Macbeth, Nick Clegg and Simon Danczuk

We fail?
But screw your courage to the sticking place,
And we'll not fail.

Shakespeare`s Macbeth has haunted me all my life. I first studied it in 1973 for my English Literature “O” level. It cropped up again when I was studying Literature and Philosophy some 5 years ago. Its a long time between being 15 and being 57. Yet the play speaks to me in so many layered and significant ways Those 42 years between have shown me the fragility, the weakness, the disturbance, the shadow, the fear and the dispair that can exist within us all. I have seen all those features of the Play wherever I have been. I have seen the characters from Macbeth in the places I have worked , in the political campaigns and political parties that I have been involved with and with individuals and outlooks I have come across.. I have felt the dispair myself at times. At 15 these words struck me and at times the barb has been deeper

“To-morrow, and to-morrow, and to-morrow,
Creeps in this petty pace from day to day,
To the last syllable of recorded time;
And all our yesterdays have lighted fools
The way to dusty death. Out, out, brief candle!
Life's but a walking shadow, a poor player,
That struts and frets his hour upon the stage,
And then is heard no more. It is a tale
Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury,
Signifying nothing.”

The ambition, the ruthlessness, the bullying I have seen it all. Lady Macbeth is in all of us. Her ambition hides the emptiness she feels and we cope with those times by creating the Lady Macbeth Character. We deny it but it is there

“Glamis thou art, and Cawdor, and shalt be
What thou art promis'd. Yet do I fear thy nature,
It is too full o' th' milk of human kindness
To catch the nearest way. “

We rationalise , we hide from ourselves, we say what is done is done and yet we know iotherwiseHow now,

“My lord, why do you keep alone,
Of sorriest fancies your companions making,
Using those thoughts which should indeed have died
With them they think on? Things without all remedy
Should be without regard: what's done, is done.”

Ambition, allows us to drive ourselves on, Simon Danczuk had become the witchfinder and fought with monsters in the abyss. The problem was that the monsters fought back and the abyss looked into him. The realisation that we are all broken, all imperfect frightens us. If we turn into Crusaders fearing and hunting the devil within we hide from our inner fears.

“Stars, hide your fires; Let not light see my black and deep desires.”

In 2010 sheer ambition led Nick Clegg to become Deputy Prim -minister. He took his party into destruction and oblivion. Now I hear they cannot even get a list together in Mid and West Wales where they hold a regional seat and hold Constituency seats at both Assembly and Parliamentary level. I was told that their membership was below 2000 in Wales and I note that in South Wales West they have been only able to find two candidates. What price they have paid and all that Nick Clegg did was to turn them into a party of Yellow Tories. Shakespeare could not do better and now they are led by the man of rags and patches Tim Farron.

Let me conclude with another two quotes. This is the key to us all and our salvation to understand one another.

'Oh, it is easy for the one who stands outside the prison-wall of pain to exhort and teach the one who suffers” Aeschylus,Prometheus Bound

“But the worst enemy you can meet will always be yourself; you lie in wait for yourself in caverns and forests. Lonely one, you are going the way to yourself! And your way goes past yourself, and past your seven devils! You will be a heretic to yourself and witch and soothsayer and fool and doubter and unholy one and villain. You must be ready to burn yourself in your own flame: how could you become new, if you had not first become ashes?”

Friedrich Nietzsche, Thus Spoke Zarathustra

Macbeth tells us of the human condition, it describes the worst we can become and it is important, frightening and illuminating what it tells me of others and myself. Particularly of the political world and the menagerie of individuals we meet there.