Many of the big issues affecting this region are acted out in what is euphemistically called 'the mainland' and this was again brought home last week with the announcement that HM Revenue and Customs had lost data on 25 million people.
The lost data contained names, dates of birth, national insurance numbers and bank account details. With the grumpiest of half-hearted apologies, Gordon Brown appeared at his 'bah humbug' worst, actually blaming the opposition for the fiasco and sulk
ed off to Iraq. Meanwhile back in the House of Lords, five former defence chiefs lambasted his penny-pinching policies both as Chancellor of the Exchequer and Prime Minister for leaving the military without the resources to prosecute the war on terror.
All these issues directly affect everyone in Northern Ireland but there was hardly a word raised from the Folks on the Hill at Stormont. It is possible to argue that the present set-up, with so many of our MPs also holding Westminster seats, has contributed to the situation in which many of our leading politicians are out of touch with what is happening on the wider stage.
It is little wonder that many are privately saying that the Executive and Assembly are quite irrelevant to their lives and the sad thing is that our politicians appear completely oblivious to this growing sentiment. The 'all politics is local' ethos has been taken to the most banal depths and great issues of importance are neglected.
Meanwhile back in the Westminster village, many Labour backbenchers in English marginal seats are beginning to wonder just why the party was so eager to ditch Tony Blair and replace him with Gordon Brown. Blair exuded class and charisma and was Labour's greatest vote-getter in its history. He hoovered up Middle England in three successive elections and brought Labour from the wilderness years to a decade in power. He made New Labour appear the natural party of government.
One man who wasn't exactly a leading cheerleader for Blair was Gordon Brown, who seems to have resented Blair succeeding John Smith as Labour leader when the party was in opposition. Brown openly coveted the position himself and one can imagine him going to bed in foul humour each night, endlessly playing his favourite song with the lines 'it should have been me.' The left's leading light had the prize torn from his grasp by the Oxford-educated Blair, who had received his secondary school education at Fettes, the Eton of Scotland. Now that the former Chancellor has finally realised his ambition, he finds that another public school-educated Oxbridge graduate, David Cameron, is presenting a formidable challenge to the decade of Labour rule. It isn't jolly boating weather for Labour.
Mind you, Brown is making a fair contribution to the government's difficulties himself. His new Chancellor of the Exchequer is not a darling for the millions of people who have been told that HMRC has lost their personal details. A few weeks ago, Darling as being lampooned as the 'Xerox Chancellor' for stealing Tory measures on Inheritance Tax and things have simply gone from bad to worse. What many people find disgusting is that under New Labour few cabinet ministers take direct responsibility for the failures in their government departments. This time round there is a growing perception that the buck stops at the door of 10 Downing Street itself, not with the very junior civil servant in the Revenue who has resigned.
It is not just on the mainland that Labour is in disarray. South of the Border, the fallout from the General Election is still hurting Labour.
Electing a new leader has not taken away the pain of knowing that if they had played their cards a bit shrewdly they could well have finished up in government with a substantial number of seats at the Cabinet table and the position of Tanaiste to boot. Instead they have a lonely furrow to plough for the next four years with an ageing parliamentary party, few of whom have any real expectation of office in their remaining parliamentary careers. They now have to sit and watch the Greens in government with John Gormley acting like the poacher turned gamekeeper. The new Labour leader, Eamon Gilmore, seems to be putting out feelers to Sinn Fein. His position in the margins of the history pages may simply be that he becomes the person who re-unites the stickies and the pinheads before they finally disappear from the political scene!
