The political comings and goings of the past week put one in mind of one of Shakespeare's lesser known and more chaotic works, says Simon Schama.
I don't know about you but my favourite stage direction has always been "alarums and excursions". Productions of the lesser Shakespeare history plays - Henry VI parts I to III - fill the stage with both. Platoons of the chain-mailed and helmeted clunk back and forth as best as the wardrobe department allows; prop swords clanging; ragged banners waving and a lot of period shouting above the fray.
Beyond the Fringe, the brilliant 1960s satire of Messrs Miller, Bennett, Cook and Moore was barely this side of parody when they barked commands of "Hereford get thee to Gloucester; Hampshire prithee send to my lord of Worcester; York comes anon to Leicester.." Chaos reigns rather than a Henry or a Richard, but we can't stop spectating, listening and hoping it somehow turns out for the best.
Which was, for a while, more or less how it felt watching the dizzy events of the past week unfold. While nothing seemed to be operating according to plan, bugles and drums had been replaced by the imperious chirp of mobile phones summoning troops of pundits to wherever the battle was thickest.
"Master Robinson, hi thee to Downing Street for matters of much moment are afoot!"
"Good my Lord of Dimbleby, I beseech thee, rest a while from thine irksome toils for methinks dawn breaks yonder over Wood Lane."
In the circumstances it wasn't surprising that snapping and snarling broke out, with hypercaffeinated and underslept journalists and politicians on the point of drawing blades and having at it.
For a while, too, the mood of the country seemed no better than that of the commentariat. As the inconclusiveness of the verdict sunk in, no-one seemed happy. Whatever each bloc of voters wanted they hadn't got it, including in some places, apparently, the opportunity to vote at all.
What followed in the next few days didn't do much to improve the public mood, for the cross-party poker game seemed to reproduce precisely the low tactical habits of the political classes that the electorate said they were voting to reform. All those who had posed as squeaky clean crusaders, champions of the New Politics, were now suddenly exposed, beneath the sharp suits and perfect haircuts, as horse-traders in power.
But memories are short. The electorate was alienated from the political system by the revelations of expense account abuses not by the possibility that should there be a hung parliament, so some sort of negotiation across party lines would be inevitable.
Bluff and counter-bluff might seem a far cry from the expression of the people's will, but elsewhere they are standard practice. In the Netherlands, where the jockeying of factions reaches far back into the 17th Century history of city governments in Amsterdam or Utrecht, it can take months rather than days or weeks for a coalition to be put together that can command a reliable majority in the legislature. Should a Dutch government be formed with suspicious speed, the wary public assumes that some sort of fishy arrangement has been made prior to the election, or else that a hastily cobbled together administration will be unlikely to survive the shocks of economic or foreign policy crises.
The difference here, of course, is that old habits die hard. The lather of indignation in both print and live media as cars bearing parties of Greeks and Trojans sallied forth between this Westminster encampment and that, was stoked by the inconvenience caused to partisans in having to abandon the stock antagonisms that had served them so well for so long, and instead submit to a niceness implant so that everyone could Get Along for Blighty.
However it all works out, though, the short-term result has been precisely the abandonment of the predictable posturing, the incapacity to break from the robotic party line, that the polling public by a large majority claims it has long yearned for.
In any event, nothing seemed to become the revolutionary election of 2010 better than the way its endgame played out. All the boys were on their best behaviour and managed to rise above the usual script.
Go faster
The outgoing prime minister who, for a day or so had been excoriated for last-ditch Machiavellian obstructionism, made a farewell speech of affecting grace and candour, ending in a moment of un-Brown-like public emotion by declaring that the "job" of being husband and father counted for more than being in charge of the destinies of the country.
The awkwardness of the comparison only made it the more moving, and the scene of the exiting leader holding the hands of his small sons as he walked from power to powerlessness, the more unforgettable, for it was the redeeming transformation of a politician back to a private person, as if Prospero had broken his sorcerer's wand and thrown the pieces to the sea.
The throwing of flowers rather than brickbats continued with the remarks of the incoming Prime Minister, who not only paid handsome tribute to his predecessor, but sounded a note of social concern that could have come from the playbook of each of his rival's parties. Whatever pain lay ahead, he said, the poor and the elderly should not have to pay the severest price, nor should a decent British government ever be indifferent to their plight.
It was hard, at that point, for anyone living a transatlantic life, not to be struck by the glaring differences between the political cultures of the United States and the United Kingdom. In the US, all things British still have the reputation for being stuck in grandiose ceremony, to the detriment of getting down to the brass tacks of business.
Lordly editorials in the American broadsheet press condescend to congratulate us on sorting things out so that we may in our own quaint way deal with our economic predicament. But the way governments in each country replace each other belies the mistaken truism. It's the US which is shackled ball and chain to an imperial way of doings. It takes months for the lumbering apparatus of presidential administration to change hands. An entire transition team, composed not of civil servants but of political appointees and advisors, moves into training quarters as a preparatory vanguard.
The whole business is cumbersome, partisan and, needless to say, very expensive. Even after the inauguration of the new President, the necessity of Senate confirmation - not just for senior cabinet positions but a whole range of posts including ambassadorships, postmaster-general, military commands - can delay the arrival of a complete administration for something like a whole year, by which time it's already preparing for the next mid-term election. By contrast, the British process moves in a matter of hours, with majestic simplicity to replace one government with another. It's our short way with pomp that the American Founding Fathers would, I think, have recognised as what they had in mind for their own republic.
And then there is the matter of the moral aura of the governance to which newly elected administrations are called. Government itself has become such a dirty word in populist US culture that those who go into public service almost have to apologise for joining the dark side.
No matter how big the disaster, natural or financial, it is always an uphill battle to persuade the public that the oversight of the federal government is not some sort of invasion by an alien intruder, a mortal threat to American liberty. To be a good conservative especially is to be armed against any and every exercise of governing power other than military.
It is otherwise here. Conservatism in the 19th Century, especially under Benjamin Disraeli, was born from a concern to guard against an unfettered economic system, not in uncritical preservation of it. It was a Tory administration that unapologetically introduced legislation to watch over the health and sanitation of a Victorian Britain that was short of both.
But all parties, then and since, have bought into the faith, first articulated in the second part of Tom Paine's Rights of Man, that British freedom would not be compromised but on the contrary made good by the provision of basic decencies for the poor, the elderly and the infirm. It was that inheritance that David Cameron seemed to shoulder in his first speech as Prime Minister to the country.
"When it shall be said that in any country in the world that... my jails are empty of prisoners, my streets of beggars, the aged are not in want the taxes are not oppressive, the rational world is my friend because I am the friend of its happiness, when these things can be said then may that country boast its constitution and its government."
It's in the nature of politics, of course, to raise our eyebrows as we listen to Tom Paine raising our hopes and our spirits. But it's in the nature of being British, I think, to take a damned good crack at it nonetheless.
Below is a selection of your comments.
It is not just Henry VI that has direct allusions to the present political situation. There is a delightful irony in that the latest RSC production is Anthony and Cleopatra which I saw in the run-up to the election. The ruling coalition (triumvirate) is threatened by an outsider (Pompey). They come to a political agreement after which Pompey is killed in battle by Octavius Caesar. Caesar then proceeds to kill the other two men in the coalition (Anthony and Lepidus) and assume absolute power. Cleopatra (Paddy Ashdown/ Charles Kennedy?) then kills herself rather than be part of Caesar's victory parade through the city. Just a ripping yarn or does Shakespeare still talk directly to us over the centuries, I wonder.
Peter Martin, Stratford upon Avon
... and when the alarums and excursions of the last 10 days have died away, Schama's apt analogy can return to Beyond the Fringe: "Oh, saucy Worcester, dost thou lie so still?"
Jane Lawrence, London, UK
Depending on your views of politics, it ranges from Much Ado About Nothing to All's Well That Ends Well (or possibly The Tempest).
Megan, Cheshire, UK
"Thine irksome toils"? Surely it should be "thy irksome toils". A quibble, yes, but not one that I (background: middling grammar school & modest teacher training college) should have expected with Simon Schama (background: scholarship to independent school & Oxbridge). The teacher in me suggests you try using my/mine to check how each fits in the phrase, rather than (as pupils are often tempted to do) use vocabulary that they believe "sounds posh" to impress.
Brenda, Bishop's Stortford
Brenda, I'm afraid I have to leap to the defence of Schama in this case lest your quibble be allowed to stand. It would be "thine" in this case since "iksome" begins with a vowel, and in Shakespeare's English (which is being sent up here) the possessive pronoun is required to add a paragogic "n" to prevent an awkward vowel glide. Using your own suggestion, you might have come across the phrase "mine eyes", say in the famous hymn "Mine eyes have seen the glory of the coming of the lord".
Anthony Bone, Bristol
The use of thine is not incorrect, just antiquated - see psalm 121 for verification using your suggestion.
LD, Wales
It is so very British to snobbishly look down on the American system in response to some offense that we seem to have caused. Before you criticize us again, however, remember this: in the time that it takes to watch Jeremy Paxman grumble on election night about the morality of allowing a minority to govern, Bill Clinton and George Bush (who both led the country in the face of opposition Congresses) could have been sworn in. Furthermore, while the British people complain about an "unelected Prime Minister" in a system where only MPs are elected (thereby judging the prime minister as if he were a president in a system that rejects presidency), Americans elect a President and a Congress separately. Presidents and Congresses serve specific terms in office that leave no confusion. We fully recognize the problems with our system. But yours is nothing to cheer about.
Mintaro Oba, Washington, DC, US
It is so very American to accuse any Brit observing differences between our cultures of being "snobbish". I don't claim to know anything much about the finer points of handing over the reins of power, but I have lived in the US for 10 years (after 50+ in England) and I can say without any fear of contradiction that on a day-to-day level, the US is infinitely more bureaucratic than the UK. As for the accusation of "snobbery", where is this coming from? Is this person still stuck somewhere in 1776? Can't you just make an honest comparison without the name-calling?
David Ballantyne, Raleigh, NC, US
What struck me most was how deeply the "first past the post system" was ingrained in the British mind. "The Tories won the election because they had the most seats" was a frequent comment. As a Frenchman living in Ireland I found this baffling. Here, Fianna Fail has had the largest number of seats in every election since 1937 but they have lost quite a few of those elections because Fine Gael and Labour had a combined majority.
Philippe Drevait, Dublin, Ireland
More please of Simon Schama. As always he places the present into a historical context that is informative and strangely comforting.
James Munro, Glasgow, Scotland
Let's hope the quote from Tom Paine has resonance with the new coalition as a guiding light. My grandfather came from Thetford, Paine's birthplace - though his ideas on the Rights of Man fuelled the French and American Revolutions, there's still a hell of a way to go.
Anthony Brown (East Anglia exile), Paradise, South Australia
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