Fidelma Cook

It’s 1am Wednesday. In the sitting room Sky News is just loud enough that I can hear it and react to any updates.

I’m always up at this hour as I work on UK time still and often head to bed at 3am, praying the dog doesn’t bark half the night and I can get at least five to six hours sleep.

Any more and I risk Pierrot breaking in in case I’m dead. He and Miriam do not understand people who live through the night and miss the sun-rise.

Their day begins at dawn; mine splutters to an awakening around 10am with full consciousness beckoning at mid-day.

Normally I write my column on Monday but occasionally, rarely, I ask permission to push it to a Wednesday, aware it causes production problems.

I did this, this week, to write about the meaningful vote in the House of Commons to be taken at 7pm on Tuesday.

As we’ve discussed, I reserve the right to come out of my French box to write about issues that impact on my life here or rather the many other UK immigrants who live in France.

It’s always a risk with a weekly column to leap into a running story and make statements that could well leave one with egg on one’s face.

Well, we all know by now that that the meaningful vote didn’t happen, as PM Theresa May did, effectively, a runner.

As of writing following her begging tour of shame, she has returned to Downing Street and there may, or may not, be the requisite 48 letters in for a vote of no confidence.

And as you read this anything could have happened; Parliament could have imploded; politicians could have grown a pair/pairs.

Anyway, I’ll try and write between shifting sands in general terms.

Having spent the last week watching the live debates I have been struck by the utter ignorance of MPs in terms of what the various ‘options’ on offer actually offer.

I have been appalled at the arrogance shown towards the Irish and the Scots. Frankly, disgusted at the sneering contempt shown to both countries by the braying ranks on their green leather seats.

I wrote many weeks/months ago of my white hot anger against this madness of taking us out of the European Union and that anger hasn’t lessened.

If anything it has crystallised into a hard core of loathing as I read story after story of those whose lives have been destroyed by Freedom of Movement ordinances.

Families fearing division and expulsion in the UK because one is a foreigner; and couples in France terrified that the ending of reciprocal health care leaves them destitute.

Story after story …..placed on the internet if not, sadly these days, in newspapers.

You have no idea how frightened people are who moved to France as was their right. No idea how they fear fulfilling a tick list of income allowing them to continue that life; how confused to understand if they will have to find huge sums to cover their care.

And this cold hearted Government cares nothing for these people in their determination to follow ‘the will of the people’.

There are those already preparing to return to the UK, selling their houses for a pittance. They will never be able to afford to buy so they will rent if possible or rely on an already over burdened system. Insane.

Reading the European papers, that same sense of horror comes across. Has Britain gone mad, they ask?

Well yes, I would answer, it has.

There is no deal better than the one the UK has with the EU.

Having written that sentence I went to bed, deciding to finish off the piece this morning.

I’ve woken to the news that the 48 letters are in and she faces a no confidence vote tonight. And to think a week used to be a long time in politics – these days it’s hours.

Watching her defiant ‘I will fight on’ speech, it was hard not to think of Mrs Thatcher in those last days. There is little dignity in remaining where you are not wanted.

And little dignity in the circling pack waiting to finish her off and pick up the tarnished mantle of power.

We’re entering new territory now and God knows where we’ll stand by the end of the day never mind the end of the week.

Whatever happens I feel only a sense of doom. The politicians who stand head and shoulders above the rest are not in this race. There are only the mediocre, the rapacious zealots and the inheritors of tired, old ideologies.

Part of me thinks: To hell with the lot of them. It’s not my battle anymore. I just watch from the sidelines.

And we’ve moved on in France. We have our own battles to fight in the coming months. Enough time has been wasted on perfidious Albion.

End