Yes, we are all Mexicans now

SINN Fein clearly feel they could do pretty well in a Northern election right now. According to the Shinners, the people need to have their say. Which makes you wonder if Sinn Fein have been following politics recently.

If the last year or two has taught us anything it’s that while the people having their say is all very well in principle, it can tend to backfire. Before Sinn Fein get too excited about an election they should possibly talk to David Cameron. He thought the people should have their say. And then Sinn Fein should possibly speak to those very people, the Brits who had their say. Many of them were not too happy with what they said, and almost immediately they wanted to take it back and have their say again, and this time they would be saying: ‘No, actually, let’s not plunge ourselves into a nightmare.’

Already, Sinn Fein are learning that triggering a political crisis in the North is not what it used to be. In previous times, this kind of thing would have led to a flurry of activity from the US, the UK and Dublin, as Mammy and Daddy clamoured to come in and stop the children fighting. But Mammy and Daddy have their own problems now, and everybody is a bit tired of the personalised bickering that passes for politics up North.

The big worry though has got to be the emergence in Northern Ireland of some kind of Trump-style figure, an outsider who plays on fatigue with the establishment parties and speaks to the voters’ baser instincts. Imagine a candidate who played on Northerners’ general disdain for people south of the Border. Such a person might even suggest that there be a wall built, a hard border, paid for, obviously, by the Mexicans, which is what Northerners call us, in case you were unaware.

Such a candidate might gain huge support from Northern Ireland’s equivalent of the rust belt — the diesel belt, a whole swathe of the country around the Border — where middle-aged white men worry that their traditional means of earning a living — laundering diesel, smuggling fags etc — is under threat.

But where would such a candidate come from, you ask. Who would this charismatic, populist politician be? Where would we find such a person, who would promise to solve everything in order to buy your vote? An outsider, shunned by the establishment, and even by the bosses of his own party, a man who uses any available opportunity — Brexit, crisis in the North — to stick his hard neck above the parapet, and to poke his nose back in.

Let the people have their say at your peril. The strangest things can happen. And can’t you just see him popping his head out of the press? “I never thought I’d end up here.” Nah. It couldn’t happen, could it?