Politics / Jenrick's treachery has made Badenoch stronger |
If Kemi Badenoch needs a little relaxation from the ‘psychodrama’ of Robert Jenrick’s defection to Reform, she could do a lot worse than watch Shekhar Kapur’s 1998 Elizabeth. The historical drama, about the plots and betrayals surrounding the early days of Elizabeth I’s reign, is uncannily reminiscent of recent events in her own party.
With her bitterest opponent now banished from the court – pushed before he could jump – those looming May elections hold fewer fears for the Tory leader
The film (spoilers aplenty) begins as Mary I dies childless, leaving her callow and inexperienced half-sister a tattered kingdom. ‘Your majesty has inherited a most parlous and degenerate state,’ one advisor tells her. ‘Your treasury is empty, the navy is run-down, there is no standing army, and no munitions’ (cf. Tory Party, 2024).
No one takes the new queen seriously and no one expects her to survive. The court teems with conspirators and those who, whether for reasons of doctrine or personal ambition, wish for her downfall: not least Thomas Howard, Duke of Norfolk (played by Christopher Eccleston), a Catholic pretender to the throne who strides and skulks about, muttering: ‘At last I shall see the fall of that heretic girl!’
With the whole world, it seems, trying to rub her out, Elizabeth, mentored by spymaster Sir Francis Walsingham (a feline Geoffrey Rush), slowly finds her inner Machiavelli. Dispensing at last with scruples, she dispatches her enemies with a spate of murders and executions. Gloriana arises victorious! Norfolk ends up not with the throne, but his grimacing head on a pike.
Such a moment, differing in degree rather than nature, seemed to come for Robert Jenrick last week, when Kemi Badenoch learned of an incriminating ‘draft letter’........