The one thing about politics that people keep forgetting is that it’s theatre.

And like all theatre, you can never see the strings because the players on the stage don’t want you to and because you don’t really have the time to process everything happening backstage.

I say this as I sit here on the day when the theatre of politics reaches its zenith with the North Korean and United States summit in Singapore.

What we will see today will be a carefully choreographed performance by 2 of the best practitioners of the art of the gesture. Donald Trump and Kim Jong Un.

Trump will swagger while Kim will smile and wave. Their roles have already been scripted. Donald will act as the tough no-compromise world leader. Kim will act as though he’s not a megalomaniacal despot but a perfectly reasonable man who by acquiring nuclear weapons is now a legitimate player on the world stage.

Will he give up his nukes? Well, I ask you, would you? The real power player here is China who can cut North Korea off at the knees by stopping food and energy imports with a wave of the hand.

At home, the theatre of politics continues with the saga of Winston Peters, Andrew Little and Jacinda Ardern.
Andrew Little yesterday abandoned the three strikes repeal. Some players are calling this clumsy and incompetent governance by Little and Ardern. Maybe they’re reading the wrong script. Many commentators saying this has been badly handled have also said that the problem with minor coalition partners is that they get subsumed by the senior partners and lose their identity and collapse.

NZ First has shown it’s not a fully complicit division of the Labour Party, conveniently after some bad poll results and a week before Winston Peters becomes PM for 6 weeks. If he aces the next month and a half then it’s all good news for the coalition. Jacinda Ardern’s lack of concern at the development was obvious. She’s playing a long game.

Meanwhile, people ignore the theatre of the three strikes law. It’s a gesture of a hard line on law and order. Ask any criminologists if the number of offenders who commit 3 serious offences are substantially fewer per head of population than before the law came into effect and they’ll say no. But it is popular. It looks good or as they say these days it has good optics

Little abandoned this because he has bigger fish to fry like lowering the prison muster. Half of which is ideological and half of which is that they don’t want to spend a billion dollars on prisons which they could better spend giving gifts.
All the world’s a stage and we’re just players on it said Shakespeare and politicians know this more than most.