DIPLOMATIC EDITOR

WATCHING anyone being publicly dumped is never pleasant. Watching a one-time super star getting the elbow is almost heartbreaking. Almost.

Like the ugly sisters witnessing Cinderella go to the ball, Ulster Unionists and British Conservatives have thrown a united tantrum, following Joe Biden’s trip to Ireland and their sense of abandonment.

” ‘How can he prefer her?’ you can hear them ask,” says relationship counsellor Marjorie Wipe of Counselling Service Wipe The Tears Away. “‘She (Ireland) is below stairs, the servant woman’. That’s a common reaction when the husband runs away with the Swedish maid. Pathetic, yeah, but very normal.

“You have to look at the British now as an international Norma Desmond, always ready for their close up but with fewer people wanting to look. To stretch the analogy, she’s a huge star reduced now to playing minor daytime soap roles.

“Remember, in 1914, Britain was top of the heap. Since then, it’s been pretty much downhill all the way. And remember when you’re on the way down you meet all the folks you stood on on the way up. Anyway, by the end of WW2, they were existing on American life support, and a special relationship with the new star. America’s girl in Europe, so to speak.

“But this special relationship with the new star, which meant they got roles they ordinarily shouldn’t have – a bit like Joey Bishop when the Rat Pack took him in – left them hanging on to America for dear life. And while the Cold War lasted, they went arm in arm. But after the Cold War, America’s eye began to wander. Tony Blair managed to win it back for a while but at what cost?

“Then came Brexit. Even the daytime soap roles dried up. The whole business became its own pantomime. An the last thing the Yanks want right now is to have a Pantomime Dame for a partner.

“So Biden did what many partners do when they want to push away, they don’t tell the other party, they just push a little, and then a little more. And the next thing the phone isn’t ringing and the invites aren’t coming and he’s off to parties with someone else.

“Painful? Yes. But I tell my clients to try and look beyond the humiliation, the agony of knowing he thinks more of his pet dog than you. There is light at the end of the tunnel. Unfortunately for Britain, it’s the Channel Tunnel and the light they are looking at is French.”