Is William Hague Losing His Mojo?

For those of you who read yesterday’s post on the Japanese Nuclear Explosion, it turned out that I had the wrong time for the explosion. So I have, to a small degree, re-written it. But the chart remains very significant. See http://astrotabletalk.blogspot.com/2011/03/japanese-nuclear-explosion.html

William Hague, the UK Foreign Secretary, is under attack for incompetence in his handling of the Libya crisis. I’d wondered that myself. There were delays in evacuating British nationals, and then the SAS were sent in to help the rebels – the only trouble was, the rebels did not know who they were and arrested them! People are also wondering if his heart is in the job – as it is being put, where is his Mojo?

William Hague is not quite fifty, yet he seems to have been around forever – since, as a 16 year-old, and shortly before Margaret Thatcher came to power, he wowed the Tory Conference with a prescient speech on rolling back the frontiers of the state. He was a Minister in the mid-nineties, and then leader of the Tory party from 1997 to 2001. While remaining an MP, his interests led him elsewhere for 4 years until 2005, when David Cameron was elected leader of the party and offered him the post of Shadow Foreign Secretary.

Politically, Hague hasn’t really anywhere to go, unless he wants to become a high-level time-server and survivor like Jack Straw. And he is an Aries. Aries needs new directions and new challenges. Also, while he has always proved a very effective debater and speaker, he doesn’t seem to have much of a track record as someone who gets things done. To me, Libya seems to be an example of this.

So is he losing his Mojo? Mojo is Mars, your drive to get what you want. It is also the Sun, the main masculine principle in the chart. The question isn’t so much whether Hague is losing it, but rather if it is going elsewhere.

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Hague has Sun at 5 degrees of Mars-ruled Aries, square to Mars itself at 11 Cancer. This is ambiguous. On the one hand, a Sun-Mars square, particularly with the Sun in Aries, can be very motivated and driven. On the other hand, a square can also suggest difficulties, while Mars can find it problematic to function in Cancer. Mars doesn’t feel very sure of itself in this sign, and men with this placement often seem to be always having to prove themselves by being extra manly! It’s difficult because Mars is having to be both sensitive and warrior-like, and they are often opposites.

So there is an ongoing thing with Hague about what motivates him. Especially with Moon also in Cancer. He wants to help others, and he wants to have the family that he so far hasn’t been able to have. It can be hard in politics to find much room for that sort of sensitivity, which he clearly exhibited in his ‘time off’ through becoming a writer and teaching himself the piano.

The quick answer is that yes, William Hague’s Mojo is headed elsewhere. Pluto is squaring his Mars-ruled Sun all year, and will then gradually move on to oppose his Mars. So a profound change in his motivation is occurring, an empowerment, which could in theory mean up the political ladder, but in practice that is not going to happen. So I think he is off. Maybe now, maybe not for a year or two. But he is off. I suspect sooner rather than later, because Neptune is finishing a conjunction to his Ascendant. And because you can’t dither when you’re in power, only when you’re in opposition.

When you get 2 major transits at the same time – Neptune-Asc and Pluto-Sun – people go through a change that is not just a new phase but often more like a completely new life. I think that is what is happening to Hague, though he may not know it yet.

Michael Portillo, who was also once the Rising Star of the Tory Party, underwent a similar change at a similar age. Just like Hague, it was Pluto hard-aspecting his Sun and Mars that did it. Portillo’s Sun and Mars are further apart – 12 degrees – than Hague, so it was a protracted process. Having stood for leader at one point, he is now not even a member of the Party.

Portillo has Sun at 5 Gemini and Mars at 17 Gemini. In 1997, with Pluto opposing his Sun, he lost his seat in Parliament. He returned to Parliament at a bye-election in 1999. But he was already changing from the driven right-winger he had been, having admitted to having had homosexual experiences, which his colleague Norman Tebbitt (‘the Rottweiler’) called ‘deviant’. He stood in the leadership election in 2001, but lost. It was felt that his heart was not fully in it. Then 2 years later in 2003, as Pluto opposed his Mars, he announced that he would be retiring from politics at the next election.

As I said, Hague’s Sun and Mars are closer together – a 6 degree square – so I do not expect to see the 6 year process that we saw with Portillo. Also, he is an Aries, not a Gemini, so he will want to get on with it rather than weigh it up over a long period.