Leadsom was plainly not ready to be prime minister

So Andrea Leadsom has seen the light by sensationally withdrawing from the Tory leadership race. This leaves the door wide open for Home Secretary Theresa May to move into 10, Downing Street without too much delay.

I do not wish to be patronising, but Leadsom was plainly not oven-ready to become Prime Minister. She would, inevitably, have lost to May had she continued as a contender, and the nation would have been stuck with a nine-week campaign whose result was pretty well assured, anyway.

Leadsom had a torrid and chequered campaign, with questions asked about her CV, and ultimately a flaming row with The Times newspaper over its “despicable” reporting of an interview with her over the motherhood issue.

She was, quite frankly, unwise to react as she did. Having seen the interview, I do not know how any newspaper could have interpreted it in any other way. In short, her reaction was naive in the extreme and simply demonstrated how unfit she was for the job.

Now we can look forward to a new era in British politics with Theresa May leading the way.

But I don’t think we have heard the last of ambitious Andrea. She will, I suspect, have another go when the opportunity occurs again. And maybe Theresa will reward her with a bigger and better job in the new administration.

We shall see... But certainly exciting times lie ahead.

:: How wrong were those pundits - cynics most of them - who assumed that the long-delayed Chilcot Report into the Iraq War would be the usual whitewash? Far from it.

The report castigated the planning - or lack of it - of the operation, and how troops were sent in ill-equipped for what lay before them. And what has been described as the “catastrophic consequences” of the invasion, were barely considered. In short, it could hardly have been more damning.

However, I am glad that the Commons, when it first debated the report, did not turn Tony Blair into an Aunt Sally. He was to present a pathetic figure trying to explain his disastrous decision, but which he thought to be the right one at the time. He said he would do the same again, adding that the world is a better place now that Saddam Hussein is no longer in it.

Now, at least two of his lieutenants at the time, Lord Prescott, then deputy Prime Minister, and Jack Straw, who was foreign secretary, who both approved of the decision at the time, but no longer do, have come out to say they will have to live with the consequences for the rest of their lives.

I would hope that one lesson to be learnt from Chilcot will be that never again will a British Prime Minister be able to follow timidly, without questioning the whims of a bellicose US president, as in the case of Blair and George W Bush.

:: I am afraid I cannot work up much, if any sympathy for the Labour Party over its leadership trials and tribulations. The party has brought this crisis on itself by approving a leadership election procedure which is totally flawed and which gives MPs - who have to work alongside the leader day in, day out - far too little say in its outcome.

You can hardly blame Jeremy Corbyn for refusing to budge. But you can blame the “morons” (their word not mine) who put him there and now cannot dislodge him.

Nor can you blame Tom Watson, the party’s deputy leader, for walking out of talks designed to end the crisis. As he so rightly said, once Corbyn had declared that “come what may” he would not shift, that dashed all hopes of a compromise.

Now Angela Eagle, the former shadow Business Secretary, is throwing her hat into the ring in a leadership bid. A bold move, no doubt, but will it work?

Corbyn has indicated, as is his right, that he will fight any attempts, however legitimate, to oust him, with everything at his command.

And with the leadership election process skewered in the way it is, the initial signs, at any rate, are that Corbyn could easily win.

You would have hoped that the very people who want to govern us, might have been able to put their own house in some semblance of order, and not in the shambolic state in which it now finds itself.

In fact, could we soon be seeing the break-up of the party as we know it, including the formation of a more voter-friendly organisation?

:: What the House of Commons desperately needs is a new Speaker. The present irritating incumbent, John Bercow, is well past his sell-by date.

Why does he apparently relish interrupting the natural flow of debate, by suddenly intervening to complain at noise from backbenchers?

What does he expect from a forum in which roughly half its members are bitterly opposed to the other half? Sweetness and light?

For heaven’s sake, a good old Parliamentary barney is what it is all about. He says “the public” don’t like it. He’s wrong. They do. What “the public” don’t like are his constant, pointless interruptions.

And, incidentally, why has no one told him that he should wear the traditional Speaker’s garb? If you are another sort of public servant, ie a soldier, you can’t go on parade in civilian clothes. So why should he be allowed to get away with it?

He was elected to the job largely by Labour MPs as an act of spite because they knew the Tories hated Bercow, even though he was a Tory MP then. What an irresponsible way to choose a person to fill this high office.