Andrew Little: Wanted And Wondered At

Here Comes The Sun: Andrew Little's political career has prospered in no small way by the care he has taken to mask both his ambition and his talent until the most propitious moment. Like Shakespeare's Prince Hal he has imitated the sun; hiding his brilliance behind "base contagious clouds" until the moment "when he please again to be himself" so that "being wanted, he may be more wondered at".

 

HAS THERE EVER BEEN a leader who commanded absolute loyalty? A king, a party boss, a prime minister so blessed with the attributes of leadership that not even one of his barons, ward-heelers or cabinet ministers ever felt moved to ask the question: “Why not me?”

 

Even in the court of King Arthur, Mordred plotted murder and ruin. The “one brief shining moment” that was the Kennedy White House shivered in the shadow of Lyndon Johnson’s unappeasable ambition. On the plane-ride back from Norman Kirk’s Waimate funeral his colleagues lobbied furiously for the numbers to succeed him.

 

The acid of political power dissolves all friendships, all pacts, all solemn pledges of loyalty. All leaders knows this and conduct themselves accordingly. On the battlefield, they bring victory. At the ballot box, more votes than their opponents. On the Government Benches, favourable polls and reliable majorities.

 

The moment a leader fails to furnish the victories, votes and validation promised to his followers, challenges – and challengers – are inevitable.

 

Power belongs to those with courage to take it – and the skill to wield it.

 

Which is why the initial conclusions of Labour’s election review panel made me chuckle. One of the reasons the party performed so poorly, reported the four wise heads appointed to identify where Labour went wrong in 2014, is that its parliamentary caucus failed to unite around the leadership of David Cunliffe.

 

Well, duh!

 

David Cunliffe knew that he faced a caucus full of enemies when he put his name forward for the Labour leadership. What he did not appear to understand was how urgently he needed to neutralise that enmity.

 

In this respect, the behaviour of Mr Cunliffe’s successor is instructive.

 

To begin at the beginning: Andrew Little’s whole parliamentary career appears to have been inspired by Prince Hal’s soliloquy from Shakespeare’s Henry IV, Part One:

 

Yet herein will I imitate the sun, 
Who doth permit the base contagious clouds 
To smother up his beauty from the world, 
That, when he please again to be himself, 
Being wanted, he may be more wonder’d at, 
By breaking through the foul and ugly mists 
Of vapours that did seem to strangle him.

 

There are times when one’s leadership ambitions are better served by keeping them hidden than by openly parading them before one’s colleagues and the world. Like Prince Hal, Mr Little was at pains to smother up his leadership qualities until such time as his party had most need of them.

 



Prince Hal In Glasses? Labour's Andrew Little.

 

And what a masterful job he made of it! As far as most of the political class was concerned there was very little to be hoped for from Mr Little’s wafer-thin victory over Grant Robertson. Commentators almost gloated that Labour’s new leader was everybody’s second choice; had never won a seat; carried neither his caucus nor the party membership; and almost didn’t make it into Parliament at all! Needless to say, the wider electorate’s expectations were similarly modest.

 

But Mr Little, like Prince Hal, understood that:

 

By how much better than my word I am, 
By so much shall I falsify men’s hopes.

 

Far from being “a modest little man, with much to be modest about” – as Winston Churchill famously described his nemesis, Clement Atlee – Mr Little burst out of Labour’s corner with his dander well-and-truly up, landing punches on a Prime Minister whose reaction to this new leader’s wholly unexpected onslaught was almost as disbelieving as the Press Gallery’s.

 

For the first time in a long time the whole of the Labour Party experienced that surge of energy and hope that comes from seeing one’s champion lay low the enemy’s best fighter. MPs, party grandees, union bosses and ordinary members alike heard Mr Little tell the Prime Minister to “cut the crap” and knew that Labour had, at long last, a leader worthy of the name.

 

Mr Cunliffe failed dismally to unite his caucus for the very simple reason that nothing he did gave his enemies cause to cease questioning his right to lead them. Like a medieval king defeated on the field of battle, Mr Cunliffe was forced to endure, through the whole duration of his long retreat, the contemptuous scorn and open hostility of his embarrassed barons.

 

Mr Little, by contrast, having demonstrated the requisite courage and skill, can now present that surest proof of leadership.

 

Followers.

 

This essay was originally published in The Waikato Times, The Taranaki Daily News, The Timaru Herald, The Otago Daily Times and The Greymouth Star of Friday, 12 December 2014.

A Modern Mark Anthony?

All Honourable Men: Is Paul Holmes playing Mark Anthony to John Key's Julius Caesar? In response to Maoridom's attack on the Government's "partial" privatisation programme did he decide to let slip the dogs of Pakeha racism? Is it possible he wrote his grossly offensive Weekend Herald column not to praise, but bury, Clause 9 of the State Owned Enterprises Act?

“CRY ‘HAVOC!’ and let slip the dogs of war!” These are the incendiary words that Mark Anthony puts into the mouth of Julius Caesar’s ghost as he surveys the bloody work of his assassins. Though Mark Anthony insists he’s come “to bury Caesar – not to praise him”, his true purpose is to turn Rome’s citizens against the “honourable men” who have slain his – and Rome’s – best friend.

How would a modern Mark Anthony provoke revolution?

A few years ago, Wellington’s Circa Theatre staged a “modernised” version of Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar in which Mark Anthony’s speech is beamed into a Roman pub. Its motley collection of patrons are at first barely interested in the live television broadcast from Caesar’s funeral, but gradually, word by word, they get drawn into Mark Anthony’s superbly constructed speech until, thoroughly “ruffled up”, they pour onto the streets in “rage and mutiny”.

Equally, a modern Mark Anthony might avail himself of talk-back radio, or the columns of a mass-circulation newspaper, to capture the attention of his countrymen, ruffle up their spirits, and “put a tongue” into every one of their wounds and grievances.

Were he in a position to do so, a modern Mark Anthony might cry ‘Havoc!’ and let slip the dogs of war across the whole media: television, radio, Internet and press.

But to what purpose? Mark Anthony had two: to revenge Caesar death, and to deal a death-blow to the tottering Roman Republic. How better to achieve these aims than by setting the Roman mob against Brutus: Caesar’s assassin and the Republic’s staunchest defender?

If we translate the Shakespearian drama into a contemporary New Zealand context, who best fits the description of Mark Anthony? Who has stepped forward to defend Caesar and attack his enemies? Who took advantage of a solemn civic occasion to shout in the ears of the sleeping dogs of war? Who, with carefully chosen words, has ruffled up the spirits of his countrymen to rage and mutiny?

Who else but Mr Paul Holmes?

From the “bully pulpit” of his column in the weekend edition of the NZ Herald, was it not Mr Holmes who unleashed a storm of criticism against the whole of Maoridom? Did he not call for Waitangi Day – “a bullshit day”, “a day of lies” – to be abandoned, and for the Treaty itself to be cast aside? Was it not Mr Holmes who, in his rhetorical fury at Waitangi Day protest, suggested that every person of Maori descent was guilty of “bashing their babies”? Did he not say that if the ghosts of family members who fought and died at Gallipoli, El Alamein and Casino were somehow able to witness the event, none could be persuaded that Waitangi Day was “anything but filth”?

In unleashing this vicious and indiscriminate attack against Waitangi Day, the Treaty, and all things Maori, Mr Holmes must have known that he was striking at the very heart of the relationship which binds the Maori Party to the National Party. Nor would it have escaped him that, by rousing the sleeping dogs of Pakeha racism, he was putting that relationship in danger. Given the precarious balance of political forces in the House of Representatives, why would he want to do any of these things?

Unless, Mark Anthony-like, his purpose was to assist his beleaguered friend, the Prime Minister, by toppling something that, already fatally weakened, was about to fall?

The Maori Party’s concern at the damage even the partial sale of state assets could inflict upon the Treaty Partnership, and its threat to withdraw from its Confidence & Supply Agreement with the Government, have clearly been interpreted as an attack on John Key. A case of “E tu Tariana?” Has he voiced in private, what he cannot publicly declare: that the judicially-defined “Treaty Partnership” has outlived its usefulness?

Is that why Mr Holmes cried ‘Havoc!’ and let slip the dogs of Pakeha racism? Not to praise Clause 9 – but to bury it?

This essay was originally published in The Dominion Post, The Otago Daily Times, The Waikato Times, The Taranaki Daily News, The Timaru Herald and The Greymouth Star of Friday, 17 February 2012.