Posts by BenWilson
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Speaker: An Open Letter To David Cunliffe, in reply to bmk,
In the long run could be 20-30 years at the pace that electoral reform moves. And typically it only actually reforms at all in response to it clearly not working. What I'm reading in that reasoning is that National will only do it so long as it's just barely enough to stay ahead of Labour. Why they get to hold the pole position on that, I don't know. I guess it's some basic form of self-defeating self-righteousness on the part of the "Left". Or perhaps it's part of their anti nuclear policy :-)
MMP should be fixed. But it won't be. It was deliberately fucked up in the first place. What they will do to "fix" it will be to get rid of coat-tailing, thereby securing the solid power of the top 2 parties, and keeping the Greens and NZF forever marginalized, and electorate reps will still be supported in tactical seats. It is actually much more advantageous to the top parties that very small parties can't form at all, but individuals can hold on. Because individuals are essentially completely powerless, like Peter Dunne, putty in their hands.
Labour could easily do this. In fact, it might not even be hard to find people willing, since a secure electorate seat conditional on unwavering support is quite a sweet deal for someone who gets to have their own whole party all to themselves. Every election they get to negotiate what sweet job they have or they can withdraw support. They don't even have to formally endorse it. They can never be kicked out by an internal coup. Like National's coded dogwhistles in their sweetheart electorates, people will soon get what installing their guy for the overhang means.
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Just in case it's not clear what a cock punch is:
"The blow that strikes to the core of a warrior's strength, against which there is no defence".
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Speaker: An Open Letter To David Cunliffe, in reply to bmk,
There’s a much simpler reason it doesn’t happen. National and Labour have long known they could do this scheme. But it would lead to a massively overhung parliament with neither party better off (since both doing it) and the public’s faith in the system would be completely eroded.
I’m not sure that they’ve thought it through, really. Currently, National IS doing it in a small way. Their majority is currently hanging on the thread of the two representative seats they have in parties with negligible party vote cross interference. Without Seymour and Dunne (who have no counterbalance), National would be relying on the Maori Party. This is what I found so incredibly stupid about killing off Mana. It’s like Labour don’t have a tactical bone in their bodies.
As for public faith in the system, is it really Labour’s job to just keep losing this way so as to maintain that? Perhaps faith should be eroded in the system, because the system we’re talking about serves us up a double dose of right wing dickheads every time so far. Basically, it’s like National gets two free cock punches every fight, with no comeback.
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Speaker: An Open Letter To David Cunliffe, in reply to HORansome,
I can only surmise that this is a paternalistic narrative put forward by people who claim to really know the interests of Māori and Pasifica people
The way I usually hear it, the working class is white and male. The way I usually see it is that the working class is brown, and pretty much evenly distributed across the sexes, although the women do seem to get the shit end of that shitty stick.
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Speaker: An Open Letter To David Cunliffe, in reply to ,
And a split might also help with that wee problem about the conservative homophobic working class / liberal academic middle class not seeing eye to eye on all things party leadership.
Yup, these two tiny groups need not be in the room together, sucking out all the oxygen with their squabbles.
ETA: I'm pretty sure the whole idea is wishful thinking, though, because the old guard would not have the courage for it.
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Speaker: An Open Letter To David Cunliffe, in reply to bmk,
I just think democracy has spoken and Cunliffe has ignored it because he didn’t like the result.
There wasn't a "David Cunliffe should resign as Labour party leader" option on the ballot from which we can clearly divine what democracy said. The election result was a Party vote. And Cunliffe hasn't ignored the result. He stepped down, and offered his party the choice about what to do with him. He probably quite genuinely does actually believe he can do better.
To ignore the will of the public and then say it’s democracy when the membership of the party is much smaller than the general public seems bizarre to me
Well perhaps a thought experiment on what the Labour Party would look like if it operated how you seem to think it should would make it seem a bit less bizarre. If they are to simply take the public choices as their only guide on what to do, they should get rid of 48% of their people and replace them with people like those in the National Party, and they should elect a multimillionaire currency trader as their leader, and then finish the job of privatizing the whole country. They absolutely should get Cameron Slater to start running their more offensive lines, because the country has spoken and they clearly think that's the way to go.
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Speaker: An Open Letter To David Cunliffe, in reply to bmk,
When a party has such a loss they need to accept it and listen and take on board what the public have told them.
I respect your opinion on this but I don't see it as any kind of axiomatic choice. Sometimes you do actually have to double down on a choice, for the big payoff. Maybe those people who form the vast bulk of the Labour Party itself genuinely feel that this is a battle worth fighting.
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Just for the record, I'd like to state that I don't support or oppose either candidate. What I support is their internal democratic process, although it isn't anywhere near as good as what it could be.
I find arguments that it shouldn't happen to be incomprehensible and insubstantiated gobbledegook, for the most part. Filled with the platitude of the wisdom of the elders and total contempt for the wisdom of crowds, yet somehow in favour of pointing out that wisdom vis-a-vis the election result, as if somehow Cunliffe's democratic election defeat is a reason why democracy should be suspended internally.
It does not compute with me, and that in itself is a large part of my own detachment. The way they operate is bizarre, like some lost tribe in New Guinea, with a circle of elders, an indentured semi-religious pressure group, and bunch of angry disenfranchised villagers. It's not something I want to have anything to do with, but I unfortunately have to take notice of it because this is a powerful tribe in my neighborhood, and there are even worse tribes around.
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Speaker: An Open Letter To David Cunliffe, in reply to bmk,
Yes I’ve heard of Rowling which is why I qualified it with in recent history.
But in recent history, since Moore there has only been 1 successful Labour leader, and she was kept on after losing. There's no other wins on the board at all to bolster your point about the wisdom of the old guard.
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In fact, bmk, the more I look at Labour's leadership choices, the less they back up your claim of their amazingly rapid dumping of unpopular leadership. They elected Nordmeyer after getting kicked out of office over his "Black Budget", and he got a couple of years before getting rolled. Walter Nash managed to also lose 2 elections.
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