Reading Dennis Shanahan in the Oz this morning about how Turnbull’s plans for 18c “have turned to a bloody custard” got me thinking about, how on every front, the disunity inside the party and outside with the numbers in the senate, in the house of reps with a one seat majority and his polling in freefall he is trapped and cornered in every and all respects and there’s not a damn thing he can do about any of it. He must go all misty when he thinks about what might have been. After rolling Abbott in September 2015 and with his polling guaranteeing and buttressing his Prime Minister-ship, if only he had gone to an election in late 2015 or early 2016 when he had the wind at his back.
Which brings me to William Shakespeare.
Shakespeare was a genius as demonstrated in this line from Julius Caesar. It could have been written for Turnbull’s failure and lack of judgement and failure to grab his opportunity, grab his high tide when it was there for the taking.
“..There is a tide in the affairs of men, Which taken at the flood, leads on to fortune. Omitted, all the voyage of their life is bound in shallows and in miseries. On such a full sea are we now afloat. And we must take the current when it serves, or lose our ventures..”