Get yourself a new pair of glasses ref! Well if you think that you can do better, here’s the whistle.

It’s an old joke, the soccer referee offering the whistle to a complaining prima donna. The ref makes the offer in the pretty sure knowledge that a. The carping player is incompetent and b. He certainly isn’t neutral.

As today’s news of resignations unfolds, Jacob Rees-Fogg has gathered his cabal together to stir up a witches’ brew of discontent. He’s not alone. In his slipstream are Jezza Corbyn, that nasty woman from the DUP, the wicked witch of the Scots and any number of self-interested individuals and factions for whom the nation is less important that political power and ambition.

How the Corbynmeister must be loving it; so too the Brexiteer toffs. Double, double toil and trouble. Strange for me to feel sorry for Mother Theresa but I do. While all around her complain in the luxurious knowledge that they wouldn’t have got close to a deal themselves, the nation is exhausted with all the hubris and complaint and manipulation. Had Mother Theresa given the whistle to any of the grubby rag bag of her political friends and foes, we would have witnessed Armageddon. Well we’re looking at it now.

Perhaps the honourable thing for all remainers would have been to resign in the first place. Theresa would have been able to bugger off to Snowdonia and watch twats like Rees-Fogg and Boris the Spider take the nation down an Eton-fashioned abyss. Or, better, why didn’t she fight for a new referendum, if she truly believed in the EU?

The lack of a third, credible, centralist party has done us untold damage. The binary nature of politics – indeed much of our political thinking and strategy – is by its very nature, divisive. It’s the same in the US. Democrat or Republican, Clinton or Trump, heaven or hell? In my local pub there are shades of opinion. Jack, who can appear a little reactionary can surprise with liberal thoughts and concede points. Jill is quiet and considers issues carefully; invariably she talks sense and appears to have no axe to grind. They just want to get on with their hard-working lives. Jack is a roofer and Jill a librarian. Their lives are so far removed from Westminster, Holyrood, Cardiff or Stormont – and they feel the distance. One voted Remain, the other for Brexit. Both admit to not quite knowing enough about the issues involved and being swayed by misinformation and scaremongering.

And so we are where we are. It’s 3pm and I’m hoping for better news at 6 o’clock or 9 o’clock or next year ..or sometime never. As the pound plummets again, so do my spirits. I’m meeting some buddies at the local at 5. Doubtless we’ll raise a glass to Theresa. Misguided, perhaps, but, just possibly she is one of the few who has set party and individual ambition aside and is trying hard for the UK. Her whistle is sounding so shrill that only dogs can hear it. One of the prima donna dogs is ready to grab it.