I was asked to follow up a good package from David Blevins which contrasted the achievement of bringing the 148th Open Golf Championship for the first time in 70s (I said over 100, so don’t take any advice on sports history from me).
Other highlights was my Freudian slip when I almost referred to the current frontrunner in the Conservative party leader stakes as Basil rather than Boris Johnson.
After broadcast it occured to me that we may be stuck in a Fawlty Towers phase of politics where Basil’s anger sits in the centre of a chaos that almost everyone agrees not to take any notice…
More seriously, no one believes in the capacity of a Secretary of State who, like most of her predecessors really since Gordon Brown took over, have been hopelessly underqualified for the job of getting politics in Northern Ireland restarted.
Both conservative candidates seem remote and detached and only interested in courting the DUP for the purposes of gaining the required numbers to get Brexit through at the end of October.
In fact, whatever you or I think of Brexit, the tough terms of a no deal scenario being talked about in London right now is not popular in Northern Ireland any other party but the DUP who only represent a vocal minority.
The irony is that the incentives for the local parties have shifted considerably. Sinn Féin’s disastrous results in the Republic should act as a wake up call that their ongoing boycott of Stormont means they will continue to struggle to be taken seriously by southern voters.
But for that to happen, the sniping of the conservative press in London at the Irish Taoiseach in order to build a strong bilateral coalition to challenge the local parties towards accepting a viable compromise.
But the governing irony of Blevins’ report above is that although Stormont politicians played a senior role in bringing The Open back to Northern Ireland, they’ll get no credit for it.
“Unique wedding entertainment Norwich Norfolk” by Edmond Wells is licensed under CC BY-ND
Mick is founding editor of Slugger. He has written papers on the impacts of the Internet on politics and the wider media and is a regular guest and speaking events across Ireland, the UK and Europe. Twitter: @MickFealty