{"id":1093,"date":"2016-07-07T15:32:37","date_gmt":"2016-07-07T14:32:37","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blog.iese.edu\/leggett\/?p=1093"},"modified":"2016-07-12T09:13:50","modified_gmt":"2016-07-12T08:13:50","slug":"brexit-referendum-lady-macbeth-strikes-once-again","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.iese.edu\/leggett\/2016\/07\/07\/brexit-referendum-lady-macbeth-strikes-once-again\/","title":{"rendered":"Brexit Referendum: Lady Macbeth [Macgove] Strikes Once Again!\u00a0"},"content":{"rendered":"

Shakespeare\u00a0could have written\u00a0this plot to oust\u00a0Boris Johnson\u00a0from the leadership race <\/span><\/a> to become the UK\u2019s next prime minister<\/strong>. Or maybe we should give the honour to\u00a0Nicholas Machiavelli<\/strong>? Or maybe it was\u00a0George Osborne<\/strong>\u2019s manoeuvres from behind the gates of his mansion in Buckinghamshire that deserve the honour?<\/p>\n

Isn\u2019t it strange that\u00a0<\/strong>the wife of one of Boris Johnson\u2019s closest collaborators in the Brexit\u00a0referendum<\/strong>, the\u00a0Daily Mail<\/em>\u00a0journalist, Sarah Vine<\/strong>,\u00a0accidentally sent a damning email<\/a><\/strong> relating to Boris Johnson<\/strong>\u00a0to some unknown person called Newman who then proceeded to put the contents of the email into the public domain by sending it to\u00a0Sky News<\/em><\/strong>? It was all a great mistake, according to Mr Gove\u2019s wife.<\/p>\n

\"Post<\/p>\n

Now Mr. Johnson is out of the race<\/strong> and the path is clear for Mr. Gove to contest the leadership, something which he repeatedly told everyone was an office he was unsuited for. Suddenly now he has become suited for it. Even Machiavelli would be hard put to think up this episode. Perhaps\u00a0the comparison between Mrs. Gove and Lady Macbeth<\/strong>\u00a0may be one analogy that can be drawn. Another analogy being branded about is Michael Gove\u2019s treatment of Boris Johnson, one time close friend and ally,\u00a0 which relates to\u00a0Julius Caesar\u2019s last words before he was assassinated; \u2018et tu, Brute\u2019<\/strong>.<\/p>\n

Michael Gove<\/strong>\u00a0is reported over and over throughout the years saying\u00a0he did not want to be prime minister<\/strong>\u00a0and was unsuited for the job, \u201cThere is a special quality you need that is indefinable, I know I don\u2019t have it<\/strong>\u201d, Gove told a reporter. Now, of course, he is suitable.\u00a0 But this plotting must have taken months to evolve. May be there is a little of the false humility of Charles Dickens\u2019 character, Uriah Heep, about Gove.<\/p>\n

\"Lady
Screenshot of Sarah Vine latests articles from Daily Mail online<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

It is no secret that\u00a0Mr. Johnson was broadly in favour of Europe before the referendum campaign\u00a0began. Mr. Gove, who was a well known Euro-sceptic, persuaded Johnson\u00a0to join the Brexit group <\/span><\/a><\/strong>, according to a report in the conservative newspaper\u00a0The Telegraph,<\/em>\u00a0during a dinner party on the 16th<\/sup>\u00a0February last.\u00a0Gove needed a formidable campaigner<\/strong> to give Brexit more weight, and Boris Johnson was the right person<\/strong>.<\/p>\n

But during the campaign,\u00a0Gove and his wife spent weekends at the country residence of George Osborne<\/strong>\u00a0at Dorneywood in Buckinghamshire,\u00a0where Osborne pushed for the position of Chancellor of the Exchequer if Gove became the new prime minister. Osborne likewise perused this with Boris Johnson. Johnson agreed to it verbally, but refused to do so in writing, according to new reports. Then along comes another Brexit contender for the leadership,\u00a0Andrea Leadsom<\/strong>. She\u00a0agreed to drop her campaign for leadership if Boris Johnson offered her the Chancellorship<\/strong>, which he did, but again not in writing. She then withdrew her support.<\/p>\n

\"A
A print of Lady Macbeth from Mrs. Anna Jameson’s 1832 analysis of Shakespeare’s Heroines, Characteristics of Women. Author: Kenny Meadows. Folger Shakespeare Library Digital Image Collection<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Gove waited till the last moment to inform Johnson<\/strong>\u00a0through a third party that\u00a0he no longer supported him and had to decide to run himself<\/strong>. Other Conservative politicians such as\u00a0Raab<\/strong>\u00a0and\u00a0Bole<\/strong>\u00a0followed Gove. Now Johnson\u2019s supporters were saying, \u201cHe (Johnson)<\/i>\u00a0hasn\u2019t been double crossed, he was triple crossed<\/strong>\u201d. It transpires that Gove had told Theresa May long before the final day that he intended to run.<\/p>\n

But, we may ask after this rather strange episode, is there any wonder\u00a0why the trustworthiness of public figures is under scrutiny by the general public? <\/span><\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n

But\u00a0this distrust has spread right across the board and not just to politicians<\/strong>. Last week, for example, I read an article by\u00a0Peter Sutherland<\/strong>, the present UN Commissioner for Refugees commenting on Brexit, in which he\u00a0basically said that the result could not be accepted and it needed to be overturned<\/strong>. Shortly after this I was listening to a well known\u00a0radio discussion programme on why Brexit had succeeded<\/strong>. I was surprised at how\u00a0each of the participants in turn rejected Mr. Sutherland\u2019s stance outright<\/strong>.<\/p>\n

Sutherland has enormous influence in the UK and elsewhere, due to his political and business experience as a former attorney general in Ireland, a EU commissioner, Director of GATT, chairman of Goldman Sachs and Barclays Bank, none of which was relevant for them.\u00a0\u00a0They associated him with big business interests<\/strong>\u00a0and thus being tainted, and dismissed anything he had to say on the Brexit result<\/strong>.<\/p>\n

This trend of a rejection of the credibility of well known figures<\/strong>\u00a0represents not only rejection of personalities but also\u00a0a rejection of the relevance of their positions<\/strong>, and experience. Whether we like\u00a0Sutherland<\/strong>\u00a0or not, it is clear that\u00a0his credibility as a public figure only exists for those who agree with him<\/strong>. The Conservative leadership race in London adds to this scepticism about the credibility of well-known figures.<\/p>\n

The story of the leadership race in the UK continues. John Le Carre would find it hard to get a better plot to write on<\/strong>. As one writer put it \u201cIt makes the House of Cards look like Teletubbies\u201d.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

to become the UK\u2019s next prime minister. Or maybe we should give the honour to\u00a0Nicholas Machiavelli? Or maybe it was\u00a0George Osborne\u2019s manoeuvres from behind the gates of his mansion in Buckinghamshire that deserve the honour? Isn\u2019t it strange that\u00a0the wife of one of Boris Johnson\u2019s closest collaborators in the Brexit\u00a0referendum, the\u00a0Daily Mail\u00a0journalist, Sarah Vine,\u00a0accidentally sent […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":313,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[7986,90235],"tags":[95747,95110,620,1395],"class_list":["post-1093","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-communication","category-current-issues","tag-boris-johnson","tag-brexit","tag-eu","tag-uk","megacategoria-mc-leadership-and-people-management"],"acf":[],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.iese.edu\/leggett\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1093","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.iese.edu\/leggett\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.iese.edu\/leggett\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.iese.edu\/leggett\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/313"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.iese.edu\/leggett\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1093"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/blog.iese.edu\/leggett\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1093\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1102,"href":"https:\/\/blog.iese.edu\/leggett\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1093\/revisions\/1102"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.iese.edu\/leggett\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1093"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.iese.edu\/leggett\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1093"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.iese.edu\/leggett\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1093"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}