IT’S true. There was no pumpkin carriage, no diamond-encrusted Imperial State Crown, no Great Sword of State or Cap of Maintenance (whatever that is).

Content wise the Queen’s Speech was also unspectacular -- dismissed immediately as “thin rubbish” by one right-wing commentator.

There were the expected empty words about getting the best Brexit deal, more empty words about bringing the United Kingdom “closer together,” a totally surreal moment when the Queen pledged to reduce motor insurance premiums (does she even know what they are?) but no cap on energy prices, no end to austerity and no mention of a state visit for Donald Trump (aw gee – we were all planning such a big welcome).

Afterwards Her Madge zipped off to the races at Royal Ascot as if this nine-minute interlude – supposedly a high point in the British constitutional calendar – had been a right royal pain in the neck.

So that’s great then.

If the Queen’s Speech is effectively the mission statement of a government, Theresa May has no mission and Britain has no real government.

Indeed, directionless, dressed-down and largely content-free, the Queen’s Speech was the stuff of one fairy tale – The Emperor’s new Clothes.

Now I was in Copenhagen this week cycling along bike-friendly streets like Hans Christian Andersen’s Boulevard – so maybe that’s what brought the Danish writer’s cautionary tale to mind. But the parallel with yesterday’s overblown, hollow, forelock-tugging ceremony does seem awfy appropriate.

In The Emperor’s New Clothes a vain emperor hires two weavers who promise him the finest suit imaginable from a fabric that will appear invisible to anyone unfit for their position or “hopelessly stupid”. The emperor’s ministers cannot see the clothes, but pretend they can for fear of looking like numpties and the emperor does the same.

Finally, the weavers pretend to dress the emperor and he marches in procession before his subjects.

The townsfolk play along – not wanting to appear stupid until a child in the crowd, too young to keep up pretences, blurts out “But he isn’t wearing anything at all!”

Isn’t that where we stand today?

It’s not just that Britain has a democratic process caked in backward-looking pomp and ceremony. It’s not even that our archaic voting system means a party supported by just 42 per cent of those who voted and 27 per cent of the whole electorate wields 100 per cent of the power. It’s that we think this kind of thing happens everywhere else. It just doesn’t.

The rest of the world watches Downton Abbey – only we still inhabit it. Of course folk like the Danes love watching Britain’s upstairs-downstairs period dramas – but they wouldn’t dream of living in a society as backward looking, class-ridden and dysfunctional.

On bad days, we cannot dream of living any other way.

Yet we must.

We must believe another type of society is possible – the kind that has evolved across the North Sea in Denmark since Andersen wrote his satirical tale way back in 1837.

One important structural difference has been the Nordic tradition of powerful, quasi-sovereign local government. It means there were 270 Danish councils for 5.5 million people till 2007 when Danish councils merged leaving 98 councils and five regional councils – still a lot more democracy than Scotland with a measly 32 councils for the same sized population.

The Danes have also had a century of the horse-trading and compromise that comes with the use of proportional representation, not the polarising, winner-takes-all first-past-the-post voting system. It has helped to have “flat” management styles, one of the lowest income gaps between management and shop floor workers and a meaningful “social contract” between parties.

That means the Danes apparently waved goodbye when Ryanair wanted to make Copenhagen airport their North European hub because the company wasn’t keen on negotiating an agreement with trade unions. In “loadsamoney” Britain, we all know workers’ rights and union recognition would never have constituted a stumbling block to anything.

The jewel in the crown is the Danish welfare state – “attractive to the affluent and affordable for all” so that it encourages middle-class Danes to use high quality public services instead of opting for private education, health or old folks care. That reinforces social solidarity and encourages folk to pay an average of 45 per cent in personal taxation. According to a Gallup survey in 2014, nine out of 10 Danes happily pay that level of tax because they know their welfare model turns collective wealth into well-being. The Danes don’t think they are paying taxes – they are investing in their society and buying a quality of life. Perhaps that’s why the Danes regularly top the World’s Happiness Index and register the world’s highest levels of trust between citizens and their government.

It all hinges on creating fair systems that actually work and making brave political decisions. Take cars and bikes.

When the 1973 oil crisis hit, 90 per cent of Denmark’s energy came from oil, almost all of it imported. Buffeted by supply shocks, it found out the hard way it had next to no fossil fuel energy supplies of its own.

So the Danish Government took the long-term strategic decision to invest in wind and discourage car ownership. When world oil prices fell, they didn’t fall in Denmark. Car prices have also remained prohibitive. That was the stick to encourage use of public transport and bikes – then came the carrot of “Copenhagen lanes”, separating bike users from both pedestrians and cars. The result is a country which puts cyclists first and which – as a result – is well on the way to producing the world’s first carbon neutral capital city.

It wasn’t just an ecological move or a question of energy security.

Copenhagen City Council has calculated that a 10 per cent increase in cycling means a €9 million saving in health care costs.

In Scotland, by contrast, we have ambitious targets, hand out free helmets and shrug when cyclists’ wheels get caught in tram tracks – as predicted. It is still the British way – expecting the individual to arm up instead of designing in safety.

WE desperately need change but first we really need to believe that a society as fair and successful as Denmark’s (but of course still uniquely our own) would be possible as an independent country.

We must keep that vision ahead of us at all times and not get side-tracked into tactical arguments – even about big issues like the timing of the second indyref.

Union-supporting papers are gleefully reporting that Nicola Sturgeon will “likely” comment on calls to shelve a second independence referendum before the Scottish Parliament breaks for the summer next week.

How about not shelving ScotRef – but the endless debate about when it should be held?

Basically, if Brexit goes sufficiently pear-shaped, Scots may be glad someone packed a parachute. But if a minor miracle occurs and there is a single market deal without freedom of movement or a total Brexit rethink, then the ScotRef lever will probably remain unused. Maybe it was a mistake to attach a couple of hard dates to a process that appears very fluid. Maybe not enough Scots care about EU membership to make it the issue that finally breaks up the Union. But no-one knows.

The debate over ScotRef and its timing is tactical. Tactics are important but they aren’t the real deal. We need to get back to vision and purpose. Scotland’s purpose is to become the modern European nation we can be – it’s in our outlook, voting patterns, economy, culture – it’s in our cultural DNA.

So let’s not get side-tracked – let’s spend more time getting to know how other countries work – because Britain is pretty weird. All the debates about abstract sounding policy differences get far more interesting when they clothe other actual, living, breathing, small, successful independent states.

The summer can be spent agonising over ScotRef or building a vision of the new Scotland that can galvanise and motivate.

I know which I’ll be doing.