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Well Larry Burchall finally did it. He wrote the Premier's political obituary - for perhaps the second or third time over the last two years. And he refused to wait until the man had actually left the office, as he is slated to do in October.

Larry - being Larry however - was determined to not let a small detail like that get in the way. He was just bursting at the seams to deliver to the Bermudian people, his ultimate 'I told you so' column.

Some people may be surprised to know this but I kind of like Larry. He can be intellectually fastidious, a trait not easily found in Bermuda, and strong in his opinions. I just happen to think that with respect to the current Premier, Dr. Ewart Brown, that Larry tends to lose it and allows his sundry resentments toward the man to cloud his judgment and thus his objectivity.

I have always found Larry an interesting character; in his column of January 13, he asserted that the Premier, is firmly fixated on the 1960s, a notion with which I disagree. To me, Larry appears to reflect a certain black Bermudian cultural type that in some ways is a throwback to the 1950s.

When I was growing up in Bermuda during the 1950s and 60s there were some black Bermudians whose carefully cultivated personas rendered them 'more English than the English'. Certainly Larry fits into that category. How he manages to speak with such a strong English accent after spending a relatively short time in the U.K., is beyond my understanding.

He is not alone in those affectations, though. Other black Bermudians who share the same trait can be found at the higher reaches of the civil service and on both sides of the political aisle.

But they represent such a small minority within the black community of today and do not have the political and cultural sway that they may have had, say, 40 years ago. A significant point that Larry and others like him seem manifestly unwilling to accept.

Another feature of this particular black Bermudian type, both then and now, was their hostility and sense of superiority - to the U.S and in particular, black Americans.

Larry makes no bones about expressing that sense of superiority and his animus toward Dr. Brown, who he and those of his ilk would consider too black American, culturally and politically. Of course, the obverse of that would be to assert that in their eyes one of the biggest sins of the current Premier is that he is simply not 'English' enough.

In a previous column for example where he celebrated the Queen's recent visit, Larry went into a rapture more appropriate for the second coming of Christ. He conveyed that the visit of Her Majesty only once again confirmed how the British connection to Bermuda was still strong and dominant.

I sometime wonder if Larry actually does live in Bermuda or resides in a quaint English village near Dorset. Today's Bermuda has not been that British - other than constitutionally - since the 1950s.

At least culturally, Bermuda, in 2010, has two dominant strains, and neither of them is British. The first, which will really kill him to know, is North American and the other is Caribbean or, as we used to say, West Indian.

Caribbean ancestry

And while the Premier's accent can betray that North American influence, one should not forget that his Caribbean or Jamaican ancestry has also played as big a part - or even a larger one - in who he is today, along with his extensive Bermudian connections.

With respect to those influences, and more to the point, Ewart Brown is no different than a majority of Bermudians, both black and white.

Larry ended part one of his misbegotten litany of woe by almost poetically summing up the Premier's tenure with the following: "Dreams dashed. Hopes gone. Disappointment all round. A now obvious mistake."

He concludes by plaintively asking, "Who will follow?"

Yes indeed, who will follow? The smart money, of course, is on the current Finance Minister Paula Cox, whom Larry also unfairly attacked and disparaged, more recently.

But no matter who follows, their predecessor will leave them with a number of signal achievements that seem likely to benefit them and the party for years to come. And here I am not only referencing policy and legislative achievements, such as a tuition free Bermuda College, free child care and a host of other initiatives that were advanced under his leadership, including the Bermuda Race Relations Initiative's Big Conversation.

From a purely political standpoint, Ewart Brown's greatest gift to his immediate successor is the fact that the combined political opposition now lies in ruins - something he promised during the December 2007 election, lest we forget.

Even the vaunted tea party-like, largely white protest group which Larry fronted during its final days during the tumult over the Uyghar's last summer is no more. Gone the way of the dinosaur.

Most importantly, the party which had stood resolutely opposed to the PLP over the last 40 years, the UBP; and which of late, had largely defined itself by its opposition to one man, Ewart Brown, is now in its death throes. Split in two.

Recent polling indicates that all the new Bermuda Democratic Alliance has done has divided the white vote into two, with neither Opposition party garnering any significant black support.

It seems that despite all of the efforts to fracture PLP support by their obsession with one man, the combined Opposition, have only precipitated their own demise.

Yet Ewart Brown remains and will leave office on his own terms in October, as he promised to do almost four years ago - another inconvenient truth that Larry apparently chose to ignore, along with many others.

Finally, Ewart Brown has demonstrated his commitment to Bermuda in the context of the world which exists today; not the world of yesteryear that in some respects exists only in Larry's somewhat fertile, pseudo-British imagination.

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