A Long and Meandering Stream

Looking through what passes for a diary these days, I see that this has been a week with lots of routine but nothing that really says 'Write about me today!'  It's all a bit boring, like the title of today's Bible notes, 'Are we nearly there yet?'  These began with the innocent question, 'Can you recall the longest journey you've ever made?'

My thoughts floated back down the years (the older I get, the more that exercise seems to become a cruise along a slow-flowing river rather than guiding a canoe down a swiftly-running stream, with more and more places to stop and explore along the way) and didn't stop when I realised that this was probably a flight to San Francisco in 2000.  Instead, recollection followed recollection until memory eventually came to rest in the early 'seventies, when I was living with my young family in the middle of a country town, almost opposite the pub and just around the corner from the church.

That was the time when I was studying economics as part of my accountancy training, and struggling to make sense of the written course material as it described the way that one government and then another had tried to control the British economy.  It was then, too, that my thoughts first turned to politics as I realised that each government in turn had first undid what had gone before, in order then to implement its own ideas of what needed to be done now.  Obviously the purpose of an Opposition is to oppose, but it seemed to me that too much of its energy was devoted to tearing the government apart, and not enough to explaining what ought to have been done instead. 

The fact that the half-dozen Liberal MPs seemed willing to agree with one 'side' on one point, and then with the other on another point was what first persuaded me to join the Liberal Party and, although that enthusiasm proved only to be a 'flash in the pan', I've been a supporter of the politics of compromise and accord ever since.  In the 'noughties', when I listened to RTE on long wave as I drove around the country, I became aware of multi-member constituencies and started to think about proportional representation as a real possibility. 

To bring this truly up to date, I'll share a comment I read this week about the speed with which 27 European leaders could reach a compromise agreement about the extension of Article 50, compared to the length of time our Parliament has taken - and has still not been able to come to agreement - over the approval of the Brexit legislation.  It was described as the grey productivity of European thinking versus the black-and-white failure of our own.  People on all sides of the political spectrum are now voicing what I was beginning to see forty-odd years ago, that the days of a confrontational parliament based on a winner-takes-all mentality are numbered.

It is indeed a long journey, along a very long road.  But I believe we will eventually learn nationally what children learn very quickly in the school playground: it's more satisfying to agree that one can play with the toy for a while and then for the other to do so, than for either to break it, or throw it over the hedge, so neither can play with it at all!