Brexit, Angela Merkel and much blathering.

Brexit, Angela Merkel and much blathering.

So here we are in the third week of November and you'll never guess what the dominant topic of conversation is. Yes folks you've got it. I'll give you three guesses and it isn't the size of Robert Mugabe's ego although that would hardly come as a major surprise in the general scheme of things. No, it's time to dig out that old chestnut called Brexit. Who on earth saw that coming when it all looked so cut and dried, decisions had been made and it was only a matter of time before Britain  finally left the building? Since when did Britain need the intervention of some petty, interfering busybody organisation who did nothing but hold the United Kingdom back.

 For what seems like several centuries now the leading movers and shakers in European Union and Customs House circles have driven us to the point of insanity. In fact at some point shortly the English middle classes may get so annoyed and intolerant that indecisiveness, dithering, dilly dallying, second thoughts and heated discussions will just be too much to take. We shall have to fire off irate e-mails to the letters page at the Times or, more pertinently, the Financial Times.

Still, Prime Minister Theresa May and Angela Merkel, the now helpless and beleaguered German leader, squabble and bicker like infants in the playground tugging at the skipping rope and refusing to be friendly. It is hard to know where to place our sympathies in what seems like the most complex political fiasco since - well, the last political fiasco.

 Every time David Davis looks as though he's come to some sort of a plausible agreement about   Brexit, the rest of Europe looks at us furiously and disdainfully as if we've just carried out an armed robbery and broken into a bank. Where do Britain go from here? To the outsider the whole of the European Union has now lost any love and faith in Britain because perhaps, understandably, we won't play ball, we have to leave that cosy little gang of European trading partners with whom we've always felt such a close affinity. And now we want out and that's final.

You can almost feel their sense of rejection and disaffection as dear old Britain sticks to its guns and insists that if you don't allow us to leave your ancient, creaking and stuffily paternalistic club we'll scream and scream. It all seems like stuff and nonsense to the uninitiated but the longer this charade goes on the more indifferent most of us are certain to become. Who would have thought that one political hot potato could turn into sour grapes on all sides? Sooner or later somebody will call a halt to this incessant blathering and pontificating and say enough is enough.

But you know what's it like. Once somebody gets a bee in their bonnet about something they won't leave it alone. Not a day has passed during the year when Brexit hasn't been top of the breakfast discourse. Occasionally there's some light relief but quite clearly this is just one relentless backing track that seems to have got its needle stuck in the middle of the record. This though is not the time though to panic and throw something at the TV because this is a counter productive exercise that will only make things a whole lot worse than they may be already.

Some time last week Prime Minister Theresa May, David Davis and Boris Johnson all seemed to get stuck in a Swedish smorgasbord of trouble and strife. The Swedes do love their salted herrings and for most of the visit by May, Davis and Johnson it all seemed very fishy. But we knew what an unseemly pickle this whole predicament has now become with European officials boiling over with impatience, threatening to pull the political rug from under the British and everybody getting very hot and bothered for reasons that have yet to become patently obvious.

So what was the outcome of the latest round of talks, whispers, those famous negotiations where nobody seems to know who's doing what and why they're doing it. Government ministers are now purple with rage and seemingly pointing the proverbial two fingers at the United Kingdom. The next two years before Britain's final withdrawal from the EU will probably seem like the longest two years of any life time.

 Over and over again the airwaves will be alive with the sound of heavy sighing, knuckle crunching and much procrastination. Shall we leave the EU or maybe we should change our minds at the last moment? Can we have more time to think about it Europe please? Should Basil Brush or Peyton Place make a long overdue comeback to our TV screens? Can we consult our back benchers or maybe we should ask the British public to undergo the same humiliating game of referendums? Maybe we should ask them to vote on issues for which very few of us can get our heads around? Sometimes the British public deserve a medal for their traditional understanding and sheer tolerance in such moments of crisis.

And then there is Boris Johnson. Perhaps British politics most unorthodox and unconventional of Foreign Secretaries is once again upsetting everybody without perhaps doing it deliberately. One minute he's passing judgment about a woman training journalists in Iran and then making a rod for his own back by saying something else that he shouldn't have said in the first place. It's the wrong kind of diplomacy Boris and somebody should really take him to one side and tell him before he does any more damage to the rest of his Cabinet.

Wherever the news takes us it invariably goes all the way back to the same soundtracks, the same characters, the same plots and the same old uncertainties. Every time we switch on our radios and TVs, there is an almost obsessive insistence on homing in on one subject and not a moment of consideration for our feelings. Soon battle fatigue will set in and we'll just explode with exquisite exasperation. How much longer is this likely to drag on without one of us demanding a coherent explanation for this pointless game of political table tennis.

Still the year is drawing closer to the end and we must hope that sometime before Christmas or Chanukah we'll all be the wiser and much more enlightened. Meanwhile somewhere in a stuffy corridor in Brussels the bulky documents are shuffling and rustling and a thousand members of the Green Party will be heartily complaining about the disappearance of yet more rainforests. This all seems unnecessary and pointless. Surely they could have resolved this issue sooner or later but then  perhaps this is the way British politics have always done these things just out of spite.

Which in a way brings us back neatly to where we before the latest episode of Brexit got under our nose. In a sense the downfall of Robert Mugabe in Zimbabwe and European disharmony seem totally unrelated to anything in particular. What fate becomes both Mugabe and the EU can only be guessed at. But Mondays are always shrouded in mystery and muddle. Same issues but complete variations on a theme.

What to do with Robert Mugabe? How did he appear on the news radar without our permission? And quite frankly who cares? Here is a 93 year old tyrant and dictator who has cold bloodedly murdered people on the most monumental scale without a single apology and never a murmur of remorse. How did one man kill and massacre human flesh without just a second pang of conscience? It hardly seems possible that men like Mugabe can still get away with it. Then he drops off to sleep and a nation curses over and over again. One day a major war crimes trial will deliver the ultimate judgment on Mugabe's evil machinations. Until then contempt has to be our only emotion and for the time being that seems to be enough.

In the meantime it's back to the drawing board in Brussels and those bustling conference rooms where everybody tries to look as though they're doing something important. But then the impression persists that it was  just a false alarm and there proceeds another round of thumb twiddling, staring at the ceiling, flicking pieces of paper across a huge desk and then gulping another glass of water. Oh why or when is it ever going to become clearer or perhaps it'll never sort itself out and we'll all be left in the dark. It's at a time like this when the result of Strictly Comes Dancing becomes a foremost concern. A night in Blackpool was always a blissful escape. Bring on the frothy, frivolous fun.