Have politicans had their day running the country?

Yesterday the sun was splitting the trees, galvanising me to do some gardening. Today my motivation is much reduced. It’s a bit like the Brexit negotiations. One day I feel we’re getting somewhere making me want to start some spring cleaning. Next day there’s a shouting match in Parliament followed by a battered Theresa May going back on her word and I just want to crawl under the hedge and not come out again.

This up and down furore surely can’t continue otherwise we’ll all have a nervous breakdown, the Lagan will stop flowing and the NHS will definitely buckle under the strain of everyone wanting happy pills. The Sister had the right idea. She took off abroad for a sunshine holiday and who knows, she may decide to stay away until it’s all sorted.

We are reduced to our celebrities treating us as though we are all stupid and don’t know what’s good for us.

The most recent is our own Ulster born comedian Patrick Kielty – sounding off in the Guardian newspaper about the need for a second referendum. Please Paddy just stick to comedy.

I remember the first time I attended one of his shows. He cracked one of his ‘traditional route’ jokes and it was so funny I thought I would fall off the seat laughing. His humour cheered us all in those dark times; Catholic or Protestant, both sides got it in the neck, and goodness how we needed that levity at such a dangerous time for us. But not now.

Maybe all that sun in Los Angeles where he lives with his wife actress Cat Deeley and their two children is clouding his memory. A majority in the

UK voted for Brexit and Theresa May has promised to deliver. British politicians will never be trusted again if they don’t honour the view of the electorate in this case.

Looking back on history doesn’t help as generations change significantly over the centuries, even decades.

Now we have a Facebook generation which has instant views on everything with, I suspect, not a lot of knowledge of our history. A reader of the News Letter, Thomas Stewart had some interesting views published in our letters page recently. He had been responding to a previous letter from Eamonn MacGrianna who wrote that the Irish Civil War of 1922 happened as a direct result of the 1921 Anglo Irish Treaty which had been accepted and voted on by the Dail and the Irish people.

Thomas Stewart says in his letter that the Irish civil war came about specifically ‘because a minority, led by Eamon de Valera, refused to accept the vote of their own parliament with de Valera declaring that a the majority had no right to do wrong’. A classic example perhaps of a politician being too big for his boots, totally ignoring the fact that he was elected by the people to do their will.

Many say that Theresa May is a remainer by choice but constantly speaks about honouring the vote of the people.

I simply can’t work out what she wants to achieve but it certainly is not what the majority of the people want. She must think how easy her life would be if it wasn’t for those pesky Irish folk not wanting a hard border at any price or those in the north demanding to continue their link with the UK. So does it go back to the days of the wily de Valera who never did achieve his aim of a united Ireland, instead governing a country which remain impoverished until the 1960’s, being saved only by joining the EU? It’s hard not to come to the conclusion that he failed his country, just as many in the UK now feel that Theresa May is also failing her country.

A more refreshing view came from ‘the Republic’s best known and most successful entrepreneurs, John Teeling’ (Belfast Telegraph), who claims that European Union regulations have ‘stymied the ability to establish and grow businesses’.

He claims to be ‘a Brexiteer, big time’.

Outside the fog is closing in and I feel cheered enough to suggest that it’s business men, not politicians or comedians who should be running our country.