I have not bothered to post on NZ Labour’s woeful insider fighting, because it is so, well, predictable and tediously cyclical (Lange, Palmer, Moore, Clark, Goff, Shearer…). Having just selected the eminently nice, but politically inexperienced, David Shearer above the other two Davids, Labour wishes to internally hemorrhage in favour of revisiting a democratic decision they made less than a year ago.
This is all about power; one guy wants it over another. Shearer has brought Labour up in the polls above the Goff levels, and a Left coalition now has more votes than National. So this is nothing more than a play for power by David Cunliffe and will flush Labour’s gains away as it applies an enema to itself over Christmas and in to February. The Greens must be rubbing their rubber gloves with glee.
Various NZ media political birdwatchers described it thus:
- “Dissent. Uprisings. Rebellion. Scraps. Blood.”
- “a bumbling, mumbling mess which at times bordered on total incoherency.”
- “organised corruption.”
- “Barmy, loopy, stupid, crazy. Last weekend’s Labour Party conference had so much political madness on and off the conference floor that the proceedings could well have been deemed certifiable.”
But not only that, Labour has restructured its internal decision-making processes to permanently cripple any future leader and, worse, extend the reach of Unions to determine New Zealand’s prime minister as and when it deems appropriate. Julia Gillard here we come.
The real problem NZ Labour has, is that it has not refreshed. There is no new blood, and what they have, is just re-run extremist feminists, fringe Rainbow warriors, UN-utopians, and tired old Marxist trade unionists. New Zealand does not have the demographic depths America has and that trendy lefty Barack Obama was able to reach into to grab a small win over Romney (Hispanics, Latinos, African-Americans. See US Voting Breakdown Graphic also Demographics & Elections). In NZ you still have to fight politics on policy and brand. The really scary thing is, even with this Labour meltdown, the same culture of entitlement now infecting America is well and truly entrenched in NZ; despite this woeful self immolation by the Labour conference, they still command a handsome chunk of the electorate, enough to form a bumbling, loopy certifiable Government.
As the Good Book says, “The earth trembles when a fool comes to the throne” and the old adage holds true, we get the governments we deserve. Unfortunately MMP manipulates those decisions for us, and the trade unions and fringe ideologues inside Labour will continue to do that with more power than ever before. A simple exotic caucus of 13 will do it.
My comment the day David Shearer won the Labour leadership, 12 Dec 2011.
