“TO THE STRONGEST!” “KRATISTOS” – ALEXANDER THE GREAT’S “LAST WILL AND TESTAMENT”
A week ago, with almost all the Party Leaders in trouble or resigning I was reminded of the famous story of Alexander The Great’s last Will and Testament in which it is claimed that he left his empire:- “To the Strongest!”
One of the principal classical histories says that on Alexander’s deathbed in 323 BC:-
“When he (Alexander), at length, despaired of life, he took off his ring and handed it to Perdiccas. His friends asked: “To whom do you leave the kingdom?” and he replied: “To the strongest!” Diodorus Siculus
The resulting wars between his Generals, which raged all across Alexander’s vast empire, gave birth to the Hellenistic kingdoms whose Kings rested upon the, often very temporary, support of their soldiers.
I was reminded of those times and that period of history when I suddenly found myself the only remaining leader of a political party in England who has held his position for any length of time!
Nigel Farage’s resignation, seemingly unexpected to the media, but which had seemed not unlikely to those that had heard that he was deeply fed up with the internal politics of UKIP, coupled with UKIP’s redundancy now that it has achieved the purpose of getting and winning the referendum on EU membership, suggests the story of Alexander’s Will is still highly topical and it may be something of a paradigm for the infighting which will now occur in UKIP between its various factions!
It was already apparent that this was going to happen after the referendum, when Neil Hamilton called for a leadership election within UKIP, saying that he intended to support Paul Nuttall. Paul for his part had then indicated that he now felt that he was ready to be Leader. Now however he too has withdrawn leaving the field open to only a medley of “Believe in Britain” types!
The saying:- “may you live in interesting times” is said to be an old Afghan curse, in that blood-soaked country. In England “may you live in interesting times” may however be a blessing to English nationalists.
Let’s work to make it so!