Hail, Ruritania!

Is anyone else ranting at the TV the way I am right now?

I switched off on Sunday night when I heard someone say: politicians will have to remember that the voters will get tired of hearing about Brexit but not being offered any solution to UK economic problems. I switched back on on Monday night and they were again - or maybe it's still - talking about Brexit. With still no solution.

Theresa May went to Florence to announce that 'we' (whoever that may be) never really felt part of Europe. Apart from the fact that she's a liar because she was a Remainer till the referendum result was in, what gives her the right to speak on behalf of all UK voters, especially Scots who voted 62% to stay in the EU and have enjoyed close trading and educational links with places in mainland Europe like Leiden, Paris, Bologna, Rome, Flanders, etc, for centuries? And why did this prime minister think it was okay to address a room full of UK journalists and politicians in an EU city in such offensive terms - and apparently not even understand how offensive she was being?

O yes, I remember now. This PM promised a vast amount of tax-payers' money to a political party in Northern Ireland in order to save her job.

I also have to ask whaddya mean: voters will get tired of Brexit? Some of us passed that milestone last year. Some of us have already had to come to terms with our worst nightmare: the future of the UK economy, the NHS, the whole shebang - all in the hands of the Tories for the foreseeable future. The Tories are 'the natural party of government.' 'A safe pair of hands.'

As if to prove that, Labour have gone off to have their party conference at which they refuse to discuss Brexit at all, and where the Shadow Secretary of State for Scotland thinks she's in Bristol when she's actually in Brighton.

Meanwhile, in Scotland the Labour Party is trying to pin responsibility for possibly unsuitable cladding on high rise buildings on the SNP, despite the fact these buildings were commissioned and built under Labour rule. They also want the SNP to use their limited budget to buy out the outrageous Private Finance Initiatives that Labour signed up to. That would mean showing these PFIs on the Scottish budget as a debt - and the Scottish government isn't allowed to have debt. Are they daft or do they think we are?

During the Cold War in the 1950s, there was a fashion for movies in which wee tiny countries challenged great big countries. I'm thinking of The Prisoner of Zenda and The Mouse That Roared. I really liked the scenes in The Prisoner of Zenda and its sequel Rupert of Hensau, where the national anthem started well with 'Hail Ruritania!' but was always interrupted at that point. And the scene in The Mouse That Roared where it was discovered that the atom bomb that held the balance of peace in the world was a dud but nobody let on. This is where I think I'm living right now: in a fantasy state where nobody dares to tell the truth: the UK is broken, its economy is a dud, and the Tories are leading us nowhere, unless - of course - you want to be another state of the USA.