A funny thing happened in the Mother of Parliaments this week.

On his debut at Prime Minister's question time, the newly elected leader of the British Conservative Party, David Cameron, offered to work with British Prime Minister Tony Blair to get legislation passed.

The offer, on education, apparently left Mr. Blair nonplussed ? a rare experience for him.

To be sure, Mr. Cameron's move was not entirely altruistic. Mr. Blair has already been humiliated by his backbenchers on a bill to increase Police powers, and will almost certainly see another on his education reforms which are aimed at giving parents more choice and schools more autonomy.

His party generally dislikes the reforms. The Conservatives generally support them, but in the Westminster tradition, would normally oppose the bill, no doubt saying they should go further.

So Mr. Cameron's offer to vote for the reforms in order to pass the bill over the objection of Labour MPs was unusual, to say the least.

In political terms, for Mr. Blair to rely on pushing the reforms through with Conservative support would be worse than having them defeated and could well force his own departure. And therein lies the genius of Mr. Cameron, who at 39 years of age and with just four years in the House of Commons on his CV, upstaged one of the political giants of this age on his first day in office.

Mr. Cameron says he wants to stop the House of Commons sounding like Punch and Judy, to end the name calling and the frequently pointless point-scoring that is typical of that House and the one here in Hamilton as well.

While there is, as there was in the case of Mr. Cameron's education offer on Wednesday, a political motive to all of this ? the general public in the UK are tired of negative politics and it could help the Tories (who own the well-earned nickname the Nasty Party) ? that doesn't mean the idea is bad, either in Britain or in Bermuda.

This newspaper has argued in the past that good policy and good laws can come out of the crucible of a heated and intense debate on ideas and issues. Perhaps it is wishful thinking to hope for that, when what passes for debate is name calling, personal invective, and a he-said-she-said babble, all of it accomplishing nothing. If anything, it produces bad policy and worse law.

Imagine if ? and to be fair it does happen from time to time ? the Opposition said "this is good and we will support it, although we think a change here would make it better". And imagine if the Government agreed.

Imagine if the Government stopped responding to every criticism with the reply that the former Government was responsible. And imagine if the Opposition didn't go into fits of hysteria in order to turn molehills into mountains.

This may be too much to ask of political parties when there is so much proof that negative campaigning is as effective at winning elections as it is at driving good people out of politics.

But the truth is that there is not much that divides the political parties in Bermuda. And Bermuda is so small that it is a terrible waste that half of the talented people who could be in Cabinet are mouldering on the Opposition benches. It is certainly too much to ask to think that Premier Alex Scott and Opposition Leader Grant Gibbons would lay down their arms and agree to work together for the common good.

But if Mr. Cameron, who silenced one of his hecklers on the Government benches by telling her she was shouting like a child, can prove that civil discourse and open minded debate can successfully replace schoolyard arguments, then maybe Bermuda's Houses of Parliament have something to learn from Westminster after all.

Wouldn't that be something?