The political class has lost the plot

The political class has lost its marbles. This goes beyond Priti Patel failing to follow basic ministerial code or Boris Johnson’s blabbermouth making life a hell of a lot harder for an imprisoned Brit in Iran. There is also the increasingly deranged ‘Pestminster’ scandal. And their ongoing emotional meltdown over Brexit. And the Russian conspiracy theories being spouted by Ben Bradshaw and others — the David Ickes of polite society — which imply Putin is puppeteering the Western masses’ brains. It increasingly feels like we’re being governed not merely by fools and incompetents, but by nutters.

Incompetence is the go-to explanation for the political class’s current malaise. And it’s a tempting one. How else do we explain Patel’s fantastically foolish decision to meet with Israeli officials while on a jaunt to the Holy Land without first clearing it with Downing Street? (Or maybe she did? No one knows. It all gets murkier by the minute.)