Mood Music

Once again a British Prime Minister has been to Brussels. Once again a British Prime Minister has been sent away with nothing, without even supper on this occasion. This ludicrously choreographed farce of Brexit-In-Name-Only is served up on a regular basis like a dire seventies sit-com, sans plot, sans imagination, sans entertainment, sans laughs. The PM barges on stage, her knickers fall down, the audience groans; we’ve seen it all before.

But wait, what light through yonder window breaks? Is it a new dawn or just the same old dreary daybreak? Suddenly, although the answer is still “Non!” as it always has been, we are told that there is a new body language, a new hope that maybe, just maybe, if we make yet more concessions... Body language? The only posture the slope-shouldered Theresa May now seems capable of is abject prostration at the feet of her masters. The UK electorate, you mean? No, it is clear who is in charge here and it is not we great British unwashed

We are told that the talks are ‘delicately poised’. Bollocks they are; the ‘deal’ was arranged months if not years ago.  All the rest has been obfuscation and delay and the Irish border question – as utterly irrelevant as it is – has somehow become the headline act. Nobody is here to see the bloody Irish border; we bought tickets for ringside seats at the battleground and instead have ended up in a bizare and unintelligible fringe event. This is nothing other than a stitch up.

There never was going to be an acceptable deal. We actually voted to leave behind all such arrangements and the EU has no intention of offering anything of any value, something it told David Cameron three years ago. We already voted on that no-deal, why are we being led down the garden path only to arrive at exactly the same point?

The EU – and by its naïve complicity, our own government – has done its best to make the whole Brexit process a thing of misery and fear and not the optimistic new wave of entrepreneurial energy it should have been. Our whole political class has behaved like despots desperately trying to cling onto the powers supposedly bestowed upon them by us and in the process utterly disregarding their proper allegiance and misunderstanding their place as servants, not masters.

When the whole sorry saga finally grinds to a halt and the bitter end is reached – and my god is it going to bitter – there is going to come a reckoning. In the meantime, how much longer is it going to take and how much more humiliation is Mrs May prepared to face before finally admitting what millions of us knew from the outset? The only response to the intransigence and mockery we have had to grin and bear is to leave the table and say “On yer way, Barnier”.