Whose fault is it anyway?

The fault, dear Brutus, lies not in the stars, but in ourselves

Let’s play a little game, I like to call the Blame Game. In these snowflake days where no-one ever seems to want to take responsibility for their actions, everything always has to be someone else’s fault. I blame (see, I’ve done it already) the litigation system and its obsession with ‘where there’s blame, there’s a claim’, but I digress.

There’s a bit of an economic mess in various areas out there and one in particular was brought home to me this morning. Can we blame the tub-thumping Brexit campaigners, one of whom seems to have become Prime Minister? Can we blame the erstwhile Prime Minister for not being able to sort out a Brexit deal that would suit both the EU and Parliament, even though she tried three times? The same PM, incidentally, who, rather foolishly it no turns out, announced that No Deal is better than a Bad Deal. Well love, No Deal seem to be where we are heading. Well done.

Perhaps we can blame her predecessor for not having the cojones to stand up to the far right of his party or the EU in the first place.

Maybe it’s the fault of the other EU member states who never wanted us to leave in the first place, – after all, why kill the cash cow? – and who appear to think that they hold all the aces (spoiler alert: they probably do).

Can we blame the remain-leaning Members of Parliament for not supporting Mrs May’s deals strongly enough because there was too much ‘Leaving’ involved for their liking and for not working hard enough to help her get a deal. Ditto the civil servants, whose excuses will probably be that they were just following orders.

Or maybe it’s down to the hard-line Brexit MPs who would never have agreed to Mrs May’s proposals in a million years, for whom leave really does mean, leave/abandon/cut-off from/have now’t to do with for ever. And ever.

Or maybe it’s the fault of the financial markets, the currency speculators and the stock market gamblers, who see an opportunity to make a quick quid or euro on the back of all our uncertainty.

All I know is that my summer holiday just got a lot more expensive. OK, so this is a first world problem, I appreciate that. But my trip to the Post Office this morning told me that, having packed my carousel-friendly floral suitcase and my yes-it-damn-well-will-fit-that-stupid-cabin-baggage-size-checker-if-I-squish-it-in-enough holdall and head to the airport, my shiny English pound is buying me only one equally shiny Euro and a few lousy cents.

Whoever’s fault it is, I don’t think it’s mine. So, thanks guys. Thanks a bunch.