Now the great grudge match really begins

Watching the Conservative leader brand Mr Brown "a weak leader" and add cruelly, "Say what you like about Mr Blair ...", and Mr Brown spitting back "Confused, contradictory, short-term," reminded us that we've not had a good hate-in at the top for ages.

Mr Blair and Mr Cameron were too similar to indulge in real loathing: Mr Blair and Michael Howard had a barristerly respect for one another that only wore thin in the very final stages of the last Parliament. You have to go back to Neil Kinnock versus Margaret Thatcher for the kind of bilious anger that coursed around the Commons yesterday.

There is good reason for the high stakes. This year's Queen's Speech marks the break in a period negatively defined for Gordon Brown by his retreat from an early election and the Northern Rock crisis, whose bad-tempered fall-out is still damaging his Chancellor.

No one doubts David Cameron has had his best period in the job since his party conference. What matters from now is whether the broader momentum is moving to the Conservatives - or whether Mr Brown can resume control.

The momentum theory favours Mr Cameron. Oppositions need to create the impression of fresh activity, surprise and to move the goalposts.

"The tide of ideas is changing," a gleeful Tory told me last week - and if that is true, rather than wishful thinking, Mr Cameron will surf it with proficiency.

It is not yet proven though. That is why Mr Brown laid out a relatively short but strategically driven Queen's Speech whose themes - immigration, aspiration, education, housing and terror, more flexible working hours for families - charting the altered landscape of the new politics and in areas he feels he can test new Tory ideology to destruction.

A couple of notable departures from the Blair era were slipped in - or rather out - too. The ancient regime loved its criminal justice bills, "respect" agendas and natty devices such as Asbos as instant problem-solvers. Mr Brown is instead presenting his claim to be the more serious and consistent candidate.

The clashes with Mr Cameron were certainly high octane and the Tory leader's confidence is unbounded. For my money, though, it was the unlikely figure of the Lib-Dems' Vince Cable who took the laurels by dint of surprise.

Mr Cable has previously behaved himself as a Lib-Dem Treasury spokesman should: well nigh invisibly. No longer. His reply yesterday was one of the stirring moments of which Parliament is still capable: when a complete nonentity suddenly scores a hit on a giant. "Is that it?" he enquired slowly of the great set piece. "He's had a 35-year wait for this day, now he's like one of those great boxing champions, semi-conscious and staggering round the ring."

Sounding like Bela Lugosi, Mr Cable draws blood, too. Mr Brown, who adopts his benevolent "Big Tent" mien when Lib Dems speak, looked doubly winded.

The Queen's Speech was not without substance. It avoids most of the gimmickry which marred Mr Blair's late period legislation. The PM's political asset is he thinks big - whether it is a bid to impose education or training to the age of 18, which his Schools Secretary Ed Balls claims will be "the greatest education reform since the Butler act".

The charge that he lacks "vision" is not really right: a late-blooming PM after a long-standing Government of 10 years is not going to produce a welter of brand new notions we have never heard of.

Mr Brown intends to focus on a smaller number of big themes which he believes he can address to voters. His poll ratings - bouncing from very good to very bad - still give him the advantage on mastery of the "big issues facing Britain". He believes he can regain the initiative by focusing on what people are really worried about. That would leave the Conservatives to tie themselves in knots over an inheritance tax break so generous that they hand large sums of money back to the residents of the priciest stuccoed villas, the deep waters of English votes on English laws - and an EU referendum campaign which, however justified, will play to the view that the party is still obsessive on this theme.

The major shift since the last election will be the handling of immigration: the subject the parties were once keen to keep on the back burner as one of the most bitter battlegrounds.

The attempt to bring about agreement on anti-terror detentions at around 50 days is a sensible compromise. I also notice Conservative opposition sounds more muted on this point. It is not clear what Mr Cameron gains by constraining his options here to 28 days, when the Government is offering a compromise figure and more judicial oversight.

But for a leader trying to escape his recent slough of despond, handsome is as handsome does. The logistics of ensuring teenagers are prodded into suitable education or training are bewildering: the potential for waste and inefficiency if the schemes and apprenticeships fail to deliver is high. Messing with A-levels will alienate many parents who, in the bewildering world of education fashion, consider this to be the exam which was a reliable building block. On immigration, we await with scepticism the outcome of Government intentions while the relevant departments cannot yet calculate with any degree of reliability how many foreign workers are in Britain.

He had a good line about how the Freedom of Information Act (which he had rescued from the shameful attempt by the ex-Lord Chancellor, Lord Falconer, to kill it off), would vindicate him on the charge of having stolen inheritance tax proposals from Mr Cameron. Those of us with long memories of Gordon came over quite faint at the thought of the great Treasury obfuscator volunteering to open up files on decision making.

Anyway, few voters will have been impressed by yet another Queen's Speech. They want the hardest thing for governments to deliver - not visions, or great ideas or heartfelt promises: just signs of tangible improvement that they can observe in their everyday lives.

The PM has chosen the "long march" approach to the next election in the hope that it that will play to his strengths as a strategic politician. He will not reap the benefits unless he can also recover a sense of ease and authority, as well as a sense of purpose to his leadership. Yesterday, the day the clunking fist became a shaking wrist, was not that day.