COMMONS CONFIDENTIAL

I blame Home Secretary Theresa May. The eye-catching “Thunderbirds” outfit she has recently been sporting has clearly inspired a sci-fi craze in the Commons.

And Labour leader Harriet Harman rose to the challenge by appearing at the despatch box for PMQs in a fetching number in silver-ish which recalled nothing more than those old bacofoil outfits that were worn by space cadets in 1950s science fiction movies. Quite smart though.

Unfortunately, her joke about David Cameron changing his mind as if he was on the Magic Roundabout appeared to have come from another galaxy. One where the inhabitants are easily amused, presumably.

Earthlings in the Commons chamber, however, were not at all tickled and Harman appeared so embarrassed by the flop that she shrugged her shoulders and smiled as if asking “who wrote this rubbish”.

Prime minister David Cameron, on robust and relaxed form, didn’t do much better, but at least kept with the spirit of the occasion by suggesting the Labour leadership contest looked increasingly like a Star Trek convention.

That didn’t go down too well either and, like Harman, he appeared a bit embarrassed by his own jibe, muttering “beam me up” as the joke flopped.

Data

Mind you, anyone watching the five would-be leaders on their Newsnight hustings last night might have seen the similarity with the USS Enterprise’s Transporter Deck, never mind the increasingly geeky appearance of at least three of the candidates. I wonder if any of them collect Star Trek memorabilia, or rubber ducks.

This was, however, a risky tactic for Cameron. I’ve said it before, but he reminds me of no one more than Data, the affable android from the Patrick Stewart version of the Enterprise. And the Tories have long had their own Mr Spock in the shape of John Redwood.

But the prime minister was obviously in a mood to live dangerously, even taking a gentle swipe at the Speaker.

The barb came after Speaker Bercow rebuked Labour MPs for jeering a Tory who had just poured praise on Cameron, declaring it was part of the rules that backbenchers supported their frontbenchers.

“And we all remember you doing that very well,” smiled the prime minister. Luckily, Bercow saw the joke and his deadly ray gun remained in its holster.

This new sci-fi theme should be encouraged, by the way. Perhaps next week could see a staging of Alien v Predator, please.

So much for the new politics in question time. We always knew it wouldn’t last long. But a week?

No matter how hard David Cameron struggles to bury Mr Punch in his subconscious, the old rogue just cannot be kept down. And yesterday he was out and about, spraying abuse at the Labour benches with great glee.

It was leader Harriet Harman and would-be leader Ed Balls who particularly caught Mr Punch’s beady eye. Harman was dressed up by prime minister Punch as the new authoritarian, a sort-of jack-booted Stasi figure desperate to poke CCTV cameras into everyone’s front room.

And to think, he declared, she used to be the head of the National Council for Civil Liberties. Now it is the Tories who back civil liberties and Labour which is out to undermine them, he claimed.

But it was Balls who got the sharpest jibe, being branded: “the new Alf Garnet of British politics”, for his recent remarks on the need to curb immigration.

We all remember who the old Alf Garnet of politics was – and it wasn’t Tory Michael Howard, who lost the previous election on a programme which zeroed in on immigration.  It was Enoch “rivers of blood” Powell.

But Education Secretary Michael Gove had got there before his boss. Only 24 hours previously he had gone so far as to suggest Balls was now adopting an approach “not done since Enoch Powell was in this House”. So it is probably fair to say the Tories have the former Education Secretary firmly in their sights.

Which is odd bearing in mind that the Tories would greatly prefer him as the next Labour leader over any of the other candidates, excluding Diane Abbott. Cameron must think the more he attacks Balls the more chance Labour will vote for him.

Democratic process

Ms Abbott, by the way, was spotted in the chamber in animated conversation with Dennis Skinner, possibly eager to discover whether the Beast of Bolsover (not so beastly nowadays) had swung his support behind her for the leadership now his first choice candidate, John McDonnell, had dropped out.

She need not have worried, he had. As indeed had a number of other Labour MPs who are know to support other candidates, such as David Miliband.

Isn’t it nice to see how they are so committed to the democratic process and the necessity of having a woman and/or Campaign Group member in the contest they are ready to “lend” her their votes.

Nothing to do with any hope they may have that the left will suffer yet another massive defeat, ensuring their influence in the Labour party declines even further.

Overall, though, this session was again notable for the lack of “yah-booing” from the backbenches. That is undoubtedly something to do with the fact there are so many new members who have not yet learnt the noble art of yelling boorishly at each other.

But it also has quite a lot to do with Speaker John Bercow’s determination to slap down anyone who does engage in such behaviour. He did it again today with a warning to loner-serving members that they should set an example to the newcomers.

This should be encouraged. Silent backbenchers make it much easier to hear the insults being bandied about by Punch from the frontbenches.

Well, David Cameron said he wanted to do away with Punch and Judy politics and today he made good on that pledge. His first question time as PM had all the sparkle and life of a used J cloth.

He may have been a touch nervous, although heaven knows why, he has faced Harriet Harman enough times in the past to have the measure of her.  Perhaps he was more worried about possible ambushes by one of his own backbenchers or a rogue Lib Dem MP still fuming over the “sell out” coalition.

And it may have had something to do with the grim backdrop to this event – the Gaza violence, the Cumbria shootings and the continuing death toll in Afghanistan.

Or perhaps more likely – and this does not bode well for future entertainment value – he really does want to do this differently with no raised voices, cheap shots or personal abuse. Or, put another way, no fun.

So what were we left with? A question time of the sort voters regularly claim they want, that journalists (particularly sketch writers) positively hate and which all new “reforming” prime ministers promise and always fail, ultimately, to deliver.

As for Harman, Labour’s interim leader seemed unsure of how to approach the session, possibly because she was unsure just how Cameron was going to approach it. So she went for the good old standby, the scattergun approach.

Pot plants

She raised a series of entirely valid and worthy issues from anonymity for rape suspects, to married man’s tax allowance and threw in a couple of attempts to highlight splits between the coalition partners along the way. “On this one,” she declared,”Nick agrees with me”. That fell flat, as did Cameron’s couple of attempts to crack jokes, one of which was something to do with pot plants and the lottery.

Still, when question times are this dull there’s always the Lib Dem leader who, when his turn comes, might spot his opportunity to seize the soundbites and liven things up.

Well not any more. Nick Clegg just had to sit there alongside his new guv’nor – and before any Lb Dem complains, that is what the word “deputy” means – and smile, or not, as and when appropriate.

Cameron then summed up the whole new approach to PMQs when he declared: “I am going to give accurate answers rather than making them up on the spot”.

I give it six weeks.

First day of the new parliament under the allegedly “new politics”  and, as far as David Cameron is concerned, everything is going according to plan. At least according to Plan B, which had to be cobbled together after the indecisive election result.

Charles Kennedy and Norman Tebbit’s reservations  aside, there have been no great uprisings in the ranks against the coalition, although it’s very early days for that sort of thing. And so far the Cameron government has stuck to the grid it mapped out in anticipation of outright victory.

So we have had all the right phone calls and visits – the most notable being William Hague’s trip to Washington to meet Hillary Clinton (presumably no cloying Miliband-style love-in there) and underpin the good old special relationship.

We have had the “radical” handing over of power over economic forecasts to the independent Office for Budget Responsibility headed by Sir Alan Budd – un-elected by anyone of course.

Next Monday we will get details of where the long-threatened £6bn cuts in spending will come. And we will have the emergency budget on 22 June.

The Lib Dem bit of the coalition has got its way on corporation tax – which actually helps George Osborne by raising substantial amounts of cash, and which he can swallow as the price of the deal, sort of . And it won a pledge to increase tax thresholds.

The third runway at Heathrow and ID cards are both being scrapped but its a bit rich for the Lib Dems to claim any credit for that as they were both Tory pledges anyway.

Orange bookers

But the really difficult decisions, and the ones that are most likely to cause unrest in the two coalition parties, are still to be taken. That £6bn will be difficult and the negotiations leading up to the emergency budget should provide plenty of opportunity for dissent as the two halves of the government argue over their priorities.

Still, it’s highly likely there will be a honeymoon period not just with voters but between the two recently-hitched partners. They really want to make this work.

The fact that history offers only failure as an example of  what may happen in the medium term does not necessarily mean this deal will fall apart.

But there must be the real prospect that  by the end of this experiment ( between two and five years?) the top tier of the current Lib Dems, largely comprised of Orange bookers anyway, will have nowhere else to go but into a strengthened Tory party.

If that happens, who will remain – Kennedy, even perhaps Paddy Ashdown? – and will they then look towards that “progressive alliance” with Labour with freshly-enthusiastic eyes.

And, who will by then be leading that party, a Miliband an Ed or someone yet to come out of the closet. Is it just possible that, with no woman running, Harriet Harman may yet be prevailed upon?

Should she end up being cajoaled into standing – and it’s probably still very unlikely – could we witness a re-run of the deputy leadership contest which she won thanks in  large part to the voting system.

A classic example, perhaps, of why the Lib Dems are less than ecstatic about AV.

Whatever else happens and however you view the outcome of the election, at least politics has become a proper sport once again.