Speaker by Various Artists

Great stuff, Joshua. I helped with Jamie Strange’s campaign in Hamilton East and it quickly became apparent that there was little desire for any power returning to the Nats. Both Hamilton electorates are now Labour-held, and this follows on from last year’s local body election, where a bunch of reactionaries were turfed out.

I agree completely about the polling exegeses, but I'm going to complain about "admiring write-ups in publications like The Lancet."

That paper was in the journal The Lancet Public Health, which describes itself as " an online-only, open access title in The Lancet's growing family of specialty journals," not The Lancet (founded in 1823, world-famous even in New Zealand).

Also, the paper was written by a bunch of Kiwi scientists, at least some of whom were involved with the NZ Covid response as advisers. So while they're right that the NZ response was excellent, it's not really an independent external confirmation.

This was good, although I would argue the swing to left us because Labour has demonstrated the power of a successful collective repsonse to issues.
The "market" can't protect us from Covid, just as it can't solve every problem.
The swing to the right of the past 30 years has stopped and gone back the other way in 2020.
We need government to fix the big issues - climate change, housing, inequality, etc.

Similar here in Whangaparaoa. A lot of split voting, National for the electorate, Labour for the party.

A hell of a lot of people who have voted National for a long time must have switched to Labour. We may eventually have sound evidence as to why this happened, but I'd think that keeping the Greens out of government is a believable motivation for a lot of people. Along with many other reasons, but it would be the world's biggest coincidence if the lion's share of them wasn't Covid-related in one way or another, as Labour's meteoric rise concided exactly with the pandemic hysteria and there has been basically no other news this year.

Right wing pundits certainly have more than their fair share of idiots. It's a great pity that they are pretty much the only people left that are openly critical of the government any more. I personally would not be singing this government's praise on it's profound left-wing acheivements, most especially not it's authoritarian response to the pandemic, which was a victory for the complete absence of any sensible democratic debate. The ensuing unprecedented destruction of the economy and entire sectors within it is not likely to be fantastic for any left wing spending programme.

Suggesting that the government is now on the verge of taking major action over climate change is particularly fanciful. They literally do not need to go into coalition with the Greens and pretty clearly are not going to. Climate change is not a major hobby horse of Labour's and it certainly is not a major hobby horse of their new found voter support from NZF and National voters. And yes, I too heard Ardern's loud dogwhistle in her victory speech for that new support base. Expect Covid to be the Government's entire priority for another year. I don't think they'll be able to milk 3 years out of it, though, by which time we will certainly see if any major inroads into anything even vaguely resembling left-wing reform actually have materialized. I'm not hopeful. Not even slightly.

Yes, since the National support bled out about equally towards ACT (of all lunatic lost causes), it indicates lack of confidence in National rather than a swing to support any particular policy of the Left. I will be pleasantly surprised if Labour is anything more than a do-nothing government on anything I care about. And, with no coalition partners to blame for lack of action, it'll be entirely Labour's fault if nothing gets done.

since the National support bled out about equally towards ACT (of all lunatic lost causes), it indicates lack of confidence in National rather than a swing to support any particular policy of the Left.

Well apart from their policy of making Covid 19 the only thing anyone could think about all year, which worked out extremely well for Labour. National had nowhere to go because they were outflanked on the right by Labour. They thought they were the party of harsh measures, but they were amateur hour. So yeah..competence. Be careful what you wish for, because people doing the wrong things with high levels of competence isn't a first in human history and it seldom goes well in the long run. I've never felt less politically engaged, because our democracy showed its yellow stripes big time this year. It's the first time I've felt truly embarrassed to be a New Zealander.

it’s authoritarian response to the pandemic, which was a victory for the complete absence of any sensible democratic debate.

The govt created a specific select committee to provide a venue for that debate. They are not responsible for what chair Simon Bridges did with it.

I fail to see the relevance of your spurious cavil regarding The Lancet Public Health article.
The Lancet Public Health is one of many specialist titles under the umbrella of The Lancet and all are held to the same high standards - "as trusted sources of information, the Lancet journals set extremely high standards for publishing, and we are committed to ensuring that our editorial processes meet our standards of excellence. "
Ergo the content of The Lancet Public Health is in no way a diminished or somehow less reliable source of quality information or comment.

I am puzzled by why you would try to blatantly claim or infer such a thing.

Others may also be interested in this fine piece from the same source about Lessons from New Zealand's COVID-19 outbreak response
(NB the author Alexis Robert is affiliated with the Centre for Mathematical Modelling of Infectious Diseases, London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine, London - no alleged log-rolling there then)

and from another journal under the same umbrella - The Lancet Regional Health Western Pacific there is this fine analysis of NZ and Taiwan's responses and yes, naturally there are New Zealand and Taiwanese authors - one of which is Dr Lucy Telfar Barnard, a long time member of this parish I believe.

Great to see you still here, but if the party (and the Party) is on Facebook, and this place is left to "ferals", spambots, cockroaches, and the occasional lawyer ... doesn’t that mean Facebook is winning on both counts?