyone as far-right, Orange bigots. Its attitudes to abortion and LBGT rights have left a lot to be desired. But it has a social conscience.

It reportedly refused to be bounced into accepting the Prime Minister’s antisocial social care programme, means testing of winter fuel payments and abolition of school meals. Perhaps we have misjudged the “hard-faced” men (and women) of Ulster. The party apparently blocked Mrs May’s attempt to reintroduce grammar schools in England, about the only distinctively Mayite policy left from her wrecked General Election manifesto.

Number 10 thought the votes of “our friends and allies” in Northern Ireland were in the bag, and that the inexperienced provincials would be carved up by clever civil servants. But it didn’t work out like that. The Ulster Unionists are very tough negotiators. They’ve had to be, dealing with Sinn Fein and the British Government over the years.

This led to the bizarre phenomenon of a Queen’s Speech without any significant legislation. Yet its drafting was repeatedly delayed for what we were told were archaic technical reasons. How many goats died in vain providing the vellum for this blank sheet of paper? Well, not entirely blank. It did say: “Brexit means Brexit” (sort of), and listed a lot of “to be arrangeds” on agriculture and fisheries, immigration and trade.

This is the “Great Repeal” agenda of repatriating all the powers from Brussels, which is expected to provide the Commons with its marching orders for the next two years, the 2018 Queen’s Speech having been abolished to save further embarrassment. If it’s going to take two years to import all of those directives and regulations unchanged from the EU, why did we leave in the first place?

This Queen’s Speech was universally declared a farrago, a burach of constitutional proportions that confirmed the May Government hasn’t a clue what it’s doing, and has left Britain the butt of columnists and politicians across Europe.

Jeremy Corbyn had great fun in his response to the “Gracious Speech” as it is called, itemising all the lost legislation. This included Mrs May’s proposal to restore fox hunting, good news for our “furry friends” as the leader of the opposition put it to howls of Labour laughter. “Non controversial” measures have survived the cull: the Domestic Violence Bill, abolishing letting fees and clamping down on insurance claims for whiplash injuries. The prime Minister knows all about whiplash injuries after her General Election pile up. The remarkable thing is that these measures could equally have been proposed by Mr Corbyn. The Labour leader had been planning his own alternative Queen’s Speech but no one expected it would be Mrs May delivering it.

Mr Corbyn even got one over on the Prime Minister on questions of royal protocol. Tabloid correspondents on social media leapt on the failure of Mr Corbyn to bow to the Queen when the speech was presented. Mrs May stooped conspicuously. But it emerged from the Palace that Mr Corbyn was correct in not bowing – it’s Black Rod’s job to do that on behalf of the Commons. This is a record: a prime minister who thinks she represents Parliament.

This doesn’t bode well. Mrs May is expected to slap Henry VIII clauses all over the Not-So-Great Repeal Bill and its seven dwarf bills. This is the pre-democratic right of prime ministers to pass certain categories of legislation without Parliament having a say. It is supposed to apply only to non-controversial legislation. Call me old fashioned, but I just don’t believe a prime minister who tried to push through Article 50 without consulting Parliament can be trusted with the powers of a Tudor monarch.

As expected, the Queen’s Speech made clear that all those powers from Brussels that the Leavers said would be devolved to Holyrood after Brexit will not do so; at least not directly. The Government confirmed hat matters such as agriculture and fisheries will first go to Westminster, where the future replacements for the Common Agricultural Policy and the Common Fisheries Policy and the financing of such will be hammered out. The same will apply to environmental regulation, nuclear power and all those responsibilities regulated by Brussels.

If Mrs May thinks she’s going to get these past the Scottish Parliament, she may have another thing coming. Such is the tribalism of Scottish politics that I wouldn’t put it past the Scottish Conservatives to support this legislative power grab. But it seems inconceivable that the Greens, Labour or the Liberal Democrats will sit idly by while Holyrood is shorn of its responsibilities.

At the very least, the Scottish Government must be intimately involved in the generation of the new agriculture and fish policies and the creation of the new regulatory agencies. There must also be co-decision making over financing new regimes. There are very large sums of money involved and Holyrood would be abdicating its responsibility if it failed to stick its legislative oar in at every opportunity.

Surely the Democratic Unionists have shown how it can be done. Indeed, in the coming disputes over the Repeal Bill, they may be of some assistance to the Scottish Government, despite differences over abortion and other matters. The DUP has yet to endorse even this cut-down Queen’s Speech. Its MPs are virtuosos of brinksmanship – or perhaps that should be brinkswomanship – since Arlene Foster is in the lead. The UK Government is confidently briefing the press that there are only a few t’s to be crossed before the Queen’s Speech is agreed by Parliament.

But on recent form that probably means that both this Queen’s Speech, and perhaps Mrs May, could be history within the week.