In Bermuda it’s never been uncommon for the buck to be passed hither, thither and yon.

There have always been those among us who cheerfully accept credit for their successes ­­— even successes they only played minimal roles in — while side-stepping all responsibility for failure and pointing the finger of blame at others.

But then, as has been said many, many times, victory always has a hundred fathers while defeat is invariably an orphan.

This old maxim seems to have become the unofficial motto of too many of our public figures because these days in Bermudian politics the buck seems to stop nowhere at all.

Assigning culpability while ducking accountability has become as much a Great Bermuda Pastime as football or cricket, but it’s a far less engaging diversion than either of those sports.

The wearying sense of stalemate and mutual suspicion which characterises so much of Bermudian public life now has turned local politics into an endless blame-game.

And while polarising hyper-partisanship may make for good election strategy, it does absolutely nothing to advance the interests of Bermuda or Bermudians.

For the flip-side of finding nothing but fault in the other side is, certainly by inference, to claim a monopoly on wisdom — and having all the answers — for yourself.

But positioning yourself as the tireless champion of great ends means nothing unless you also come up with concrete methods for achieving them. And such fine detail is almost always conspicuous by its absence from the self-serving rhetoric of our more zealous party political propagandists.

The very concept of adopting bipartisan approaches to our more intransigent problems has become a topic for some manufactured and particularly poisonous partisan wrangling in recent weeks.

When even bipartisanship is used as a partisan wedge issue to whip up fear, to paint one party or the other as being utterly disdainful of compromise, consensus and cooperation, you know the blinkers so many of our politicians and their cheerleaders wear remain firmly in place.

Today there are no exclusively One Bermuda Alliance problems, no exclusively Progressive Labour Party problems. There are only Bermuda’s problems.

And the Island’s future lies in partnership, not disunity, in increasing interdependence, not the construction of still more barriers to cooperation.

The roles of our political parties should be complementary, not pretexts for further divisiveness. For surely their goals are the same — ensuring economic progress, equality of opportunity and social justice for all Bermudians.

Constructive engagement, whether on the floors of the House of Assembly or the Senate or in the joint select committees which provide legislative mechanisms for bipartisanship, should be an overriding imperative for Bermuda’s politicians. Because embracing the common cause rather than fuelling discord for short-term partisan gain is more urgent now than ever before.

Finding solutions to vexing difficulties such as containing spiralling healthcare costs, paying for an enormously expensive new Acute Care Wing at the hospital and, most crucially, revitalising a stubbornly underperforming economy transcend party allegiance.

All of our best efforts are required, all of our know-how, all of our goodwill.

We live in an era when it’s been said “history moves with the tramp of earthquake feet”, when any failure to acknowledge and adapt to the fast-changing circumstances can prove fatal to a community’s best interests.

Time and events do not stand still. Indeed, change is perhaps the one immutable law of life.

The road to a full economic recovery for Bermuda remains a long one and the pace demanded of us remains consistently urgent. Our situation is such that we should be looking to the future with a shared sense of purpose, not deepening the artificial divisions in our society for reasons of political self-interest. We simply can’t afford to keep passing the buck.