Maybe it is time that the two sides within the Tory party filed for divorce

A letter from Michael Deasy, which first appeared in the print edition on October 24:

The Tory party leadership soap opera is a proxy for deeper problems.

The party split in two six or seven years ago over Brexit. The sides have been cohabiting rather chaotically ever since and the row has become a feud — no one remembers how it began and everyone involved now prefers to fixate upon personalities and upon tangential slights and differences.

The ‘wacky races’ leadership spectacle we are witnessing today is really just the sublimation of a bigger dilemma. Is the Tory party a single coherent functioning political party? It appears not.

Maybe it is time they all filed for divorce. The only certainty is change and when something cannot go on forever — it doesn’t.

Meanwhile 67 million people await the resumption of coherent government via the obvious simple and respectable expedient of a general election.

Michael Deasy, Bandon, Co Cork