MPs must pull their finger out to halt Parliament’s decline

From: Professor Frank Rhodes, Crag Dale, Settle.

HAVING spent five decades researching into and lecturing about our Parliamentary system, I write to thank Bernard Ingham for his article ‘Swapping Brussels for a Boris dictatorship’ (The Yorkshire Post, July 15).

He has so well encapsulated the decline of the House of Commons, and the replacement of its once vital (and then understood) democratic rights and responsibilities, by overmany press leaks and the gradual transfer of power from its benches to a jumble of all sorts.

Speaker John Bercow was often vilified but his strength lay in his insistence that Ministers must come before the House, not to pressmen on College Green, when they had important news.

We seem currently ruled not by a Prime Minister, whose business and political history can at best be described as appalling, but by an unelected adviser who is taking us from a Brussels to a Whitehall dictatorship at breakneck speed.

Our MPs should be getting their finger out – and quickly.

From: John Cole, Oakroyd Terrace, Baildon, Shipley.

THOSE whose task in life is to paint floors learn early the important lesson: “Do not paint yourself into a corner.” Yet, politically, this is precisely what this Government has done, and is doing, with respect to Brexit.

Michael Gove’s latest announcement of the various activities the Government is engaged in by way of preparation is indicative that the painter is still painting.

In consequence, the constraints are becoming tighter and the room for manoeuvre less.

Zero substantive progress is being made with talks on the future relationship with the EU27 and most of the blame for that resides with the UK side.

From the start, Theresa May’s government and now Boris Johnson’s administration has shown no intellectual honesty or clarity of thought or purpose.

January 2021 is set to be a disaster.

Our best hope of being rescued from this lies with the EU27 saving us from ourselves.

Now, there’s an irony for you – the organisation we have spurned riding to our rescue.

From: Peter Rickaby, Selby.

THOSE who “take the knee” are expressing a desire for society to treat them as equal to others.

Those who also give the “black power salute” are indicating another agenda, one surely at odds with their initial objective.