For one political party to get it wrong on Brexit is unfortunate. For two parties to get it wrong looks like carelessness.
Welcome to the irrational world of northern politics, where our two main parties insist on walking their traditional routes over Brexit, based on the belief that habit should take precedence over logic.
The two parties are, of course, Sinn Féin and the DUP, the partnership which brought us political failure, financial scandal and academic selection (and the third of those three will do more lasting social and economic damage than the other two).
The DUP opposes Theresa May's Brexit deal because the north will have better trading conditions than the rest of the UK (yes, honestly) and Sinn Féin largely supports the deal, but will not go to Westminster to vote for it (do not expect us to do anything to achieve our demands).
Both will apparently claim that it is all a matter of principle, which shows that while Britain has only one historical relic in the form of Jacob Rees-Mogg, we have two: one Protestant and one Catholic.
The Protestant Rees-Mogg party sadly believes that there is still a British Empire and that they are somehow part of the motherland which controls it. The DUP insists on being different from the rest of the UK on a wide range of issues, including same sex marriage, abortion, several legal areas, local government, alcohol licensing, voting (do you remember when the DUP used to described the PR system as "un-British"?) and a sectarian political system which most British people would find abhorrent.
Indeed it was that desire to be different which led to the RHI scandal. But when it comes to regulations governing imports, the DUP wants to be more British than the British themselves. As a result, they now find themselves at odds with industry, business and farming leaders here, most of whom support Theresa May's deal. (The next DUP election manifesto will make interesting reading: "We support farming, but not farmers.")
Sinn Féin, on the other hand, wants union with Berlin rather than Britain, for reasons which it has yet to explain. While it is perfectly entitled to do a U-turn on its EU attitude (a sort of an EU turn) its support for the EU leaves it at odds with many of its other policies.
For example, it opposes austerity, even though the Maastricht Treaty of 1992 (which, in fairness, SF opposed at that time) made austerity an official EU policy. The EU abandoned what is known as social democratic economic planning, which focuses on the general well-being of the population by re-distributing taxation through welfare and other public services.
It was replaced by what is known as neo-liberalism, which transfers public services to private ownership, reduces government spending and practices austerity in public services. (This is exactly the same as British government policy, so if you can tell the difference between UK austerity and EU austerity, let us know.)
SF supports EU membership on the basis of defending rights, an odd claim since the EU does not even grant national governments the right to determine their own economic policy. As happened in Ireland, Greece is undergoing extreme austerity under the orders of the EU Commission, even though a 2015 referendum rejected that policy.
The European Commissioner for economic affairs, Pierre Moscovici, is reported to have privately admitted that the decisions made in secret regarding the Greek economy were an abuse of the democratic process. It is what others have called "the tendency of contemporary capitalism to suspend democracy."
Any rights not available in the north, such as same sex marriage, are denied by the use of a petition of concern, a device invented by SF in co-operation with the DUP. SF has helped to deny the rights it says it is defending.
But rather than go to Westminster to vote for Mrs May's deal, Sinn Féin insists that it has no responsibility to lift a finger to help either it or the rest of us. Attendance at Westminster, it argues, is a waste of time (presumably unlike attendance in the Dáil and Stormont). Going to Westminster to vote for this deal, however, would increase the chances of it being passed and boost SF's electoral support.
Instead Sinn Féin will stay at home and allow the DUP to block a deal which SF supports. You could not make it up.
So the two party leaders, Mary Lou and Arlene, are not showing much leadership. Instead they accusingly point out that the other party is adopting a ludicrous position. And do you know something? They are both right.
