Hard News: The Next Labour Leader
295 Responses
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Bart Janssen, in reply to
it isn’t fair for the Labour party to go after Green votes
That's not my problem with that strategy. I don't care if it's fair. What care about is that it's a failed strategy that is only more and more likely to fail again as folks become more familiar with MMP and the idea that a small party can represent their specific interests.
So I want Labour to stop targeting the Greens (something they have not done much at all) because it will fail.
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Craig Ranapia, in reply to
What care about is that it’s a failed strategy that is only more and more likely to fail again as folks become more familiar with MMP and the idea that a small party can represent their specific interests.
And if both Labour and National can't grok that voters are not their bitches, they have nobody but themselves to blame for the results and no amount of pissy dolchstoßlegende whining will change it. Seriously. Not rocket science.
Well, they got a 50% vote increase so more and more people think they are.
And if Labour decides that a 'Doctor No' strategy a la Tony Abbot is what works for them, the Greens may find they're a lot more influential outside government than inside it. One thing commentators haven't picked up on is a larger caucus also leaves the Greens a much deeper bench to cover select committees - just because the lamestream media doesn't cover them properly doesn't mean they don't matter.
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BenWilson, in reply to
Um, no they haven't.
Fair call. At 3am, the "Labour led coalition with formal and informal (yet mostly loyal) support from the Greens, and a sometimes backed by various other groups with similarly complex terms of agreement" blurred into "Greens supported and influenced Labour in Government, even to the point of getting extremely controversial legislation of their own writing passed" and thus into "Greens were in government". Yeah, it's more complex than that.
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NBH,
NB: Labour is a right wing party, just not far right like National.
I stick to my view that the next left-wing government in NZ will be Green led with Labour as a support partner.
I'm a consistently Green voter, and I'd just like to say that comments like the above actually make me think twice about that support. For all the complaints about Labour sniping at the Greens, I can't help but see a huge amount of ill-informed, naive, and equally pointless Labour-bashing amongst my fellow Green party supporters (far more so than amongst the actual Green party members I know).
OTOH, this:
I'm not suggesting that the Greens are going to overtake Labour any time soon. But I do think Labour would get a lot more out of working out what happened to the 10% of voters who dropped off the voting game altogether, and making some kind of assault on the high party vote that National got, many of whom must have come from Labour. Taking those votes counts twice, because it's a vote off the opposition. Taking votes off the Greens counts zero when it comes time to put a coalition together.
is absolutely 100% true. Internecine fighting - whichever side starts it - doesn't do any good, and given the turnout this time there's pretty clearly huge room to grow the overall left/progressive vote.
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Isaac Freeman, in reply to
Speaking of which, how did the ’Zine Fest go on Saturday?
Small but perfectly formed. The venue wasn't ideal, particularly on account of not being very well lit, but that's life in Christchurch. There was the sort of crowd you'd expect: a mix of poets, activists and musos. People didn't have a lot of cash, but with what they had they bought zines, even from squares like me.
There was an interesting panel discussion about zines as political journalism, by writers who'd recently been in Palestine and Kurdistan.
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HenryB, in reply to
Ask your average Tea Bagger in the United States, and every center-right government in the Anglophone world with any kind of welfare, public education and public healthcare might as well be North Korea.
Listening to John Banks this morning on morning report one would believe this is where his heart lies.
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HenryB, in reply to
I stick to my view that the next left-wing government in NZ will be Green led with Labour as a support partner.
With Labour on 22 electorate seats (roughly 18% of all seats) and the Greens on 13 list seats (roughly 10%) the Greens would have to do extra-ordinarily well on the Party vote and Labour extraoridinarily badly to be the lead partner in any negotiations. It needs repeating: Greens do not have a single electorate seat. I don't have the arithmetic to work it out, but if by some circumstance this were to happen, I would imagine the `overhang' would be enormous and who knows what that would do to the figures.
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Sofie Bribiesca, in reply to
I think the Greens had to broaden their appeal – how many times did Norman say “smart green prosperity”? – and it worked for them. But claiming nothing has ever changed in the party’s orientation is delusional.
This from the Herald would seem to confirm that.
The most visible evidence of the Greens' quest for economic credibility was in co-leader Russel Norman's preference for a conservative suit and tie.
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Isaac Freeman, in reply to
I stick to my view that the next left-wing government in NZ will be Green led with Labour as a support partner.
Quite a lot would have to change for that to happen. Apart from the obvious change in voting patterns, you'd also need a massive culture change within Labour. Perhaps if the Labour Party split in two, and a very different organisation somehow gained custody of the name.
Alternatively, there's a historical precedent for a smaller party taking the top job
as a condition of coalition with a larger party, and going on to control the whole government for some time. However, as a party that tends to think in the longer term, I suspect the Greens would notice that things ultimately didn't work out very well for Hitler.Flirting with Godwin aside, I'd have thought that any hypothetical Green-led government would be more likely to involve some grouping of new parties than Labour. But it's quite a hypothetical.
Even if not, with 10%+ of the house, any Labour government will either have to accept the Greens (and quite likely Mana) as a partner or be in opposition for ever.
I doubt Mana are in it for the long haul. Unless I'm missing something (which is certainly possible) their position seems to be that they're a better Labour than Labour and a better Māori Party than the Māori Party. Either of those parties could pull the rug out from under Mana with minor changes to policy and presentation.
To last, Mana needs either a distinct political position like the Greens, or to supplant the Māori Party. They didn't achieve the latter in 2011, and presumably it'll be ahrder in 2014.
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Greens to overtake Labour in number of MPs is such an absurd idea it is very hard to take seriously anyone who holds it. Think. This was a very very bad year for the Labour party. The Greens still could not manage much more then ten percent. When Labour rebound, as they inevitably will, they will head back up to 40%, and beyond (and some of those votes will come from the Greens, and that is just the way of the world.) The Greens have little prospect of pulling over 15% for any election in the next ten years.
Further, no the Greens haven't been the government yet, and they never will be the government in the sense that Labour or National will. Everyone knows that the Greens would have to win concessions from the major party. They are not expected to be bound by their manifesto. The major party is expected to be bound by their pre-election policy, and deviation is punished by the the electorate.
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Any time you get a minority running a country, in this case the rich and their sycophants, you will see a desperate majority divided and crushed by that minority's power.
When people rose up in the 60's', against war, poverty and corruption, how long was it before the divisions evolved in the guise of the Green movement, feminism and gay rights. People are people and real people care. We do not need those divisions, we do care about the environment, we do care about women and we do care about vulnerable minorities. Most of all we care about justice for all and not the greed of the few.
So stop with the bickering. We need to pull together to defeat the power-hungry elite, we need to stand strong against these dangerous and powerful people.
Brothers and sisters... WE share the same dream.</gets off soapbox and runs away before the smiling assassin rears his daemonic head>
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Lew Stoddart, in reply to
Greens to overtake Labour in number of MPs is such an absurd idea it is very hard to take seriously anyone who holds it.
On election night I was offered and swiftly accepted a bet on this premise. If Labour get a higher party vote than the Greens at the 2014 election I stand to gain one, possibly two, bottles of malt whisky, subject to the guy who proposed the bet not begging out in the next short while (in which case I win the right to mock the shit out of him for the next three years :)
L
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BenWilson, in reply to
Internecine fighting - whichever side starts it - doesn't do any good
Yes, the side that it hurt the most this time was the right. National's huge party vote cost the right dearly.
I wouldn't be surprised if National, who do have some canny strategic advisers, don't opt to build up a party to the right of them. It could be ACT, but I think it won't be. ACT's own leader is already talking about rebranding the party. They really need a party that is socially conservative and economically radical in the free market direction - basically like themselves, but a bit more hard core. Flirting around with social liberalism just didn't work, created a party that fell apart under its own contradictions.
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Craig Ranapia, in reply to
Greens to overtake Labour in number of MPs is such an absurd idea it is very hard to take seriously anyone who holds it.
Yeah, and once upon a time it was an absurd idea that the Greens weren't going to go down with the Alliance. Just saying.
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Isaac Freeman, in reply to
I think the Greens had to broaden their appeal – how many times did Norman say “smart green prosperity”? – and it worked for them. But claiming nothing has ever changed in the party’s orientation is delusional.
I think you're talking at cross-purposes. Would it be fair to say that the Green Party's brand has shifted dramatically, but their policies haven't?
Sue Bradford and Nandor Tanczos loomed large in the public perception of the Greens. Although it wasn't fair to two very capable and successful MPs, they came across as much more scary and radical than they actually were. I don't think many Greens have ever seen reform of laws concerning marijuana law or ending a specific legal defence for child abuse as fundamental planks in the party's philosophy, but they drowned out other subjects. Which is not the media's fault: if you're talking to a Rastafarian MP, why wouldn't you ask about marijuana? And while I respect Sue Bradford's accomplishments, she stumbled badly when she allowed the Section 51 debate to be so far derailed that you had to say "so-called anti-smacking law" before anyone knew what you were talking about.
I'd propose that the Green Party's public image today is much closer to how Greens have always seen themselves.
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So Labour’s processes and institutions are both a curse and a blessing. It needs to reinvent those to reinvent itself. It needs to pay attention to the public’s evolving political tastes. What it doesn’t need to do is panic.
The problem as I see it is that N-ACT (and after yesterday this feels more and more appropriate) probably do see this as the last chance they have to do a whole lot that they have been leading up to doing. By this Christmas (!!), we are told by Banks, we will have Charter Schools: that's just 15 days after the final results are in. A TABOR type bill will be drafted and enacted - and I am less sanguine than others that this will be easy to simply repeal. And the timing of the later is as to suggest that National is already fairly sure it won't be the government next time.
Panic is not appropriate but I agree with Bryan Gould that Labour cannot afford to be silent in the first two years of this next government as it seemed to be over the first two years of the last. Just too much is going to happen. And, in the light of this, the leadership contest really matters because Labour needs somebody who will take the fight to these people. Otherwise, it will be Winston who will do the running.
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Isaac Freeman, in reply to
I wouldn’t be surprised if National, who do have some canny strategic advisers, don’t opt to build up a party to the right of them
It does seem like it would be in National's interests to focus on economic liberals, and promote another party for the social conservatives. Under different leadership, they might have had New Zealand First in this position. United would have been there, but they never staked out a clear position and got lost trying to be a Centre party instead of something distinct.
Although it hasn't made it into Parliament yet, the new Conservative Party looks like a pretty strong contender. I'm sure National is very keen to have them around.
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BenWilson, in reply to
If Labour get a higher party vote than the Greens at the 2014 election I stand to gain one, possibly two, bottles of malt whisky
I'd say the biggest danger to your whiskey is a renege. The Greens are on a long slow build. Unless they really do target Labour's basic constituency, by unveiling their amazing plan to create massive numbers of jobs (and I don't write this off as a possibility), their main constituency will continue to be people who can basically afford to worry about big picture problems like global warming, international injustice, peak oil, etc. As their picture gets fleshed out, which it slowly is, it will broaden appeal, when more and more people finally get that the resources of the world are finite, the resources of the country are finite, and unaccounted-for cost will always catch up with you in the long run. Perhaps these ideas will become mainstream and the Greens will have served their purpose. Hard to know.
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Sofie Bribiesca, in reply to
when more and more people finally get that the resources of the world are finite, the resources of the country are finite, and unaccounted-for cost will always catch up with you in the long run. Perhaps these ideas will become mainstream and the Greens will have served their purpose.
Which NZers already think. Anti asset sales, no drilling , caring about our conservation land and the rest of the targets, using alternatives in many fields. lots smoking dope and not scared of it, or the people who do. It is pretty mainstream now. That is not advocating they have served their purpose though, I have always appreciated that their presence gives us the advantage of seeing these environmental concerns and that is what I liked about them. I am a little sad to feel that becoming mainstream puts them beside whoever they choose to work with each Election, but beside Labour suit my wishes as it brings a bigger picture that I hope for. I liked that they were deeply alternative, real even.That is why I could now see Mana climb for those disaffected staunch lefties.
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John Armstrong, in reply to
Man, I am explainy today. I am aware that I am talking about abstractions, and don't have to walk the talk of running a real political party.
Maybe so but you are making a lot of sense to me.
And anyway, is their really any such thing as a pure abstraction in politics?
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John Armstrong, in reply to
it isn’t fair for the Labour party to go after Green votes
Labour would do far better to go after the people who didn't vote at all in this election, rather than those who voted for the Greens. To that end, I think David Shearer would be the best choice, in that he probably has a better chance of attracting people who have become indifferent to politics than Cunliffe, who, despite his many qualifying attributes, is probably viewed as an establishment politician.
As Ben has been saying, this is to prioritise leadership above policy, which I agree is a problem. But, it might also be true that you have to lead a horse to water before it can drink. People who have stopped engaging to the degree that they choose not to vote are possibly not going to re-engage very deeply with new policy, no matter how good it is.
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BenWilson, in reply to
Which NZers already think. Anti asset sales, no drilling , caring about our conservation land and the rest of the targets, using alternatives in many fields. lots smoking dope and not scared of it, or the people who do. It is pretty mainstream now.
There's a long way to go before we're really ready to fully account for our costs, though. Not just farmers. The urban do have to come to terms with the extent to which our economy rests on farming, which means ultimately our own jobs are built around the same externalizations.
I don't think this is great, personally. I've never had much affinity with farming, myself, particularly not the NZ kind which involves massive numbers of farting, shitting, possibly sentient animals, which we have to buy at the same price as people everywhere else in the world. But I don't especially want an industrial revolution here either. I had hoped the technological revolution might be a new wave, but I'm not convinced it is - it's the most globalized mobile kind of business there is, not something we can really hold onto, nor compete in on a grand scale. The most money to be made out of technology in NZ is ripping of NZers by scoring the telco monopoly. There's little fortunes here and there in niche products, but nearly without fail, these things are bought out from abroad, the organization gutted, and eventually the last people standing ship themselves off to wherever the money came from. It's really a big fat fail from a national outlook (although it has enriched quite a few people and shipped out considerably more who had little trouble slipping into a new country).
So I don't have the killer ideas for economic rejuvenation. For me the focus is on making sure what's left is fairly distributed. I like the idea of more infrastructure projects - these are things that are hard to just up and leave. Even if the money leaves due to opportunism under neoliberal governments, at least the good itself remains, and we get some of it. Practically every large piece of infrastructure in this country owes itself to the taxpayer.
But these are old socialist ideas. I feel a shameful lack of imagination in being unable to produce any others.
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<q>Man, I am explainy today. I am aware that I am talking about abstractions, and don’t have to walk the talk of running a real political party.
Maybe so but you are making a lot of sense to me.</q>
Ah, good. Then there are... almost two of us.
And anyway, is their really any such thing as a pure abstraction in politics?
That probably depends on how you feel about Saint Anselm's Ontological Argument, and whether you can still reasonably call it "politics" if it involves divine intervention.
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Kumara Republic, in reply to
I stick to my view that the next left-wing government in NZ will be Green led with Labour as a support partner.
It happened in Canada with the NDP getting more seats than the Liberals. Then again, they still have FPP.
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David Hood, in reply to
It does seem like it would be in National’s interests to focus on economic liberals, and promote another party for the social conservatives.
It might be, but I think to get any traction, the right-little-party would need to be seen as independent of National, and to me at least it seems National don't just want to make room and leave the other party to it, they want more hands on influence on their satellite parties. And in those cases why shouldn't perspective right-little-supporters vote National anyway if they are going to be dictating policy.
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