Like it or not, and I suspect that for the overwhelming majority of you it’s ‘not’, we are hitched to the sinking ship of state known as the United Kingdom.

Thursday’s election gives the illusion we have some control over our destiny. But the voices we return to Westminster will struggle to be heard in a parliament focused almost entirely on the concerns of an English electorate.

When politicians use a word, they usually mean the opposite. “Change” is Keir Starmer’s cry. ‘More of the same’ is what we will get.

For the past 14 years, the British government has, at best, been indifferent to the needs of people here. That we have survived the incompetence of successive secretaries of state is one of the most remarkable things about our politics. But at what cost? Like the UK as a whole, the north has been brought to its knees.

Attack on Jessy’s house in Antrim should be condemned by us all - The Irish News view

Pat McArt: Joe Biden bowing out will be bad news for Ireland

With the exception of the short-lived Julian Smith, culled by Boris Johnson for displaying a vestige of competence, the list of Tory potentates demonstrates the depths to which the British political class has sunk.

© The Irish News