Amid the pomp and the catcalls from Dennis Skinner, last week’s Queen’s speech offered a defensive government a rare chance to gain political momentum. It is a statement on the coalition’s serial dysfunctionality that it proved unable to seize this opportunity. The sovereign’s offering was a decidedly unimpressive list of bills – on, for example, supermarkets, charity donations and water. All may prove useful, but it’s thin gruel and hardly a grand vision for the future of our country. After the 15-minute, 19-bill speech, dedicating the week’s parliamentary schedule to debate it seems like flogging the proverbial dead horse. But questions to ministers don’t resume in the Commons until Tuesday, and there are no debates in Westminster Hall – the Commons’ parallel chamber. Labour MPs will be looking to sustain the hard-hitting attack delivered from Ed Miliband in the Commons last week, in what was surely his most accomplished performance yet from the dispatch box.

The Commons assembles mid-afternoon on Monday and MPs will plunge straight into the Queen’s speech – with the theme of the day business and the economy. No single statute can pull Britain from the slump, but the coalition’s agenda last week displayed a startlingly lack of anything resembling an economic plan. We are, after all, in a double dip recession. The speech contained the usual warm platitudes about the ‘priority to reduce the deficit and restore economic stability’ and the perennial promises of reducing red tape and better bank regulation but it was as if the country’s grave economic news had passed George Osborne by.

Business ends with an adjournment debate led by the David Lammy on Payment under the Riot (Damages) Act 1886. Unbelievably this statue from towards the end of the 20th century is the avenue for the Tottenham MP to pursue complaints from his constituents’ difficulties in extracting compensation for damage from last summer’s riots. Given the deep social and financial scar that that summer episode left on the country’s fabric, let us hope that those suffered are at least compensated fairly and promptly.

On Wednesday we hear from the Northern Ireland secretary Owen Paterson and his team before the flagship event of the week – prime minister’s questions. Cleverly, post the usual gladiatorial bout, the opposition day debate on the Queen’s speech has been given over to the cost of living. The coalition, perhaps intuitively spotting their weakness in this area, expressed a desire to ‘reform the water industry in England and Wales’ and introduced the grandly-titled groceries adjudicator bill.

Last week was a good week for Miliband, the week before that – and the local elections – even better. A loss in London aside, where a fatally flawed candidate bucked the national pro Labour trend, Miliband and his ensemble can feel secure in that they have had a strong few weeks. David Cameron, with the embarrassing revelations to the Leveson inquiry, is on the run. With the Queen’s speech, the prime minister attempted at giving his government new life. But the paucity of measures only emphasised that, two years in, the coalition is already running out of steam.

Given that my previous attempt at political predictions was so wonderfully successful, a wide-ranging reshuffle is expected this week for the shadow cabinet. Rumours abound that Miliband may seek to heal nearly two years of bitterness following the leadership battle of 2010 and add another Miliband to his team. A reinvigorated Ed, and an emboldened David, will surely give Labour many more successful weeks ahead.

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David Talbot is a political consultant, tweets @_davetalbot and writes the weekly The Week Ahead column on Progress