Tories and Labour deserved their local election kickings - Bernard Ingham

Of course, you savaged the Conservatives, even if, for all their fratching, fracases and failures, they are our only viable government and are running a relatively successful economy. But you also gave Labour a mighty swipe across its Marxist face.

You rightly see both parties being split every whichway when they should know by now that the British do not like political parties that do not know their posterior from their humerus, to coin a phrase.

You have commendably told both to sort themselves out, get us out of the European Union sharpish and start attending to the raft of social issues that mar our national reputation. I need mention only education, health, welfare and law and order.

It is conceivable that if Nigel Farage’s Brexit Party had entered the lists Labour would have done even worse in its anti-EU heartlands.

But here I wish to counsel caution. Farage may have his Euro head screwed on the right way but his is a one-issue party with no experience of government and even less to offer by way of a considered political programme.

It is a protest rather than a sign of political maturity to vote for his lot.

Events, dear boy, will judge whether it was sensible to vote for the 1,178 (661 more) Independents who now sit on councils. But I shall only believe it if they stop whittering about being starved of government funds while wasting brass on extravagant projects, pandering to minorities and indulging themselves at the expense of residents.

Nothing would warm me to independents more than their forgoing the £10,000-plus councillors – apart from parish councillors – draw for just turning up. I would then have some cause to believe that public service is making a much-needed comeback.

The Greens, who did relatively well in the polls, are no more than the hard Left piously draped in verdant raiment and guaranteed to cause power blackouts before we are much older.

Which leaves only the Liberal Democrats who did best of all in the elections (704 gains). This is where my fellow Britons cast doubt on their intelligence either because they don’t have any or because – same thing – they are Europhiles clinging to an undemocratic, bureaucratic, expensive, corrupt and failing Euro-ship.

We are only in the European Union because of our Establishment’s defeatism caused by our retreat from Empire, Suez and our alarming economic record in the 1960s thanks partly to the unions’ abuse of power. Britons did not help to win the Second World War only to be subjected nearly 75 years later to a Franco-German hegemony.

But over and above this I haven’t a clue what Liberal Democrats stand for, except perhaps to handicap a coalition partner. Their former leader, Nick Clegg, had a list of about 18 examples of where they frustrated the Tories from 2010.

The Liberal Democrats exist only to flex their muscles in coalition with other parties and, at best, are only a moderating force in British politics.

But we don’t need moderation when the nation needs a very sharp smack of firm government?

In my view – and you may feel I am demented in my optimism about the future – you have merely rearranged the deckchairs on the Titanic in the local elections.

Speculation about the deaths of both the Tory and Labour parties is premature.

I suspect we shall go on for a bit re-arranging the furniture unless we get out of Europe this year on reasonable terms. That would revive our politics.

Remainers would know they might as well shut up about re-entering the EU since the price would be horrendous and we would have to become members of the destructive single currency.

Labour might then recognise that playing unprincipled politics over Europe has got them nowhere – especially with Jeremy Corbyn, John McDonnell and their fellow Marxists.It would also concentrate the Tories’ mind on what they stand for.

Once Theresa May has gone – as she will probably sooner rather than later – we should discover what the array of contenders for No 10 have to say about Tory principles, purpose, methods and goals. Who is leadership material among the Uncle (and Auntie) Tom Cobleighs?

Meanwhile, they know what you think: politicians have mucked about long enough. Get us out of the EU and forge a new Great Britain.