‘These words will cost ten thousand [votes] this day…’

There is a scene in Shakespeare’s ‘Henry VI Part III’, where the newly crowned King Edward IV sends the Earl of Warwick – famously known as ‘the Kingmaker’: and arguably, the sole reason for Edward even being on that throne to begin with - on a diplomatic mission to France.

The idea is to secure a strategic marriage between King Edward and Lady Bona; sister to France’s King Lewis. And a lot hangs in the balance. Not only would this union effectively end a war that had lasted almost 100 years… but it would also shore up King Edward’s own (hotly contested) claim to the English crown.

There is, however, a small problem. Shakespeare’s King Edward IV - and it seems the historical one was not much different – comes across as the sort of randy teenager you might encounter in movies like ‘American Pie’. Unable to contain his naked lust for the more attractive Lady Jane Grey… he abruptly decides to marry her instead: and the news reaches Warwick’s ears, literally seconds after he himself had only just proposed marriage, on the King’s behalf, to the Lady Bona in France.

Understandably enough, Warwick flies into a rage. He has been humiliated; betrayed; and – much worse, in his own eyes – ‘underestimated’, by the same young whippersnapper he had only just crowned himself. And right there, on the spot, he disavows his allegiance with the House of York; and unites with his sworn enemy – Queen Margaret of Anjou – to “revenge [Edward’s] wrong to Lady Bona, and replant Henry in his former state….”

Now: that’s as far as I’ll go with the Shakespearean analogy… partly because the ensuing battle did not actually go very well, either for the House of Lancaster, or (even less) for Warwick himself…

But partly also because… hey! That all happened over 600 years ago now. Surely, enough water has flown under London Bridge, to wash all those historical grievances away…?

Hmm. I’m not so sure, myself. Leaving aside that the United Kingdom’s present predicament seems to have changed uncannily little, since the 1450s – only with ‘clownish Prime Ministers’, instead of ‘clownish Kings’ – I would argue that the entire political situation, as stage-managed by Shakespeare, remains every bit as relevant in 2022.

So, just as I randomly picked one scene, from one Shakespeare play [note: and I could have picked almost any other from that tetralogy] I will now pick an equally random, recent political event here in Malta.

It concerns the ‘War of the Roses’ that is currently engulfing the Nationalist Party; but again, the same proviso applies. I could just as easily have cast Prime Minister Robert Abela in the role of King Edward (as indeed I did last week: without any Shakespearean allusions.)

Without much further ado, then… onto our play.

Act One, Scene One

Former PN Leader Adrian Delia – who, as we all know, was deposed by rebels in 2020 - accuses Loving Malta editor Julian Bonnici of ‘high treason’ [translation: he sues him for libel] over an article claiming that Delia had exchanged dozens of messages with the arch-villain-of-the-piece, Yorgen Fenech.

Interestingly enough, the claim itself had been made separately (and earlier) by none other than Jason Azzopardi, of the same House of… I mean, Nationalist Party…

… and I’ll stop there for now, because already you can see the emergence of a ‘Temple Garden’ scene: where the ‘disputing generals’ of the Nationalist Party gather to pluck red-or-white roses from a bush: and thus, take up their respective positions, ahead of an all-out power struggle for the party’s throne.

Representing the ‘House Of Lancaster’ – and therefore, in their own eyes, the only true, established, God-anointed heirs – are the self-styled “Blue Heroes”: and weighing in on the opposite corner, is the detested usurper Adrian Delia, and the ‘Blackshirts’ who support him. (‘Red Rose, White Rose’; ‘Blue Hero, Black Shirt’… it’s all already there, staring us in the face…)

But there is more: closing an eye at a few (rather stark) differences in both character and appearance… Adrian Delia himself makes a very well-cast Richard Plantagenet.

Like the ‘Grand Old Duke of York’, he feels he has an entirely legitimate claim to that throne. Likewise, he can also reason (however inaccurately) that the current leader Bernard Grech – much like Shakespeare’s Henry VI – is actually destroying ‘his’ [Delia’s] party, through ‘weakness and indecision’…

Most importantly of all, however: also like the ‘Grand Old Duke of York’, Adrian Delia enjoys the support of (very approximately) ‘10,000 men’… and he has proven, on more than one occasion, to be perfectly capable of ‘marching them up to the top of the [Fosos]; and marching them down again’…

He, can in a word, mobilise supporters: who – regardless of any internal divisions within that party – would still, ultimately, be voting for the Nationalist Party as a whole. And this also means that, in spite of everything… the PN still needs to keep those ‘blackshirts’ on board, if it is to have a realistic stab at the greatest prize of them all…

… the Kingdom of Malta itself.

Now: do I really need to remind the audience, that the ‘great battle’ for that very prize – General Election 2022 - is now scheduled to take place in just a few weeks’ time?

But back to our play:

Act One, Scene Two

In the absence of his own lawyer, Adrian Delia decides – in purely Shakespearean fashion – to cross-examine Julian Bonnici in court. This prompts Therese Commodini Cachia, no less – a former pretender to the throne herself; a proud member of the ‘Blue Heroes’; and a sworn enemy of Adrian Delia… in other words, every inch the equivalent of our ‘Margaret of Anjou’ – to tweet that:

“Do you find the questioning of a journalist by an MP in his own case as surreal and in utterly poor taste as I do? True, he can; but doesn’t anyone think this flies in the face of the press freedom MPs should be fighting for?!”

And to be perfectly honest: she even sounds a little like Queen Margaret there (she was, after all, the one to originally say: ‘Off with his head!’… and inspire Lewis Carroll’s future Queen of Hearts…)

Act Two, Scene One

Faced with this unwelcome (and, let’s face it, entirely unnecessary) public skirmish, King Bernard Grech summons the two rival renegades to council – or does he? Because according to some sources, he may just as well have communicated with them using carrier-pigeons…

But whatever the details: Grech’s response was to ‘mediate’ between the two sides, behind closed doors… whereupon we were all assured, by a party herald, that the dispute had been ‘resolved’.

But…

Act two, Scene Two

The PN’s ‘Duke of Balzan’ – i.e., local councillor Andre Grech: an admittedly minor, but significant, character – resigns his Dukedom in protest.

“Adrian Delia was scolded [by Grech] because we had gone to the Fosos with [Team Delia] T-shirts; and after Comodini Cachia’s comment, we’re saying the party is united […] I’m sorry but I cannot be part of a party of haters…”

And just like that, from one moment to the next: the ‘War of the Roses’ is back in full swing…

Hmmm. Yes, I can fully see the Nationalist Party ‘trouncing’ Labour at the forthcoming election, under such circumstances. After all, what could possibly go wrong, with a military strategy that pits two halves of the same army in mortal combat against each other… just hours before the same army is expected to lay siege to the walls of Government?

Honestly, Shakespeare would have had a field-day with a plot like that. For even if the details may vary drastically… that scene I described above, from Henry VI Part III, finds counterparts in almost every aspect of the PN’s current predicament.

If King Edward IV thwarted Warwick’s diplomatic intentions – plunging his own reign into chaos, as a result – it was, very simply, because he just couldn’t keep his ‘Royal Pecker in his Royal Trousers’. He allowed his lust – an ‘animal passion’, if there ever was one – to cloud his better judgment; in a nutshell, he let his emotion get the better of reason.

‘Lust, hatred, hatred, lust’… in this particular context, it doesn’t change very much at all. The Blue Heroes have time and again proven that they simply cannot control their undying hatred for Adrian Delia, and everything he represents… to the extent that they are even willing to scuttle even their own party’s only hope of triumph, in order to achieve…

… um… what, exactly? OK, that’s the part I myself haven’t fully worked out yet (for, to misquote another Shakespeare play: ‘though this be method, yet there is madness in it’…)

… but what I don’t see represented, anywhere at all in this drama, is the deadpan rationality – the calm, cold, dispassionate analysis; the Machiavellian astuteness… the political ‘nous’, if you will – represented by the Earl of Warwick in Shakespeare’s Henry VI.

And this can only mean that the final act of our own play – which, for obvious reasons, cannot be written yet – can only be even more tragic, and even more catastrophic, than the real War of the Roses.

For the plot has now been driven well beyond the point of no return. As Shakespeare’s Edward IV himself puts it, in that disastrous ‘parley’ before the walls of York – in full view of his own father’s severed head, affixed to the battlements - ‘These words will cost ten thousand lives this day…’

Replace ‘lives’ with ‘votes’, and… well, something tells me even the ‘ten thousand’ figure may yet prove accurate…