politics

If you told me with no context about a story, play, whatever, called The Speaker and the Upstart, and that the presumed audience is automatically assumed to be against "The Upstart", I would think you were talking about like a collectible lore book in a game, like some flavor text you find sneaking around a drunken magistrate's chambers in Dishonored that paints a picture of a snobbish and decadent aristocracy blind to the lateness of the hour.