Many politicians couldn’t run a corner shop

Madam, – Why is there so much argument over who is to blame for the Brexit fiasco?

To me it all seems so simple.

The culprits are that silly little man Speaker Bercow – who has consistently shown his bias and inability to control debate, as he struts and smirks his way along an obsessive ego trip – and, on a wider scale, all politicians who have simply refused to do what we told them.

After the referendum in which we gave our employees a solid and simple instruction, the only politicians who should have participated were government ministers appointed to carry out that instruction.

All the others were (and are) wholly irrelevant. It really is as simple as that.

And on the wider issue of ever-decreasing standards of conduct and competence, this will never be addressed until we confront the simple fact that a majority in Westminster (many more in Holyrood) are not capable of exercising the sound judgment which must be an essential pre-requisite in those tasked with running the country.

That in turn would disqualify those who are simply too young to have gained that essential experience as a basis for that solid judgment.

Thus, the first but inescapable step in improvement must be to increase the minimum age for people seeking elected office.

As I’ve been saying for some 30 years in these columns and elsewhere, 35 seems a reasonable age.

But in any event our politics will never improve until we stop pandering to juvenile antics from those who are not qualified to run a corner shop, far less our country.

At the end of the day, these people may have to make decisions which are literally life or death.

Jim Parker. 9 Banchory Green, Collydean, Glenrothes.