David Cameron's first PMQs: All the excitement of a good game of cribbage

Gosh it was dull. If the new grown-up prime minister's questions goes on like this, I may angle for a job as the Guardian's cribbage correspondent. At least there'd be drama, tension and raw, untamed action. We would have asked for our money back, if we'd paid any in the first place. Imagine being taking to a secret location in a van with blacked-out windows to watch illegal bare-knuckle boxing and finding a bridge party. Or a sumo wrestling bout featuring two pigeon-chested teenagers. Or an Olympic sprint in which the runners wear carpet slippers. But this is the new politics, under the "happy coalition" as the prime minister called it yesterday. In this we are kindly, thoughtful, concerned - anxious to find common ground rather than accentuating differences. Oh, David Cameron got in a couple of jibes, but they were good-natured digs, the kind of banter old friends might use against each other. Maybe it's because they were shocked by the events in Cumbria. More likely Cameron is saving his powder for the next Labour leader: no point in aiming your best barbs and using up your anger against Harriet Harman, who won't be there in autumn. But if it goes on like this I may have to spend the half-hour session watching reruns of Murder, She Wrote on Freeview. Douglas Carswell (whose mouth is at the same curious angle as David Miliband's, as if a child making Mr Potato Head had got distracted) asked about the House of Lords, and received a most thoughtful reply from the prime minister. Apparently we can expect a draft motion on the topic some time in the next few months. Yee-haw! Harriet Harman asked about giving anonymity to men charged with rape. She thinks, on balance, that it's a bad idea. The prime minister thinks, on balance, that it's a good idea. There we left it. Ms Harman got on to tax breaks for married men. How would £3 extra a week keep families together? She may be right. Can you imagine a kitchen sink drama in which the wife shouts: "I loathe you! You have shredded the innermost fibre of my very being! On the other hand, three quid is three quid ..." Mr Cameron went slightly bonkers. "We support many things in the tax system, such as Christmas parties and parking your bike at work. Why not marriage?" Eh? "I hate you, you bastard. But maybe we could save the £3 a week and have a terrific party at Christmas!" Ms Harman pointed out that the deputy prime minister was very quiet: "On this, Nick agrees with me!" Mr Cameron pointed out that Labour had done a lot for marriage, by increasing the inheritance spouses could leave each other. And that, believe it or not, was the high spot. The prime minister got in a quick shaft when Labour MPs jeered because he didn't know about government grants to Nissan. "It's a funny thing, you know," he said. "I'm going to give accurate answers rather than making them up on the spot." Oh dear. We really are all doomed to cumulative half-hours of tedium stretching for five years, or the end of the coalition, whichever comes first. Then Ian Davidson, a Labour MP for Glasgow, went completely berserk. He followed a question about safe bases in Afghanistan by addressing Mr Cameron as "comrade premier!" When people laughed and jeered, he said he was surprised at the reaction: "Aren't we all in this together?" And, he went on to say: "Don't the vast majority of us dislike, mistrust and despise the Liberal Democrats? And when it comes to safe bases, there is no base safer than an aircraft carrier." He was like one of those men who shout randomly at bus stops. If we have to depend on Mr Davidson for our fun, we really are lost.