Bad news, I'm afraid. The government has started talking about world conditions.
The first law of politics is that when the economy is doing well it is because of the government's brilliant stewardship. Most Labour backbenchers think we are still at that stage of the cycle. So at Monday's questions on work and pensions Ross Cranston from Dudley North thanked Andrew Smith and the rest of the government for the low unemployment rate.
Others had more local concerns. Eric Martlew wanted Smith, the secretary of state, to join him in congratulating the staff at Carlisle job centre because unemployment in the town has fallen over the past five years.
But the second law is that when things go wrong it is down to world conditions, which the government can do nothing about. So it was a worry when Smith said the employment level is holding up well "given the world economic slowdown". That suggests that it soon won't be holding up at all.
Smith would be better placed than most if were laid off. His foghorn delivery means that the people at Carlilse job centre would soon find him another post if the minstering fell through. They could stand him in the Solway Firth and use him to warn shipping.
Others might find it more difficult to find alternative employment. Ian McCartney, the pensions minister, shares Robin Cook's habit of swallowing half his words without bothering to say them. So "I say to my honourable friend" comes out as "I see my old friend". On top of that, he has the delivery of a Gatling gun commentating on a close Derby finish.
But McCartney's appearance is even more striking. As he slumps on the treasury bench with his little sausage legs extended, you feel sure you have seen him before somewhere. There is something of Grandfather Smallweed from Bleak House about him, and also of Othello's "men whose heads do grow beneath their shoulders". Then it hits you. The figure he most resembles is Jimmy Krankie.
Which would prove a challenge even in Carlisle. So it's lucky for McCartney that he has already been given another job. He is to act as the prime minister's fixer in the firefighters' strike.
That's New Labour for you. If they can't understand a word you say, they assume you must be good at talking to the workers.
The debate on the Queen's speech goes on for several days, each with a different theme. Last Friday the themes were education and that new hybrid culture-media-and-sport.
All interesting subjects. But what Charles Clarke wanted to talk about was truancy. There was no stopping him.
"We will establish parenting orders to require parents to attend parenting skills classes, and we will be ready to take legal action to put that into effect. We will establish a co-ordinated programme of truancy sweeps even beyond what we have done so far."
He hadn't finished. "Targets for local education authorities and schools, funding for electronic registration systems in high-truancy areas, a publicity campaign to address the responsibilities of parents, powers to magistrates to impose sentences on parents."
Clarke thought he was setting a trap for Phil Willis. "if the Liberal Democrats decide that they will not support our measures, I think that the people of this country will judge them in an adverse light. The people acknowledge that there are real problems."
That's the conventional wisdom. Government action against parents is popular. People assume that new powers will apply to their neighbours and their neighbours' children, not to them.
But things may be changing. As Phil Willis said in reply: "Even during the Department's experiments, huge opposition was encountered from the parents of students who were picked up when going to the doctor, looking after a sick mother, or engaged in other legitimate activities."
Willis was impressive, pointing out that if Clarke's aim is to get supportive headlines from the Daily Mail his policies will fail. What the government has to do is re-engage young people with education create a curriculum that turns young people on, not off.
It is part of our modern malaise that we cannot imagine children doing anything constructive unless they are under close supervision. It is not just schools: New Labour is keen on breakfast clubs, after-school clubs and summer lessons too.
The government is right in seeing good parents – even more than good schools – as a bulwark against criminality and incivility. Its problem is that it cannot trust anyone. So parents have to be trained, nagged and counselled by an army of professionals. They can even be stopped in the street when they are out with their children during the day.
A society which treats parents like naughty children should not be surprised that those parents do not carry authority any more.
They let us out of purdah after the party elections and Parliament immediately goes into recess to await the Queen's speech. It was hardly worth taking our burka off.
But long holidays are on the way out. Though Wednesday saw Westminster at its most Ruritanian, reform is in the air. No late-night sittings, MPs to return in early September, uncompleted bills carried over to the next session.
We are pleased that some MPs will be home to read Jack and Chloë a bedtime story. And if there are no divisions in the small hours there is more chance of their knowing what they voting about.
Other moves are less of a blessing. This government's agenda is tabloid driven, and in early September the tabloids are desperate for copy. There is a real danger that a press campaign to ban something like silly string will be rewarded with emergency legislation.
And carrying bills over? At House Points we are democrats. We believe it an outrage that the Lords – clapped out hacks, descendants of royal mistresses, dodgy businessmen – can thwart the Commons by refusing to pass bills at the end of a session. Which makes it embarrassing that in the Blair years, just as under Thatcher and Major, these hacks and businessmen have proved more liberal and more representative of public opinion than the elected house.
Yes, there is a case for dynamiting the place and starting again. A horseshoe chamber, offices for every MP, a crèche. Even mains water. And anyone who visits Westminster today realises it is a royal palace not a popular assembly. Visitors are made to queue in the rain, just as they are at that other heap of mock-medievalism, Leicester prison.
Yet there is method in the madness of the existing set up. Even the newest New Labour members went off the idea of electronic voting when they saw that trooping through the lobbies gave them their only chance of talking to ministers.
And there is something magnificent about Westminster's sheer oddity. As Charles Masterman wrote in 1906: "it is a splendid place for a game of hide and seek. There are secret passages, winding staircases, strange galleries and mysterious corridors. Members set forth to explore the labyrinth and never meet again."
If they all find their way back, the new parliamentary season will start in earnest next week.
Wimbledon has outside courts: the Commons has a second chamber off Westminster Hall. It is here that backbenchers' debates are held, and last Wednesday one of them was called by our own David Laws.
It covered cross-channel shopping and the authorities' attitude towards people bringing alcohol and tobacco into Britain. Somehow the spirit of the single market does not seem to have reached Her Majesty's Customs and Excise.
David had three concerns. The first was that customs reverse the burden of proof. People suspected of bringing back goods for resale have to prove their innocence. The authorities do not have to prove their guilt.
The second was the penalties inflicted. Offenders' cars are confiscated, which can mean a £20,000 fine for a minor misjudgement.
His third concern was the mismatch between the limits for tobacco and alcohol – the latter are much more generous. But that had been partly met by a treasury announcement raising the number of cigarettes travellers can bring home.
You could see this increase as a victory for the single market. If a state tries to levy higher taxes on a product its citizens will buy abroad. It could even make Europe popular.
Except that Liberal Democrats are keen on public health, and cigarettes are the biggest killers of all. Charles Kennedy is giving them up, and we are proud it was Tim Clement-Jones who caught the Tobacco Advertising and Promotion Bill when the government dropped it.
When that bill was passed, Evan Harris said it was "just the beginning" and listed the other measures we want: "sorting out workplace smoking, allocating proper resources to smoking cessation therapies and health education for children". He also commended the World Health Organisation's Manifesto for Global Tobacco Control.
It's good to see health policy going beyond a call for more doctors and nurses, and it's true that clean water and air have saved far more lives than drugs or heroic surgery have. But there must come a point where a concern for public health clashes with our love of liberty. isn't our statement of principles called It's About Freedom?
In last year's mini-manifesto we squared this circle by calling health a fundamental freedom: "no one can fulfil their potential without the best possible health". (Ludwig Wittgenstein writes: hmm.)
Unfortunately, it's not that simple. We would all be fitter if the government made us do physical jerks before breakfast, but it would be perverse to argue that we were more free.
Rather serious this week. Remind us to look at the Conservatives for some light relief.
Back in the 1980s the Alliance's strategy was clear: we were going to replace the Labour Party. Unfortunately Tony Blair got there first. If we are not careful he will scupper our new strategy and replace the Conservatives too.
Certainly, someone should replace them. Watching the Tories over the summer, you wondered what the point of the party was. On Iraq, for instance, a thoughtful Conservative opposition would have asked what national interest was at stake in Iraq. Instead Iain Duncan Smith has attempted to sound more pro American than the prime minister. He has succeeded only in sounding faintly batty by arguing that Saddam Hussein is on the point of launching an attack on Britain.
But Oliver Letwin was far battier. He had won himself everyone's good opinon through his thoughtful approach to the home affairs brief – a welcome contrast with Ann Widdecombe's ludicorous attempts to paint Jack Straw as a dangerous libertarian. But his big idea of the summer - special sattelities to keep track of paedophiles – sounded like an outtake from Brass Eye.
Let's not be complacent. Some of the ideas about giving power to parents and patients put forward in Bournemouth this week offer a challenge to the Liberal Democrats. We are happy to talk about devolution and freedom in principle, but we get nervous when they point us towards policies that might upset Guardian editorial writers. We must not allow the Tories to make all the running on decentralisation.
Luckily for us, they are still not very good at it. Take their agonising over Section 28, the clause of the Local Government Act that makes it an offence for councils to "promote the teaching in any maintained school of the acceptability of homosexuality as a pretended family relationship".
This was passed in 1988 after a furore over a book called Jenny lives with Eric and Martin, which was widely read at the Daily Mail if nowhere else.
Raised on stories where resourceful children found buried treasure and trapped Nazi spies, I am poorly qualified to judge such issue-laden fiction. For what its worth, I suspect it is more likely to bore children to tears than corrupt their morals.
But however good or bad this book is, the right people to judge it are parents and teachers. If the Tories don't trust them to do even this, how can they think them capable of running entire schools?
Until the Conservatives agree that Section 28 should be scrapped, we will know that they are not serious about devolution.