It looks like I am holding the fort here at Scribo Ergo Sum while my esteemed co-writers are variously engaged away from broadband connections.  Only through such experience can I consider Harriet Harman’s plight at the moment.  Stuck in London while her boss is practicing pilates in a jacket and tie somewhere in East Anglia, Harman is the only senior Cabinet member at home.  Poor woman; I almost feel pity.

To avoid an embarrassing croquet-at-Dorneywood incident, Harman has been cleverly concealed away from the prying eyes of the press.  Smart.  The media machine rumbles on, slowly losing steam over the will-he/won’t-he of a Miliband coup.  The news channels are full of Olympics, taking up as much as half of each bulletin.  The Conservatives are continuing to drip out press releases each day, policy by policy, quietly preparing the ground for an all-out assault at Party Conference.  And we are all blissfully oblivious to the fact that nobody is actually running the country.

The government’s response to South Ossetia is beginning to cause a bit of a stir (proving that journalists will literally write about nothing in August!) in the blogosphere and beyond.  But the problem extends far beyond foreign policy.  The SATs debacle is still on the agenda, and mercifully nobody is trying to brush it under the carpet.  The sad fact is that nobody is even in the building to pick up a broom to begin with!  Ed Balls is nowhere to be seen.  Nobody has adequately explained how the mess was allowed to come about to begin with, nobody is dealing with the consequences, and nobody is taking the flak.

Or take the economy.  Inflation is up to 4.4% today: well above double the government’s own target.  Alistair Darling’s attempt to reassure the public that he was “considering several options” last week was a resounding failure, not least because he indicated that people ought to wait until the Autumn for a better picture of the government’s plans for the housing market.  The result: people decide to sell in a few months, further hitting the ailing industry.  He appeared on radio with no policy to announce or explain, and no timetable for action to set out.  He wanted simply to show people that he was there, doing his best.  But his best was to speed up the property slump: a shocking failure.  After that miserable performance, it seems as if some wise advisers suggested that he should keep quiet for a few weeks, leaving all official Treasury business to be fronted by Yvette Cooper.  Who has done nothing but muddy the waters further.

I must admit to finding Silly Season a little refreshing.  One is not being constantly bombarded with suit-clad ministers running from studio to studio rubbishing the other guy’s latest lightbulb-above-head moment.  Sport and celebrity weddings take the place of reports and committees.  But there is a catch.

I like to see MPs as like police officers.  When all is well with the world, I don’t want to see them at all.  If the presence of police on a tube platform is slightly unnerving, the sight of MPs in summer is deeply concerning.  But if an attacker is approaching me 100 feet under Central London, I would dearly love a whole battalion of burly hi-vis-wearing coppers to march to my rescue.  Likewise, if everything is going up the spout, I expect to be lead by my government.  They were elected to govern, not have seaside photo-ops in a cat and mouse game of “I’m on a proper holiday”, “No, I’m on a more proper holiday. Look, I’m even wearing a T-shirt!”.  If some idiot contractor has screwed up exam result processing, I want someone to say “sorry: here’s our plan to avoid repeating this farce next year”.  If some idiot Chancellor has screwed up not trying to fix the economy until the Autumn, I expect him to either apoligise and announce a solid plan to save the economy, or to apologise and state firmly that there won’t ever be a plan to save the economy.  And if some idiot not-really-a-deputy prime minister cannot be seen to be taking control of government for fear of looking like she is positioning herself to depose her leader, then the whole sorry Labour party is far too fragile to be allowed anywhere near the corridors of power.

Giving the impression that you are on holiday, and letting the nation take a breather, is a fantastic skill in otherwise driven politicians.  But if you are the captain of a pleasure cruiser, currently heading for some rocks, you don’t grab a poolside sun lounger on the upper deck.  This government is cruising, rudderless, towards a whole series of crises at home an abroad.  And whilst they ostentatiously jump from the diving board boasting about who is on the most “normal” holiday, the cabin is empty and the warning lights are going unheeded.