Goodnight Snarlene

It is the last few days to deadline, and I’m nearly there after three years down the word mines on the sequel to The Squad.

However, it would be remiss of me not to take a break from that and mark the passing of Arlene Foster’s career as a political leader.

In truth, she should have been toast after the RHI scandal in 2017.

That shitshow was a misuse of public money on a gargantuan scale with more than a whiff of cronyism as well.

During the subsequent inquiry, Arlene repeatedly demonstrated under oath that she was incapable of self-reflection, let alone any sense of penitence.

Instead, she clumsily deployed some self-exculpatory sophistry which was painful to watch.

Fortunately, events came to her rescue and Theresa May’s cunning plan to lose the Parliamentary majority that she had inherited from David Cameron.

The 2017 election temporarily put the DUP in the driving seat at Westminster.

However, they squandered it in a way that made the RHI  scam look like a shrewd use of public money.

The DUP voted against May’s deal and threw their lot in with this ambitious chap.

Arlene and her colleagues then seemed surprised when he betrayed them by signing up to the Northern Ireland protocol.

They just didn’t think that Boris would involuntarily propel them under the moving wheels of a road-going public conveyance.

Bless….

Arlene was also being assailed on the electoral front. The DUP has been losing votes to the Alliance and  Jim Allister’s Traditional Unionist Voice  (TUV).

As ever the London media did not disappoint with their stunning ignorance of politics on this island.

Good grief…

Where to start with that?

However, I still felt moved to reply to Mr Peston’s..ahem..expert analysis.

So what comes next?

Well, it looks like the Gammon Olympics are already underway.

The early frontrunner is Edwin Poots MLA.

This fine fellow believes that the planet that we are both on is, wait for it, 6,000 years old.

Yes, SIX THOUSAND YEARS…

Mr Poots describes himself as a “young-earth creationist”, other descriptions are available.

Irish Twitter was not slow to see the comedic value of  Snarlene’s imminent departure from the political stage in Narne Arne.

Waterford  Whispers never disappoints and they followed up today with this one.

Mallow News are also a class outfit.

Here’s my particular favourite from the peerless Tadhg Hickey in Cork.

On a serious note, it appears that we are no closer to the emergence of an F. W. de Klerk type figure within Ulster Unionism.

Someone who realises that the old days of supremacy and discrimination are gone and that a new dispensation must be negotiated.

Arlene was certainly not that person and neither are any of her likely successors.

The demographics that created the Six County ethnostatelet a century ago have been consigned to the blue wheelie bin of history.

The 2021 census will almost certainly confirm that  those identifying as Protestants are now in a minority in Northern Ireland.

That, in itself, should alter the mood music within Unionism.

However, Brexit, is an epoch making miscalculation by the DUP.

All is changed, changed utterly.

It has created the foundations of an all-island economy within the EU Single Market, in effect, an Irish Zollverein.

Now, for your humble correspondent, this is all marvellous stuff.

I firmly believe that we are closer now to ending  Partition than at any time since that artificial boundary was drawn a century ago.

The own goal of Brexit happened under Arlene’s watch.

I, as an Irish Republican, am hugely grateful to her for that.

Míle Buíochas a grá!

Ok, back to the word mines for me.

I’m sure that this Irish writer will never conjure up any dystopia that can compare to the reality of the DUP!

Please stay safe out there and get whatever vaccine you’re offered.

We are all in this together.