By Patrica Del Pino Roman asks if Mrs. May has reached the ‘River Kwai’ phase of her political career? That stage where her dogged determination to see Brexit thing through has finally blinded her to reality?
In David Lean’s film ‘The Bridge on the river Kwai’, a Lieutenant Colonel Nicholson played by Alec Guinness, leans over the handrail of his newly constructed bridge, completed under protest from his sidekick Clipton, in order to demonstrate to the enemy, the superiority of British engineering. Then clutching his swagger stick, he proudly tells the Japanese commandant that “tonight; maybe tonight” he‘s finally achieved something that compares with “other men’s careers”
Is that how May feels too? Is she seeking comparison with other men’s careers? Despite all the warnings, despite all the protests from those she purports to lead, is she hoping, praying even, to fulfil a destiny that will guarantee her name in the history books? A statue perhaps? Is she taking us to the brink for the sake of glory – her name finally written in lights?
Meanwhile, back in celluloid land, British saboteurs have laid dynamite in order to blow the bridge and here is where Reality and Fantasy merge. Nicholson loses his grip of the swagger stick. It plunges into the river. He looks down and sees the cables. But the train is fast coming down the tracks. There’s very little time left. March 29th 2019 is almost upon us and we have to do something. But will the saboteurs (that’s us) succeed in blowing the bridge? Down on the river bed, Nicholson’s stiff upper lip quivers as he finally realises his treachery.
“What have I done” he says whilst conveniently falling on the detonator that blows the bridge and train to smithereens. Oh Mrs. May, have you too seen the light? Will you too fall on your sword? Let’s leave the last word to the now vindicated Clipton, (Kenneth are you listening?) who shakes his head and mutters “Madness!” Then in case we didn’t hear him, repeats it. “MADNESS!” he declares and we all hear his cry.
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