Is there any way ...

... by which we can stop even highly intelligent people from saying rather silly things about politics? I am thinking about Tim Montgomerie of Conservative Home who has an article on Comment is Free today in which he gives a good and very pithy analysis of what is going on around the Prime Minister.

He does not mention that getting rid of a Labour leader is considerably more difficult than of a Conservative one but, in a sense, that is irrelevant. What he wants is for Brown to resign and for a general election to be called, not a particularly logical development in any case. A new leader would, most definitely, go to the wire.

As it happens I never thought Brown would resign or call an early election and am on record as saying so. Mr Montgomerie seems to be coming round to that point of view.

What I really object to is the following sentence:

The parliamentary Labour party has shown it can't run the country and it is now looking like it can't run a leadership coup.

Amusingly phrased or rather re-phrased from previous sayings. The only problem is that it is not the job of the parliamentary Labour or any other party to run the country. Even theoretically, they are part of the legislative not of the executive.

MPs have a double role: they must legislate (as little as possible) and hold the executive to account (as strictly as it is humanly possible). They do neither, having given away their legislative powers and being able to do nothing but occasionally squeal at the huge flood of it coming it and having decided that they cannot be bothered to do the second. Running the country they neither can (being unable to run the proverbial whelk stall) nor should.

How long before our political commentators finally grasp this simple concept?