Boris, the Bard and the battle for Hamilton West

This column was first published as an editorial for Stuff’s newspapers The Press and Dominion Post.

OPINION: The week began with heated arguments about whether the plays of William Shakespeare are still relevant. We didn’t really need to ask. Scarcely believable political dramas involving hubris, ambition and failure in Hamilton West and London showed how many of his themes are eternal.

Let’s go to London first, where British Prime Minister Liz Truss resigned after a mere 45 days in office. Even New Zealand’s Mike Moore outlasted her by two weeks and it was an unwinnable election that took him out, not his own party. That bit came later.

There are other similarities even if the link seems spurious. Like Labour in 1990, Truss was trying and failing to sell an enormously unpopular programme. She had a vision for a low-tax, high-growth economy or a form of neoliberalism that would turn London into Singapore on the Thames.

Where there was once Reaganomics and Rogernomics, she offered Trussonomics.

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Rather than voters, it was the markets themselves who rejected Truss and chancellor Kwasi Kwarteng’s mini-budget, which might surprise those who vaguely remember that neoliberalism was supposed to be the expression of the so-called “invisible hand” of the market.

Kwarteng took the rap and Truss U-turned. But her position had become untenable. After a volatile debate about fracking, it could be said that Truss’ leadership was itself well and truly fracked.

The other potential lesson for New Zealand is about tax cuts, although Leader of the Opposition Christopher Luxon has taken care to distinguish National’s proposed tax cuts from Truss’ tax cuts. But you can be sure Labour will try to exploit the connection in 2023.

The post-Brexit Conservatives remain a party without a clear sense of who they are and what they stand for – again like Labour in the early 90s. The chaos is such that The Economist magazine now talks of Britaly.

What happens next? The more moderate Rishi Sunak is probably the leading contender to replace Truss. There may be a moral argument that such an unpopular government should seek a new electoral mandate, but there is no requirement to call an early election.

If one was called, the Conservatives would be trounced by Keir Starmer’s Labour.

Can Boris Johnson make a return? Nothing is impossible and he still has his supporters.

Which brings us back to Shakespeare. It is not just Johnson’s unsuccessful attempt to write a biography of the Bard to follow his biography of Winston Churchill that brings Shakespeare to mind.

A week after Johnson left 10 Downing St, William Ruff, the president of the Nottingham Shakespeare Society, delivered a talk on “What Boris should have learned from Shakespeare”. Ruff ran through relevant themes in Macbeth, The Tempest, and Antony and Cleopatra before arriving at Measure for Measure.

“All leaders should read Measure for Measure carefully,” Ruff explained. “It is a play whose opening words are ‘Of government’ and which presents a variety of issues bound up in the concept of justice. Crucially the play shows us, through the character of Angelo, that you can’t impose laws on people if you lack moral probity yourself and if you break the very laws you have been appointed to uphold. Angelo may be faithful to the letter (as opposed to the spirit) of the law but his lust for Isabella shows he cannot govern himself.”

Meanwhile, in Hamilton West, a by-election has been scheduled for December 10.

Compared to the drama playing out in London, Hamilton West might look like amateur theatre.

But while errant ex-Labour MP Gaurav Sharma may not be a figure of the magnitude of Johnson or even Truss, he is someone whose sense of self-belief appears to outstrip his personal achievements and who seems to be driven by a need for attention as much as burning political conviction.

That makes him far from unusual in New Zealand politics or in politics elsewhere. Shakespeare probably would have recognised him and others like him.