When the going gets tough, he goes missing.

The Prime Minister has earned the reputation as TS Eliot's Macavity – the Mystery Cat, who is never there when something goes wrong.

He voted for the Iraq war and then acted for years as if he didn't, and then followed that with the election that never was, the almost-secret and embarrassed signing of the EU constitution (on which he reneged on a promise to hold a referendum), the fiasco over the 10p tax band, and the Chinese Olympic Torch, which he endorsed but made sure not to touch.

None of it was his fault, of course. Someone else was always to blame.

To quote Mr Eliot: "But when a crime's discovered, then Macavity's not there!"

For a man who wrote a book about political courage, Brown is seriously lacking in the quality he so admires.

And so it seems the same holds with his devoted acolyte Ed Balls.

Over recent weeks, as the scandal over the disastrous failure over the marking of the schools SATs tests has unfolded, Balls has been conspicuous by his absence. His hapless underling, Schools Minister Jim Knight, has repeatedly been sent to face the critics, while the Normanton MP has sulked in his tent.

This week Balls was finally forced to face the House of Commons – and delivered a performance of such stunning ineptitude that it made you wonder how he was ever talked up as a future Labour leader.

Faced with strong evidence of utter chaos in the marking system, he refused to resign or even apologise.

Told that waitresses and teenagers had been brought into mark exam papers, that thousands of scripts had been lost and that the American company contracted to mark the exams had failed miserably to meet the agreed deadline, Balls weakly admitted he was "accountable" but apparently not "responsible" and would therefore cling on to his job.

Try that at work, boss, the next time you drop a clanger.

What this latest episode demonstrates is that far from being leadership material, Balls is an over-promoted policy wonk, entirely lacking in the political nous or bravery required to lead a party or a country. Er… a bit like his boss really.

Strange light in sky

ON a family holiday in Scotland this week, we spotted a curious object in the sky.

It was big and round and gave off such a bright light it hurt your eyes just to look at it. It appeared every morning and then disappeared every evening, only to reappear as regular as clockwork the
next morning.

We considered calling in the police or the Ministry of Defence, or even the X-Files but instead we decided to look it up on the internet.

After hours of research we've come to the conclusion that this may be the fabled "sun" that apparently made regular appearances in British summers before global warming became such a fashionable theory.

Unfortunately, since the pseudo-scientists of the environmental movement confidently predicted that every summer would be uniformly long, dry and unbearably hot, the sun has failed
to oblige.

The result has been summers in recent years that are precisely the opposite of the forecasts – cold, wet and short.

The latest appearance of the "sun" of course proves nothing in the long and complicated history of climate change.

But if it means the global warmenists are finally correct about something – and after all, even a stopped clock is right twice a day – it is a good thing.

And if you spot a large, hot disc in the sky don't panic – sit back, enjoy the sun on your face and take a sip of that cold drink. It is really rather nice.