Arlene Foster has got up my nose

Double Vision with Charlie Adley

We all have limits, personal and professional, and sometimes they blur, one into the other, producing thoughts that are plainly unacceptable in our 21st century woke culture. Thank goodness we are allowed to express dislike of politicians’ policies and on occasion even admit to disliking a politician or two, for their failings, their corrupt or ambitious natures.

What you cannot do is say you dislike a politician’s appearance. How many times did this colyoomist want to write about Charlie McCreevy’s teeth, but no – how could I look my mates at the bar in the eye, when they exposed their lonely gums as they smiled to see me?

On top of the confines of morally respectable prose, I have a personal loathing of disingenuous behaviour, so I’m not going to write some kind of half-humorous apology for my struggle. I’ll just cough it up and take the flak.

There are at the moment so many reasons to disagree with Arlene Foster, so many causes threatened by her policies that we could all fill many pages with heartfelt discord and righteous debate.

Yet my feeble spirit has already lost the plot.

I have gone from feeling mildly irritated by her, to outraged that the British and Irish people are being held to ransom by her, to viscerally annoyed by her until my insides cramp as I see her, floating around the corridors of Brussels in her special white dress, twitching with excitement, her hubristic hands writhing over each other with the evangelical enthusiasm of a person who knows that this is their moment.

Her tiny life is suddenly being played on a world stage. She’s got the UK government by their short and curlies, to such an extent that Theresa has had to resort to pleading with moderate Labour MPs opposite to support her uniquely unpopular plan.

If it were simply a matter of intractable political differences that’d be fine, because that’s just falling to see somebody else’s point of view.

But that’s not it.

It’s her nose.

To read Charlie’s column in full, please see this week’s Galway City Tribune.

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