Blue Monday DisMay

Blood Moon rising on Blue Monday, a wrecking ball for democracy

The blood moon had fired up the night sky but the day dawned grey and damp. It was Blue Monday, supposedly the most depressing day of the year but I still felt optimistic despite a dental appointment to extract a tooth following a ten-month wait for root canal treatment. By the time the dental hospital got round to giving me an appointment, it was too late to save the tooth. The dental hospital had still not yet sent a letter to my dental practice to explain the diagnosis so the dentist suggested holding off for a couple of months until she had the letter. So another morning wasted and the pain postponed.

On getting home 200 hedging plants had been delivered but they were four days late, the last three days had been perfect for planting but the ground was now frozen and would be until the weekend. So my frustration was ratcheted up another notch as any Blue Monday afternoon activity was postponed.

I decided to watch the prime minister make her statement on Plan B for Brexit, which turned out to be Plan A again. It was an irrefragable confirmation of Blue Monday. Mrs May utterly fails to get it and the MPs of all parties must have felt like lemmings at a cliff edge as their requests to make progress or consider alternatives were summarily dismissed by the PM in her inimitable style of reciting a clutch of oft-repeated meaningless phrases. As always, John Crace got it right in his parliamentary sketch.

"Which bit of the EU saying it would not renegotiate the backstop hadn’t she understood over the past 18 months? The time had come for her to drop her red lines and adopt proposals that could command the support of the majority of MPs.

"La, la, la,” May snapped, sticking her fingers in her ears. She had her plan. And just because it had failed once there was no reason why it should fail a second time. Hadn’t she always said that a bad deal was better than a no-deal?

Thereafter a succession of MPs from both sides of the house became increasingly exasperated as they tried and failed to talk her out of her madness. The more rational they became about the need to consider a customs union, extending Article 50 and a second referendum, the more adamant the prime minister became that the road to glory was paved with failure. 

Labour’s Barry Sheerman tried to instil a note of optimism. Today was Blue Monday. Officially the most depressing day of the year. So could they take a rain check and come back tomorrow when they all might be feeling slightly less bleak. May declined. The very idea was an affront. She hadn’t got where she was today by doing anything to give people cause for optimism. There was no situation she could not make worse. And she’d started so she would finish."

I now believe in Blue Monday.