Throttlebottom is not a word in common parlance. But it should be.
The government of the United Kingdom is now led by one.
Webster’s dictionary describes such an individual as ‘an innocuously inept and futile person in public office’.
The true blue voters of North Shropshire obviously recognised a Throttlebottom when they ended nearly two hundred years of Conservative representation in the recent by election. Shock and awe was how the scale of Lib Dem victory was described.
North Shropshire was not only 60 per cent Tory but also voted 60 per cent Leave during the Referendum in 2016.
With post Brexit Britain in disarray, there is a degree of karma in such a constituency overwhelmingly voting for a pro Remain candidate in Helen Morgan.
Boris Johnson can’t be fully blamed for this electoral slaughter, the former MP Owen Paterson is entitled to share in the ignominy.
Allegations of sleaze stalk the Conservatives. Double jobbing MPs and the doling out of dodgy contracts without any due diligence or procurement procedures has turned once loyal voters into archangels of electoral vengeance.
But for now Boris will have more than a new baby to give him sleepless nights as the carnivorous members of the Carlton club and his own backbench malcontents sharpen their knives and plot his demise. The party was fun when it lasted.
Only the DUP can match the Tory party in turning on its leaders.
And of the DUP, the words flotsam and jetsam come to mind.
The party is afloat but the course is uncharted.
The obsession with the NI Protocol and the sea border is akin to the fatal attraction of Captain Ahab to Moby Dick. And what Melville wrote of Ahab could be said of Jeffrey Donaldson, that he and “anguish lay stretched together in one hammock”.
The DUP has one solitary goal at this stage and that is to remain the largest party of unionism. In fairness, that is probably achievable. What seems beyond the reach of the DUP is the golden grail of the post of first minister.
The DUP faith in Boris Johnson is mystifying.
Johnson has consistently betrayed his promises, his party and his partners. He took the DUP leadership in with all the deftness of the Pied Piper of Hamelin.
Jeffrey Donaldson is playing roulette with the NI Protocol. It’s a high stakes game he will ultimately lose, if he does not cash in on the mitigations being made in the negotiations between the British government and the EU. In practical terms Donaldson and the DUP are little more than interested observers to the game play between the EU and UK. Bit players.
Threatening to pull down Stormont is meaningless. An enraged public has little enough confidence in the political classes. They will likely vent their anger on elected representatives who duck their responsibilities in the middle of a pandemic.
Furthermore sabre rattling will only play into the hands of those who want to destroy the Good Friday Agreement and the stability it has brought.
Take this tweet last week from a well known but fringe loyalist. “It’s time to pull down the Belfast Agreement Institutions. Should have been done long ago”. Is this the trajectory of travel for mainstream unionist people? Methinks not.
The only people capable of fast tracking the pace of a new Ireland is political unionism by further alienating the very constituents they need to win over to maintain the Union. Unburdened by nonsense about identity young voters are already deserting in their droves.
Just as the Lib Dems proved by overturning a whopping 23,000 Tory majority, there are no certainties in politics.
Even the former DUP songstress, Arlene Foster, understood the fragility of leadership when she warbled: “That’s life, that’s what all the people say, You’re riding high in April, shot down in May”.
As Johnson ebbs towards his Ides of March, Donaldson should beware being hitched to his toga in May 2022.
