Occasionally I entertain myself by saving Liberal Democrat press releases. It's an odd thing to do, I admit, but there's something reassuring about knowing that no matter how existentially confused one might feel, someone else once spent an hour issuing an urgent statement into the ether, along the lines of: “Tories cannot be trusted on the environment - Clegg”, or “Government failing to take tough decisions on Digital Britain - Foster.”

They spew out of the Lib Dem offices, these press releases, up to four a day, rarely saying anything of any surprise or interest whatsoever. Like a hamster on a wheel - as if running really really fast might one day make a difference.

Politicians tend to talk more when they're doing least, just as they have a tendency to make more dramatic statements the less important the thing is that they are actually saying. I remember the Tory housing spokesman describing as “a devastating vote of no confidence” that a government-owned house had been put up for sale - without completing a home information pack first! Whereas if David Cameron makes a fundamental change to Conservative tax policy, for instance, he doesn't need to dress it up as “dramatic”. The most radical reforms are the ones that dare not even speak their name.

Tony Blair used to say that the difference between being in opposition and being in government was that, in opposition, he woke up and thought, what shall I say today; in government, he thought, what shall I do today? It may be time to reassess that dictum, as the spreading series of strikes around the country implicitly recognises.

For the country is facing a crisis of parliamentary and governmental impotence. In both the banking collapse and the row over the employment by British firms of migrant workers, the solutions and the causes lie outside Westminster. Westminster could arguably have prevented them, but it couldn't have caused them. And it does not seem able to stop them.

From the sub-prime market in the US to irresponsible levels of gambling in the City or EU laws backed up by European Court judgments, the British Government is having no effect. Even the widening scandal over the disgraceful conduct of certain peers in the House of Lords has its roots in parliamentary impotence: one of the reasons that lobbyists targeted the Upper House was because backbench MPs no longer amend government legislation.

If MPs cannot amend legislation, what are they there for? If Gordon Brown cannot regulate (or even bribe) the banks, what is he there for? If the Government cannot protect British jobs from European workers when necessary, then what is the point of it?

On Monday, the Liberal Democrats led a debate on constitutional reform: “Parliament must be fundamentally reformed - Heath.” Amid much honourable waffle, one point stood out. John Redwood, the Tory MP, asked the following: “Is not another problem that the Government are afraid of proper accountability and probing? For example, they spend £37 billion on bank shares, yet none of us can ask them, ‘Why don't you do proper due diligence? How much are those banks going to lose? How much will they pay in bonuses?' There is no accountability.”

That £37 billion was passed in an hour and a half - £410 million a minute. The £50 billion for the second bank bailout bypassed the Commons altogether. Government has been hived off to bankers, accountants and officials, the taxpayer merely asked to keep signing the cheques.

Every time power is siphoned off to a new quango or another management consultant, the taxpayer is taken one step further away from democracy and Parliament shrivels a little more. Pace Mr Blair, everyone is in opposition now. They cannot do; they can only talk.

They might like to learn a lesson from the country's social services departments. Yes, really. Yesterday the Conservatives called a debate over the recruitment of social workers, having discovered that one in seven posts is unfilled. There can be no question that social work is in crisis. The Government, the Conservatives and a committee of MPs have all piled in with inquiries and reviews. But they are asking the wrong question: not, have we got enough social workers, but, do any of them have responsibility? Funny that 646 MPs with generally no direct responsibility for anything wouldn't think of asking that.

As in government, the question of responsibility - and therefore accountability - in social work has been so devolved and diluted, along with the proliferation of posts, that it has disintegrated. Social worker specialisms now include child protection, fostering, mental health, young people, older people, youth justice, physical disabilities, learning disabilities, health, housing, adolescent alcohol and substance misuse, asylum seekers, family, special needs...

All very well, you might think: why shouldn't a young man with learning disabilities and a drug problem get the most specific professional help that he requires? The trouble is, he will get advice, usually pretty similar, from lots and lots of these professionals, but not one will be able to take a meaningful decision, and be prepared to stick their neck out. That young man, meanwhile, will be unable to take a decision for himself because his power has been taken away from him by all these people. It's called “multi-agency working”, and it doesn't work. Too many hamsters chasing each other's tails.

Replace that young man with a voter and the social workers with politicians - and there you have our parliamentary system, suffering its own existential crisis. Which the Lib Dems write press releases about. One way or another, nothing gets done. You see? Hamsters. Wheels.

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