Political proceedings have now reached the realm of high farce

IT was just after reading Marianne Taylor’s wonderful piece on the toxic atmosphere of Theresa May’s Home Office (“I naively thought it would be like The West Wing. In fact, it was more like The Thick Of It – but without any jokes”, The Herald,

June 12) that I flicked on the BBC News at One to hear Norman Smith, the assistant political editor announce (with a straight face) that one of the reasons why the Queen’s Speech is to be delayed is that it is written on goatskin vellum, which needs to be hung out to dry for a week.

When empires pass beyond decadence into the realm of high farce, you know their days are numbered. Caligula made his horse a senator. Daily revelations about the Westminster Village’s Mad Hatter’s tea party carry a similar sense of absurdity. We know that the Palace of Westminster is literally crumbling. I would suggest it close for repairs and the 650 MPs remove themselves to a modest municipal facility perhaps in Liverpool or Glasgow. Removed from a lunatic asylum, men and women of good will should be able to recover their sanity and find sensible solutions to even the most intractable problems.

Dr Hamish Maclaren, 1 Grays Loan, Thornhill,

Stirling.

THE role, influence and power of “advisers” in No 10 surely needs scrutiny.

But why, particularly after Theresa May became the “first among equals” without even a contest, did cabinet ministers meekly accept her kitchen cabinet decision-making and their humiliations at the hands of her now-sacked “co-chiefs of staff”, which are now being reported?

Why did they not insist on at least reviewing the draft manifesto before it was finalised, and on participating fully in the countrywide campaign as a competent team (cf the perceived incompetence of Jeremy Corbyn’s)? They now appear to have justified the apocryphal Spitting Image sketch of the cabinet as Mrs T’s “vegetables”.

Were they all in favour of the election in the first place, with its overlong seven-week campaign, which must have severely diverted the attention of the whole cabinet, not only the Brexit team, from necessary final preparations for the vital EU negotiations?

In the current disarray, the recent silence of Conservative Party chairman Sir Patrick McLoughlin speaks volumes. Where did he stand in all this?

John Birkett, 12 Horseleys Park, St Andrews.

JOHN Balliol, King of Scots 1249 1314, was known with derision as Toom Tabard (“empty coat”)

This term is reasonably applied today to Theresa May, but equally to Alex Salmond and Nicola Sturgeon. One down and two to go.

William Durward, 20 South Erskine Park, Bearsden.