Brexit - will it ever go away?

Brexit- will it ever go away?

Yes folks it's still here and it won't go away. We've pleaded and begged for it to stop but it's rather like some infuriating song that you simply can't get out of your head. No amount of gentle coaxing or persuasion will make it go away and just leave you alone. Brexit has now got us exactly where it wants us. The blunt fact of the matter is that we're probably no further forward than we were two years ago.

Over and over again it is mentioned with such horrible persistence and stubborn insistence that some of us are just resigned to the fact that it may continue to dominate dinner party conversations for ever more. In every living room, kitchen, office, college and university the same nagging dilemmas will haunt and taunt us wherever we go.

So how on earth did we get to this point without reaching for the off button? For over two years the ears and eyes of the UK have been battered and assailed from every angle, bombarded with comments and indoctrinated by experts, government ministers with plenty to say and the kind of social commentators who will have us believe that if we don't listen to them then we may have to take our holidays in Brighton, Bournemouth, Blackpool and Great Yarmouth. At this rate we may never be allowed to set foot on Mediterranean sand again and that's final. This time the EU are serious and they've had  enough.

The EU have now genuinely- or so it would seem-  lost patience with the UK because the whole of Britain is just dragging its feet, taking far too long to make up its mind and if they don't hurry up and decide one way or the other then the long term consequences of their head scratching, indecisiveness and procrastination could be much more damaging than we might have imagined.

This week the House of Commons have made their feelings abundantly clear and the message does not make for easy reading to  Prime Minister Theresa May. In fact she may be wondering what on earth she has to do to please the people she thought she could rely upon. But there is betrayal in the air and the cabinet who have hitherto stuck by her side are now sniggering under their breath, growling like irascible bears and threatening to send her packing out of Downing Street.

Two crucial votes have now been lost and lost quite embarrassingly. The feelings of helplessness that the Prime Minister may well be feeling are such that time is now rapidly running out for her quite literally and metaphorically. Does she kindly request for an extension to the time frame needed to complete Britain's withdrawal from Europe or does she sneak out of the back door in the hope that nobody notices her?

We've all heard about Article 50, the legal technicalities that have bogged everybody down, those hard and soft Irish borders and of course those pragmatic deals or no deals. This is beginning to sound like the type of business transaction that a certain Lord Alan Sugar would probably rub his hands together with glee over. But at some point most of us will be drastically compelled to take ourselves off to a palm tree fringed desert island, lie on a comfortable hammock and try to forget about British politicians.

The truth is that most of us are  heartily sick and fed up with the same crazy rhetoric, those ludicrous comedy punchlines, the dull discourse and the maddeningly silly gobbledygook. Late into last night it would have been fascinating to be a fly on the wall of those stuffy and hallowed corridors of Westminster. But then you began to think that those poor old flies would have spent their time far more constructively had they given those Punch and Judy performers a miss.

Still this is what has happened whether we like it or not. The men and women who have been relentlessly prodding her in the back and provoking her now seem to be at a complete loss. This is not the gang warfare that eventually drove Margaret Thatcher out of power but a cruelly insidious attempt to make Theresa May look very small and inferior.

This now has the makings of what could turn into a major international crisis. The truth is that something that should have been resolved much sooner is now entering the realms of the intolerable. You're reminded of the American tennis player who once took a Wimbledon match to a tie break that lasted so long that some of us were already boiling a kettle for a late night mug of cocoa.

So where exactly does Britain and the UK go from here? Do we pretend that this was just one long eternal bad dream or is it some classic record album that we simply have to play indefinitely until the needle accidentally scratches it? Time was when we could actually talk about the more vitally important issues such as education, the homelessness epidemic, the National Health Service and hospital beds in corridors that are just an unsightly clutter. Even the economy, it seems, has been conveniently forgotten.

Some of us are convinced that Benjamin Disraeli was in 10 Downing Street the last time a British politician had anything interesting or worthwhile to say on any subject. Anyway, it is comforting to know that Britain has yet to lose its capacity to laugh at itself. We may be counting down the days to March 29 and the excitement is building. The final Brexit plot is thickening and if there's any justice, we may finally get the result we were looking for. It may be time to toss a coin if we don't.