Keir Starmer’s concerning decision to ditch Shakespeare’s portrait

Politicians are said to campaign in poetry and govern in prose. In the case of Keir Starmer, he campaigned in the most uninspiring, plodding prose imaginable, and has now chosen to govern in what might politely be compared to a child’s first attempt at poetry. It is all word-vomit and incomprehensible mumbo-jumbo. 

Still, this befits the character of a man who, according to reports, has overseen a steady exodus of portraits of key British figures from the walls of No. 10. First came down Margaret Thatcher, then Elizabeth I, and now, perhaps most egregiously of all, William Shakespeare. 

Shakespeare’s place in British national cultural life is, for most literate people, without parallel, but it is politicians who have the most to learn from his work. If you remove all the tiresome buzzwords used about Shakespeare now – such as ‘accessibility’ and ‘universality’ – and go back to his actual plays, you are faced with one of the great treatises in how to govern and how to use power.