Three weeks of coalition, but Labour haven't started fighting them yet

The phoney war continues. Just as in September 1939 the people of Britain gazed up into the cerulean sky watching for German planes that did not come, so we wait in the Commons for the first outbreak of real fighting. Our gas masks are ready, our coupons will buy us each a quarter pound of gristle, our children are on trains to the countryside and Vera Lynn is sucking on her lozenges. But for the moment the sound of the bees is louder than the bombers. Labour is unwilling to commit its forces. Almost the only topic of debate is how to cope with the deficit, and, after just three weeks, they can hardly blame that on the coalition — though we have seen isolated attempts to blame our present situation on the last Tory government, which left office 13 years ago. They are also lacking a leader. A banner stitched: "Forward with whoever we happen to choose!" is not going to rally the ranks. Today we had the first question time for Vince Cable, confirmed in a poll this week as the most popular politician in Britain. He is now the head of a large ministerial team and is determined to sound statesmanlike. Possibly because of hurried hair-combing, he had a tiny pigtail sticking down at the back of his head, so he looked like one of the original Chinese mandarins, immensely grand civil servants who also did not do jokes. So there were no one-liners, and almost no light banter at the expense of the other side. Here is his first reply, on the regional development agencies: "The government intend to replace RDAs with local enterprise partnerships and to bring together business and local authorities to establish local accountability. Where they enjoy clear public support, the partnerships may take a similar form to existing RDAs. In making the necessary reductions in RDA budgets and reviewing their functions, we will seek to mitigate the impact on economically vulnerable areas." You could hardly march behind that banner, either. But then Dr Cable isn't trying to enthuse us. We are in the hands of a solicitor, someone who will handle our problems carefully and without hyperbole. Take the question from Pat McFadden, who is the new shadow minister for business. He welcomed Vince to his new job and pointed out that they had something in common. Back in his Labour days, Vince – and Mr McFadden – had worked for the late Labour leader John Smith. "But that was before the secretary of state fell in with the wrong crowd. And now he has fallen in with an even worse crowd." Vince refused to be teased. "He is quite right. We both greatly respected John Smith, for whom we worked." He then went on to tweak Mr McFadden gently for all the work he had done towards the part-privatisation of Royal Mail (a project the old Labour government had to drop). But it was a very gentle tweak indeed, rather like being slammed by a feather duster. Just as we were all about to nod off, Labour's Chris Bryant accused the Lib Dems' Ed Davey of "sanctimonious poppycock". We thought perhaps we thought we could hear the first air raid siren wailing in the distance.