UK’s bird-brain politics that could leave us all in a very dark place

There is a bird in legend. It’s called the Oozalum bird (you can look it up if you don’t believe me).

Although very rare, it was famous because if startled it would fly faster and faster, in ever decreasing and tighter circles, until it disappeared up its own anatomy.

Some accounts would have you believe that the Oozalum bird likes to fly backwards, because although it never knew where it was going, it likes to see where it has been.

But in every account, its tendency to disappear up its own backside is its dominant feature.

As you read this the Oozalum bird that is the House of Commons will have spent the whole of Monday disagreeing with yet another series of alternative propositions to the withdrawal agreement.

They — the elected representatives of the people of the United Kingdom — have now decided that (a) they want to leave the European Union, (b) they don’t want to leave the European Union unless they can agree a basis for leaving, (c) they can’t agree a basis for leaving under any circumstances, (d) they definitely want to leave, because that’s what the people want, (e) they definitely don’t want to leave, because that’s also what the people want.

They’re flying around in ever-decreasing circles, but the Oozalum bird is about to meet an inhospitable Irish mammy.

They’re very rare too, of course, but you’ve met her too — the one who stands in the hallway, when you’re unsure whether to stay or go, and says “here’s your hat, and what’s your hurry?”

In other words, they’re working to a deadline.

The deadline is April 12. By that day the British parliament, and its equally divided and chaotic government, must decide whether to stay for a while, or go immediately.

But they must make a conscious decision that they want to stay, for a limited period or for a long one, and they actually have to ask.

They may not be capable of realising that, or of doing it.

So, as things stand right now, April 12 could be the day that the mother of all parliaments disappears up its own fundament.

If that happens it will be unthinkable. But the unthinkable has been happening for weeks now, as Britain drifts ever closer to an unplanned, unwanted, uncoordinated departure from Europe.

The crash can still be averted, but that now requires an act of considerable leadership.

Ah, leadership. The current British prime minister is often described as the worst prime minister the country has ever had.

At least, that is, since the last one.

He, the last one that is, took a feckless and irresponsible gamble, and launched the country into a referendum that nobody wanted, except a tiny group of hardcore people in his own party.

He had promised the referendum in the previous election, in order to see off a perceived challenge from Ukip.

The party managed to have just one MP elected — one out of 650 — but the prime minister decided to try to fly the Oozalum bird anyway.

Exactly one year later, it wasn’t the bird that disappeared, but the passenger.

Having launched a referendum that nobody wanted, but that he figured he couldn’t lose anyway, David Cameron vanished up that part of his anatomy that none of us wants to mention and was succeeded by the hapless Theresa May.

And ever since then she too has been strapped to the back of the bird.

And watching her, tempted to join her on her doomed flight, because even though he doesn’t like her, he shares all her instincts, is the equally useless leader of the opposition, Jeremy Corbyn.

There’s a brilliant article in the current edition of the New Statesman by Martin Fletcher.

The article is called ‘The Humbling of Britain’, and in it Fletcher refers to Corbyn as a “covert Leaver masquerading as a Remainer, the opposition leader who refuses to lead, the head not so much of a government-in-waiting than of an ‘opposition in hiding’”.

Meanwhile, the grown-ups are meeting this week.

Today Leo Varadkar is talking to Emmanuel Macron, and on Thursday Angela Merkel is coming to Dublin.

They find themselves having to figure out how to react if Britain, by accident or design, crashes out of Europe in less than a fortnight.

All the talk right now is about how, between them, they set about protecting the single market, because the island of Ireland is the place where the rules of the single market are in jeopardy the minute the bird disappears.

But Leo Varadkar has a different, and more complicated, task.

He has to remind Macron and Merkel and everyone else that there was a reason for the backstop, and that reason remains valid even if Britain leaves.

The word “backstop” only appears once in the withdrawal agreement negotiated between Europe and Britain.

It has been replaced in the agreement itself by a long and complicated protocol.

That protocol, complicated as it is, is firmly and irrevocably based on European recognition of the crucial importance of the Good Friday Agreement.

The entire withdrawal document, and therefore the protocol, has been unanimously accepted by Europe. It’s clear from the language that they understood what they signed up to.

So, our Taoiseach has to remind everyone he talks to that the Good Friday Agreement is based on three critical and equally important relationships.

The internal power-sharing arrangements in Northern Ireland, the relationship and mutual cooperation between North and South, and the relationship between Dublin and London, are all inter-related and mutually dependent.

Those relationships are the basis on which peace was won, and they are the basis on which peace survives.

If one of them breaks down irrevocably, the architecture of peace is undermined.

We can already see the strain caused by the continuing impasse around the power-sharing internal government of Northern Ireland.

And the more the DUP rail against the backstop, the clearer it is that North/South cooperation means little or nothing to them.

If Britain takes the ultimate step of dumping itself out of Europe, the third leg of that stool, the East/West relationship, could well become sterile and meaningless. That’s the great danger.

Of course, we will face immediate economic peril in the event of a crash out by Britain, but equally significant is the potential collapse of all of the structures and key relationships that underpin peace on the island of Ireland.

It’s a measure of the irresponsibility of the British parliament and government that even today they don’t seem to be willing to consider the risk they are running.

Europe, it seems, gets it. There will be grown-up conversations over the next few days about the importance of the peace process and how it must be protected.

The pity is that those conversations will take place in Paris and in Dublin, but not in London.

Instead they will continue to fly faster and faster in ever-decreasing circles.

At least then we might find out the answer that isn’t clear in the literature about the Oozalum bird.

When it does finally disappear, can it ever come back?