Remainers starting to sound like fascists

As Brexit comes to a grisly conclusion (perhaps) people on all sides are saying intemperate and uwise things.  Some, like the Daly Mail, have been doing it for years.

People as normally level headed as Jon Lansman are calling for automatic deselection of MPs who vote against a (likely) Labour three line whip for Saturday's vote on Johnson's crappy deal.

Johnson's deal will be a wrecking ball through the lives & well-being of ordinary people across Britain. Labour MPs cannot and must not vote for it. If they do, the NEC will have no choice but to replace them with a new, socialist Labour candidate at the next election

— Jon Lansman (@jonlansman) October 18, 2019

Others have called for automatic withdrawal of the whip for rebel MPs.

I can understand that people feel very passionately about this.  It's easy to preach moderation from the comparative safety of New Zealand.  But this extremism is worrying.

Crying out for automatic expulsion is Draconian. It's the sort of behaviour people have condemned 'Corbynisas' for in the past - all that talk of deselection, trigger ballots and crushing of internal dissent. Now - because this is an issue that tickles their fancy - these people are adopting the same language and tactics allegedly used by 'Corbynistas'.

Defying a three line whip has never lead to automatic expulsion, as far as I'm aware. It should lead to some sort of sanction, but that is at the behest of the Chief Whip - a set up that is deliberate, intended to prevent party leaders using direct threats against MPs to intimidate them.

Back in 2003, 121 Labour MPs (including a certain Jeremy Corbyn) defied a three line whip over Iraq and were not expelled. I think we'd agree Iraq was at least as serious as Brexit. Can no-one see how a reaction like automatic expulsion for defying a 3 liner sets a very dangerous precedent for the future?

Also, by adopting tactics similar to what self-described 'moderates' claim 'Corbynistas' are using in CLPs they're legitimising the 'Corbynista' tactics as well. The ends justify the means. Whatever these alleged 'Corbynistas' believe in, they doubtless believe in it just as strongly as the alleged 'moderates' believe in Remain.

Or, as another chap once wrote:

Twelve voices were shouting in anger, and they were all alike. No question, now, what had happened to the faces of the pigs. The creatures outside looked from pig to man, and from man to pig, and from pig to man again; but already it was impossible to say which was which.

The moderates are starting to sound like what they claim to hate, advocating crushing opposition to their vision by any means. It is disappointing how everyone seems willing to embrace dangerous precedents and endorse behaviour they would condemn in other circumstances; and how quickly they start to sound like a fascist if they are provoked just a bit.

We all like to think of ourselves as wise, rational, level headed, moderate lovely people but turn into swivel-eyed monsters demanding purges and punishments when we're scratched. Mike Tyson said, everyone's gotta plan until they get punched on the nose." You could say the same about calm rational moderation. We've all got it, until we realise it isn't going to get us what we want.

It is dangerous to start using the language and tactics of your enemy - it has a way of sticking, and after your enemy is defeated, you discover they've actually won, because you've become like them.

Battle not with monsters, lest ye become a monster.

Bad Language, milk shaking, abuse of politicians and so on

So, there has been a lot of talk about 'inflammatory language' in the British parliament recently.

The whole culture of British politics has become very polarised and toxic.  Some recent examples:

• In January of this year, a group of men surrounded MP Anne Sourby as she walked to parliament, calling her a Nazi, invading her space and videoing her without consent, presumably in the hope of capturing a reaction or tears.  I won't include the images or footage as it was filmed without her consent.


• Journalist Owen Jones was crowded, heckled and abused on the same occasion.  As Owen filmed them himself, I will reproduce the footage.

Just met some lovely Tommy Robinson fans and I’d love for you to get to know them too pic.twitter.com/iRom8GavNy

— Owen Jones🌹 (@OwenJones84) 7 January 2019

Owen Jones would, of course, be physically assaulted by a group of thugs in August.

•  Dianne Abbott received almost a third of all abusive tweets sent to female MPs in the six months before the 2017 election.  And the total number of abusive tweets sent to female MPs was a staggering 25,000.  That's about 8000 hateful comments being aimed at a single person in 6 months, or about 50 a day, or about two every hour.

Take a moment to imagine someone yelling an insult at you every thirty minutes; or every fifteen minutes assuming they don't do it while you're asleep. Might tend to spoil your day a bit.

• Then, of course, there was UKIP candidate and internet 'opinion shaper' Carl Benjamin's "I wouldn't even rape you" comment to MP Jess Phillips.  Phillips then received further abuse for objecting to people making comments rank with sexual violence and misogyny about her.  Apparently, that's a free speech issue.


• Anti-Brexit campaigner Gina Millar described the vitriol aimed her way in 2017.  Given she's been involved in attempts to foil the recent attempts by Prime Minister Boris Johnson to finesse break the law to get a No Deal Brexit by proroguing illegally suppressing parliament.


• Jolyon Maugham, acting for Millar in her recent case, also received abuse and death threats, has been advised to wear a stab proof vest and had a panic button installed in his home.  In his twitter feed, he describes how he had to threaten the Daily Mail with legal action to prevent them publicising his home address.  

This is, of course, tip of the iceberg stuff.  I could go on and on.  There is no scraping of the bottom of the barrel of hatred here; the barrel just goes on and on.

And lurking in the background is the murder of Jo Cox in 2016, which came into the headlines again this week when her name was brought up in parliament by and MP (legitimately) commenting on the toxic environment surrounding Brexit.

There has been a lot of talk about inflammatory language, with Johnson lobbing terms like Surrender Bill' about; but the left needs to be careful here.  We have not always been as pure and spotless as we would like to think.

Remember when Nigel Farage was getting milkshakes thrown at him?  Oh, how we laughed.  Never mind that it was legally assault, and that crowing over his humiliation was legitimising bullying.  Saying Farage 'deserved it' because we don't like his ideas is dangerously close to legitimising the hate-filled abuse being directed towards the likes of Millar, Maugham, Jones and so on because - guess what? - people on the other side of the left / right or leave / remain feel as passionately as we do.  If it is okay for us to call Nigel Farage unpleasant things and throw things at him and intimidate him by waiting to ambush him then it is okay for the other side to do it as well.  Jeremy Corbyn was egged earlier on this year; people quite rightly condemned it.  A lot of the same people probably had a good chuckle at Farage being milkshaked.

And I'll admit I couldn't resist a smirk when I saw the images of Farage covered in milkshake and blustering feebly about people being mean to him.  But that does not alter the fact that assault is wrong. Even petty assault that doesn't cause physical hurt.

If you're saying it's okay to assault someone in the real world, you can hardly complain about mean words in a text message.  If physical assault doesn't count, then how can we justify being opposed to nasty pixels?  Pixels are even more ephemeral than flavoured milk.

People don't think twice about using foul and demeaning language to deride and insult a politician whose ideas they disapprove of; but when the same language gets directed at someone they support, it 'abusive.'  It's Orwellian double think.  People just don't seem to realise they are entertaining two contradictory notions in their heads at the same time.

This seems to be part of a bigger and ongoing project to debase political discourse to the point where everyone acts and speaks like Donald Trump; where argument is replaced by insult and reason by abuse, logic by threats.  It is driven most obviously (in Britain) by the likes of the Daily Mail ("Crush the Saboteurs!"), the Express and the Sun; but it is also advanced in the more measured tones of the Guardian, the Times and the Telegraph, with the persistent 'othering' and dehumanisation of the other side.  You can insult them, then tell lies about them, and assault them, because it is okay to do all these things because they are bad people.  Though the 'people' part is becoming questionable.  We don't like to think of them as people, but as "Remoaners" or "Gammons" or "Republicans" or "Fascists"; we're millimetres away from describing other people as 'vermin' fit to be exterminated.

Orwell would have recognised this phenomenon.  “The creatures outside looked from pig to man, and from man to pig, and from pig to man again; but already it was impossible to say which was which.”

And another uncomfortable truth.  The left / remain have to put their own house in order, urgently.  Sad to say, we are worse at it than the right.  A study by the University of Sheffield indicated that - contrary to the stereotypes - the most and the worst abuse aimed at MPs via twitter was directed at male MPs and towards Conservative / right-leaning / pro-Brexit figures.

Now, the study is by no means perfect.  It focused on just four months over four years.  Two of those months were immediately prior to elections (2015 and 2017); in 2015 both the Conservatives and Labour were lead by males, and in 2017 Labour was lead by a male and the Conservatives by a female.  With the focus on the leaders during an election campaign, that is bound to skew the statistics.  Cameron and Milliband are the most significant receivers of abuse in 2015. Johnson and Corbyn get a lot of abuse in 2017 but Theresa May gets almost as much. It's reasonable to think that if the party leaders receive most of the abuse, having mostly male party leaders would skew those stats.

(I'm not saying abusing party leaders is okay or acceptable; but I'd be interested to see data without those 'big beasts' in it to see how that affects the figures.)

Also, Boris Johnson received a lot of abusive tweets in 2017, as the figurehead of Brexit.  So those factors might tend to cloud the day-to-day abuse and threatening language aimed at less high profile and female MPs.  And here's the thing - Johnson's segment of the 'sunburst' charts is the largest and the darkest (size indicating amount, and colour indicating intensity, of insults).


It looks like the left and / or Remainers are actually the more vituperative.  And that's very troubling.  We can not condemn the hateful, inflammatory speech of our opponents while engaging in - or at least ignoring - the virulent hatred emanating from our own side.

Thatcher claimed her greatest achievement was the neutering of socialism - Tony Balir and New Labour.  It looks like The Mail, Trump, Bannon, Farage et al have successfully managed to make the left into a nascent fascist movement.  They don't care that people oppose them; the important thing is that the people are adopting their language and tactics, which justifies and legitimises their own egregious behaviour and gives them scope to escalate it.  The more fascistic we sound, the more fascistic they can become; and they are much, much better at it than we are.  And even if we do win the odd scrap, ultimately they win the war, because we have become them.

The creatures outside looked from pig to man, and from man to pig, and from pig to man again; but already it was impossible to say which was which.

Never do what your enemy wants you to do.  We're enabling them.  That's what they want.

Apolling Propaganda

So, there have been a couple of polls, apparently.

One - by Reid research - was pleasing for National.  Another - by Colmar Brunton - pleasured Labour.

Over on The Standard, the former was met with howls of despair and derision. Reid Research, apparently, were fully paid up members of the Illuminati-Space Lizard conspiracy. Stephen Joyce personally wrote in the numbers. Or something like that.

The second poll was give a much warmer reception. Indeed, I think some commentators on The Standard would have married the poll, so entranced were they by its appeal. Someone, writing under the anonymous NOTICES AND FEATURES nom-de-plume, rushed out a marriage proposal glowing endorsement. It proved, apparently, that, "The 3 News poll was a rogue."

Whoa, whoa, whoa!  It does no such thing!

The claim that a Colmar Brunto shows a Reid Research poll to have been completely inaccurate is not correct and whoever is writing under the NOTICES AND FEATURES byline should be ashamed of themselves. I suspect they know they are doing a Bad Thing but decided to put it out there anyway for purposes of propaganda.

Comparing the findings of a Colmar Brunton poll and a Reid Research poll does not show one is accurate and one inaccurate. Even comparing several CB polls to the RR poll does not invalidate it. It merely shows that the two companies have different sampling methods and / or process the data differently and obtain different results.

The only things that would show RR’s poll to be a rogue would be further RR polls that show significantly different results; or the election result itself.

You’ll recall that in Britain, Survation was mocked when its polls showed Jeremy Corbyn’s Labour Party closing in on May’s Conservatives. Other companies showed the Conservatives well ahead. It turned out that Survation was correct and they called the result more accurately than the other companies, by considerable margins. You do not know which polling company has the right formula (or the least wrong, more like) until the real votes are counted. Until then, you can only regard the forecasts with bemused curiosity or phlegmatic disdain.

Do not dismiss the latest RR poll until it is invalidated by further RR polls. The alternative is psephological madness.

You do not get fundamental political changes in a fortnight

Sorry to be both repetitivie and continue Grinchy, but I feel the all consuming urge to rain, Harvey-like, on Labour's parade.  Yes, it is jolly exciting to have Labour actually ahead of National in the polls - without having to include the Greens and New Zealand First to get there - but let's be sensible for a moment, amid the euphoria.

One poll in twelve years?

That doesn't indicate a profound political shift.  People aren't suddenly casting aside their convictions of the last more-than-a-decade, discovering the joys of socialism capitalism-with-a-bit-of-social-conscience.  If it was about policy, people would have been flocking to Andrew Little's (very, very light) red banner.  They didn't exactly flock.

Ardern is waving the same very, very light red banner.  But now the people are flocking.

For a lot of the electorate, Jacinda Ardern is a new shiny object and they are naturally excited by this new toy.  But otherwise, the 'phenomenon' will be a sort of adult fidget spinner – must-have object of fascination for six weeks, then completely forgotten about.

I suppose the question is, will the fad last up to election day? And are we cynical enough to celebrate an election that is won on ephemeral froth, not policy?

I suspect we are.

'Jacindamania' (ugh!) is personality driven stuff - Ardern's youth and vitality contrasting with the drier, more ... senior ... asspect of English and Little.  A lot of it is media driven hype. But the media will bend whatever way they think the wind is blowing. They are no longer the fourth estate, they are just PR and revenue source for their owners.  Right now, Ardern is hot news and click-worthy.

If she actually becomes threatening to the people that own the media and control wealth, she'll suddenly receive a lot less positive coverage.  So she will become a prisoner of her own success - not able to follow whatever radical instincts she may harbour because her success depends - like Tony Blair - on media image.

Half of Shadow Cabinet to Resign?

Obviously, Hilary Benn has been busy.

Just been told half the shadow cabinet to resign this morning

— Laura Kuenssberg (@bbclaurak) 26 June 2016

I despair of the Parliamentary Labour Party.  They really don't get it.  Corbyn is not the problem.  They are the problem.  They were dumbfounded by the Brexit result because they have NO F-CK-NG CLUE about anything beyond their self regarding, narcissistic little bubble.

I'm baffled that the political class seem to have been so confounded by this. If I could see it coming from the other side of the world, what the Hell were they doing? What were all those MPs surgeries and local meetings and focus groups and 'soundings' and 'learnings' about? Clearly, not about finding out what people actually thought or wanted.

And their solution to the discovery that people are not listening to them?  "Hey, we've got a leader who actually seems to broadly reflect public opinion on something! Let's try to get rid of him and replace him with some clueless cumstain whose opinions reflect what we think people should think, not what they actually think. Because that will make them listen to us! They just haven't been told what to think by the right person yet! Tony, could you maybe .."

Wankers.

Thoughts on Labour (NZ or British variety)

The other day I treated The Standard to a long and waffley post about the not-as-similar-as-they-initially-appear plights of the British and Labour parties.  It is all to easy to assume that what will work for one may work for the other; and if that were so, my (very) cautious optimism about Jeremy Corbyn would look to be at odds with my glum response to David Cunliffe's quixotic campaign in 2014.  But there are differences between New Zealand and Britain, and between the British and New Zealish Labour parties.

So it was with some bemusement I noted that great minds think alike, or fools seldom differ, as the New Stateman also publishes a piece of Corbyn inspired navel gaving, covering roughly the same terrain (albeit with out the New Zeal element).

They start off by re-framing some thoughts from that profound left wing thinker, Lord Ashcroft, from his 2005 opus telling Dave Cameron how to get re-elected (helpful advice for which he felt he was was not rewarded adequately, leading to the publication of another, slightly less helpful book in 2015).  The main points identified by are:

• A party must target their scarce resources at people who are more likely to vote in places which are more likely to decide elections.
• A party must campaign hardest on the things that matter most to people, rather than things they hope can be made to matter.
• There are number of parties competing for voters. It should never be assumed that one party’s unpopularity directly translates into support one other single party.
• A party must not simply indulge the instincts of its core voters. The core is, by definition, not big enough to win an election on its own. By endorsing their views and tactics (e.g. classist, inverse-snobbery) too strongly a party risks alienating wider sections of the public that are needed for electoral success.
• There are a number of different types of voters that must be brought together under the umbrella one party’s support. They are likely to have some diverging interests but it is the managing of your loyalists with the persuadables that is key to avoiding become an unelectable rump.

Which is all well and good, though I think actually more applicable to New Zealand than to Britain.  They are not the same, you see.

I think Corbyn can succeed in Britain, which may not be quite the same thing as winning an election.  But I’m not sure a Corbyn figure - something some on the left are trying to imaginate - could succeed in New Zealand. They are very different countries and have very different electoral systems.

Britain has a much longer and stronger left wing tradition, where as New Zealand’s left is more of a fickle beast. How many genuine, irredeemable socialists are there in New Zealand? I’m not convinced there are that many.

There are a lot of socially concerned liberals and lots of people who instinctively oppose National’s combination of neo-liberalism and rural conservatism. But that’s not quite the same thing, and moving left tends to make this loose coalition fragment. After all, in New Zealand they can do that – if Labour smells too strongly of Trotsky, the wets can always vote for the fragrant Mr Dunne, or Mr Peters (he looks like he uses Old Spice) or the Greens, depending on their perversion preference. They’ll still get what they want at the end of the day – a government that reflects some of their centrist principles, built on the back of a diluted version of Labour or National.

I think – this is all just opinion – Britain has a much larger socialist / social-democrat demographic. They are, however, deeply apathetic and disengaged. Turn out in British elections is about 10 percentage points lower than in New Zealand – a massive difference. It is unlikely, in my opinion, that there is much to be gained by campaigning for the non-voters in New Zealand. You might get a few more votes, but it would be at a huge cost – and if winning those votes meant moving left, it might also cost centre votes. Whereas in Britain, there are a lot more votes to be gained, and the archaic monstrosity of First Past the Post means there is no-where for votes to go. As a Brit, I’m quite familiar with having to vote for a party that is only vaguely representative of my opinions (take a bow, Tony Blair!) because the only alternative is much, much, worse. That’s less of an issue in New Zealand, for reasons already described.

We saw what happened with a nominal leftie here in 2014. 25% of the vote. The ‘Missing Million’ did not show up. Hell, even many of those committed enough to vote for Goff in 2011 abandoned ship.

Yeah, I know. The media blah blah blah and / or not sufficiently left wing blah blah bah.

Be honest with yourself for a moment. Do you think the media are really, truly that bad here? Look at what Ed Miliband had to put up with, what Jeremy Corbyn has already had to endure. The NZ media are lightweight. And as for trying again even further from the left, I’m not sure repeating the same experiment, once more with feeling, is the best choice anyone has ever had. Corbyn may work in Britain (and it is a big may) – but I doubt he would here. New Zealand just isn’t the sort of country that would vote for a socialist. And voters are clued up enough to know if they vote for an allied party, they’ll likely get something they don’t want.

What we need is a strong, charismatic centrist figure, someone with a strong social conscience to actually make a real difference (a positive one!) to people’s lives. I don’t think we can realistically hope for more than that at this time.

Which brings us back to the five points identified by Lord Ashcroft.  No-one likes compromise and no-one likes centrist muddle.  We all dream of red flags and revolution and storming the barricades and whatnot.  But the whole point of such shenanigans is that they don't win elections.  Doing that is a grubby, miserable, fraught business of trying to persuade enough people into agreeing with you to let you do more good than bad.  It's not terribly inspiring, but it is reality.

The left need to grow up and stop pining for their own romantic revolutionary hero who will somehow conjure victory of of impossible electoral mathematics.  A pragmatic compromiser, with a dash more charisma and core of principle but an instinct for building bridges rather than barricades, is the best medium term option.

But who the Hell fits that description? And even if we did have such a figure, what’s the likelihood of infighting and factioneering bringing him or her down?

Further rambling on Northland

So, it looks like Peters has this in the bag.  And even more importantly, it looks like ACT will get less than a hundred votes.  Now THAT is worth celebrating.

The triumph of Winston Peters, on the other hand, is not worth celebrating. I won’t be toasting a Peters’ victory. A Labour, Mana or Green victory, yes. But not one that is just going to extend John Key’s reign.

If people seriously think he won't immediately start working out an accommodation with Key, they are fools. Winston is winning it for Winston. He wants to be Minister of something or other. Why do the left never, ever learn from history? This is the farce to the prior tragedy!

Look, I know there is a desperate need on the left to see the words “National defeated” in any context. But this result will change nothing and – given the comparative ease with which Peters has managed it – it raises some troubling questions about Labour’s utter inability to challenge Key.

Sorry to spoil the party, but it isn’t our party. It is the party of Winston Peters, a self serving right wing demagogue. Nothing for progressives to celebrate here. You don’t think it is just a bit sad that we’re reduced to getting all excited about Winston Peters doing the job we’ve been totally incapable of doing?

Without, it must be noted, disturbing a hair of his perfectly coiffured head.

There has been some slightly odd talk of how Labour's 'strategy' has worked, as if setting Winston on Key was part of some grand plan.

What strategy?

The one that involved showing that Key and National are beatable, except by Labour?

I don't see this as a vistory-by-proxy for Labour or progressive politics. I think this is a long term disaster. It changes nothing, other than forcing Key and Peters to get used to working together, making it even less likely NZ First will look Labour’s way in 2017. And if we’re going to be stuck on 30% then, we’ll need the simpering glances of every coquette we can get.

But the likelihood is that, in 2017, our new Bestie will spurn our advances. Mr Key is no fool. He will doubtless recognise Peters – not Labour or the Greens – as the real danger and ensure he is stuffed full of baubles before the end of the week.

A message from the North

The Northland by-election count is under way.

Looks like Winston Peters is going to coast home.  He is already 1,500 votes ahead.

If he does win, I suspect the left will collectively go into a fresh fit of insanity.  You can almost understand.  Any sort of victory over John Key and National has been a long time coming.  Helen Clark couldn't do it.  Phil Goff couldn't do it.  David Shearer didn't get the chance to do it.  David Cunliffe couldn't do it.  Andrew Little, while coming across as affable and competent, hasn't thus far shown much sign of doing it.

Who else, then, but Winston, could do it?

But let's not get over-excited.  Yes, a Peters victory will see the National led government lose its majority.  But that is all.  The only difference is that Winston Peters will now be part of that government.

Don't, for a moment, delude yourself into thinking that Peters is one of us or that he will use his new power to bring the government down.  He isn't interested in that.  He wants to be the government.  He wants those baubles, and John Key will happily hand them out to him.

The message from Northland is not a warning to John Key that his time is up; it is really a bitter dispatch for Labour - If Peters can do this with noting but a twinkle in his eye and good hair, why the Hell have Labour found National so impervious?

Dunno what to say about this, really

Donald Trump and Russell Brand are having a spat on twitter.  It puts me in mind of Oscar Wilde's quip about fox hunting - "The unspeakable in pursuit of the uneatable."  Though in this case, more a matter of the despicable in affray with the punchable.  You can choose who is which.  I recommend alternating them as the mood takes you.

The digital fight started when Trump tweeted that the Forgetting Sarah Marshall star is a 'major loser.' Brand, however, hit back - and eventually suggested that Trump is not the entrepreneur he has claimed to be, by linking to an an article that mentioned his multi-million dollar inheritance and financial aid from the US government. 

'I watched Russell Brand @rustyrockets on the @jimmyfallon show the other night—what the hell do people see in Russell—a major loser!' Trump first wrote. 

Trump's comments came three days after Brand appeared on 'Late Show with David Letterman' on Monday. Brand is not scheduled as a guest this week on 'The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon'. 

Trump then published another tweet, which read '.@katyperry must have been drunk when she married Russell Brand @rustyrockets – but he did send me a really nice letter of apology!' 

It was not immediately clear what 'letter of apology' Trump was referring to.

Perry and Brand were married in 2010 and divorced two years later, with Perry telling Vogue in June 2013 that Brand announced his intention to divorce in a 2011 New Year's Eve text message. 

Brand soon retaliated and responded to Trump's second message with jokes about Trump's sobriety and his much-lampooned hairline.

Smells like two sad publicity whores staging a phoney fight for attention.

Meanwhile, John Lydon, of Sex Pistols, PiL and buttermongering fame, sums up Brand pretty well in a typically bracing Q&A session in The Guardian:

The youth of today have every possibility as being as smart or a stupid as the youth of past. So long as you remove Russell Brand from the agenda. I think he's absolutely clarified himself as arsehole number one. It's not funny to talk nonsense. I think his words are the words of somebody else. Misconstrued.

Excellent.  Elsewhere in the Q&A he advocates voting, no matter how dire the options, as "everybody should try to make the best of a bad situation, and for me I despise the entire shitstem because it is corrupt, but that corruption has only come about because of the indolence of us as a population." Which is about the polar opposite of Brand's recent (well, recent-ish) whiney call for mass apathy in the face of drab, uninspiring or actively corrupt or malevolent politics.  Brand justified - nay, bragged - about his disengagement from politics:

I have never voted. Like most people I am utterly disenchanted by politics. Like most people I regard politicians as frauds and liars and the current political system as nothing more than a bureaucratic means for furthering the augmentation and advantages of economic elites.

Well, that's nice, Russell.  You really showed those nasty corrupt venal self-serving troughers, didn't you!

Incidentally, Brand was born in 1975, the year after I was.  That would mean the first election he would have been able to vote in was in 1997 (probably).  That was a big one, and anyone who couldn't see a difference between John Major's corrupt, exhausted Tories and Labour (even with Tony Blair in charge) was being wilfully blind.

It is staggering how willing people are to discount the impact of democracy on their lives. Born in an NHS hospital? Had NHS treatment? Enjoyed a free schooling? Voted out the Tories in 1997? Worked in a safe environment, with the right to join a union (which you probably ignored) and with recourse to the courts and law when you needed them? These are not rights but privileges, and they need to be defended as there are powerful people who want to destroy them. I'm going to hazard a guess that someone who can't be bothered to vote would make a fairly piss-poor revolutionary. Brandism, a political creed of shrugging ones shoulders and doing nothing, would help people who want to attack the privileges he - and you - are taking for granted.

Someone who can't be bothered to vote isn't going to accomplish much as a revolutionary, no matter how much he styles himself on vaguely remembered 60s icons.

And authoritarian governments fear an active citizenry. They aren't scared of passive refuseniks who bleat about how "nothing works," how "they are all the same" and how they are "giving up on political parties." That's the sort of thing Thatcherites love to hear. It gives them free rein and forces the opposition to appeal more an more to the pool of active voters.

So if "They are all the same" as Brand calims, it is because people are passively enabling that evolution.

Brand qualifies his stance slightly by saying it is "current" politics and political parties he is disillusioned with.  But political parties can be reformed. We saw this, negatively, in the 90s when Blairism subverted the Labour Party, or in New Zealand in the 80s when the neo-liberals infiltrated Labour.  Or in the 2004 when ACT tried to take over the National Party.  Just because the obvious examples are negative, showing parties going the wrong way, it doesn't have to be that way.  And sitting on your hands saying, "But I don't like this, give me some parties I want to vote for," isn't going to work either.  Because if you're not in the game, why should they care what you think?

And no matter how dire, there's always ther stark reality of choosing between 'bad' and 'worse.'  Standing aside and letting others decide for you might be a superficially noble act, but it's a bit shitty, really, for all the people who aren't Russell Brand and have to live with the consequences of 'worse.

The fact is, politics and political parties can make people's lives better (or worse).  Comedians, with an amplified idea of their own importance, don't.  From the 1940s to the late 70s things were moving in the right direction.  Leftwing political parties made the country better.  Comedians told some funny jokes.  Then the crises of the 70s gave the ruling class a chance to reverse the progress made over that time, almost back to pre-WW2 days.  Comedians told some funny jokes.  Some of them were even political.  But they didn't change anything.

(As an aside, the reversals suffered in the 70 illustrate something too many on the left have failed to grasp. Progress is not made in times of crisis. The assumption that 1927, or 1977, or 2008 (love those Kondratiev long waves!) would lead to the final demise of capitalism is naive. A crisis gives the ruling class the chance to re-establish control. Progress is only made during times of plenty and relative ease, when people are able to worry about more than what they are eating for dinner tonight and whether they will have somewhere to sleep next week.  That is why the French and Russian revolutions ended so badly - they were a desperate convulsion that played into the hands of the bandits and psychopaths who wanted power for themselves, not for the powerless.)

Brand's message is a naive bit of posturing, couching basic ideas in preposterous language (He really should read Orwell, particularly 'Politics and the English Language,' or at least look at the five rules of good writing at the beginning of The King's English by the Fowler brothers.)

It appeals because it justifies people's indifference - getting involved in politics and actually making the Labour party (or, if you are That Sort Of Person, the Conservative Party) into a properly functioning, distinct political force, is hard, tiresome and not very well rewarded. We'd much rather watch TV.

Or follow him on twitter, because berating someone about his hair is so revolutionary and daring.  Well done, Russell!  That showed that unspeakable oligarch!  He'll think twice before he garners even more wealth!

The state that we're in

First, a nice song:

Listen while reading what follows.  It will help, one way or another.

One of the basic tenets of most strains of socialism is that people are the product of their environment.

This can be abstracted to the nth degree, with the materialist view of the world; or targeted specifically, where we try to tease out the socio-psychology of the individual.  The concept is the same, and fundamental to most socialists.  Circumstances create people before people create circumstances.  Otherwise, why bother about the material and economic relations of society?  If they aren't fundamental to the shaping of people, why worry?

But there's an uncomfortable shadow to that, the fact that we live in a society that has been openly, aggressively encouraging selfishness, individualism and consumerism for over three decades, in most countries of the developed world.

If we accept that people are formed by their environment, then we probably have to accept that people have been changed by the relentless narcissism and consumerism which has been the (hem) predominant discourse in western societies for the last 30 years. This is why I’m not convinced by the loud voices wailing that Labour's current woes can be alleviated by a sharp turn to the left.

People voting National are not going to suddenly vote Labour when they are offered a more left wing alternative. They’re going to be even more repelled. The most we can do, in the short term, is pry off the centre vote, and then when people realise the Sky Has Not Fallen, persuade them it will still not fall if we move a little bit further, then a little bit further.

The neo-liberals had the advantage of circumstance when they moved the country the other way in the 80s. But I think a crisis generally favours the right (and they deceived as to how far they were going to go) as witnessed by the right wing retrenchment after 2008.

Unless there is some system busting crisis (which we’ve been waiting for for over 150 years now!) Fabianism is probably the only way for the left to return to power. Bolsheviks might dream of seizing control and imposing (their version of) the dictatorship of the proletariat, and then persuading people they were right all along, but most historical examples warn against that route.

(By Bolsheviks, I meant (nearly) literally that – a small group of extremists seizing power by non-democratic means. This happened in the 80s, when the neo-liberal Bolsheviks won power through deception. Do we want to go down that road? Democracy requires winning the argument before taking power.  If we can not win compliance, coercion or deception are our only options.  I don't think they are good ones.)

It’s an argument born of practicality.  Yes, we're facing a catastrophe in the form of climate change and environmental destruction.  But the Greens get about 10% of the vote. They need another 40% before they can do anything. The planet, unfortunately, is a big place and it is hard to take in the impact of human activity.  And people – weaned on consumerism and selfishness for three decades – are more receptive to iphones than egalitarianism or environmentalism.

Hence the needs for small steps.

The missing million have sat out three elections now. It is unlikely they will be tempted back in significant numbers. They are the flip side of the neo-liberal-narcissistic-consumerists; the permanently disenfranchised and alienated.

If they couldn’t be bothered voting AGAINST John Key, what sort of inducements can we offer them that will get them to vote FOR the left? It’s a pleasant fantasy that they will roll up to the polling station in 2017, if only we offer a sufficiently leftwing program … And even if we entertain that fantasy for a few moments, what do you think will happen to centrist voters if Labour lurches left? They’ll leave, probably in greater numbers than the ‘missing million’ are being won back.

(The great thing about the ‘missing million’ delusion is that it can be recycled, of course. It’ll work just as well prior to the 2020, 2023, 2026 and 2029 elections as it does now.)

They won't vote because they don't care. It's alienation.  It's not a pleasant thing to contemplate, but it seems to me to be the reality.  If you don't like reality, you can dream about them all you like. You can devise a fabulous platform of policies. They won't listen in significant numbers. And for every one you win, you'll lose two at the other end. You might not care, too much, but you won't win. Savour your ideological purity because it is all you'll have to enjoy until 2026.

And in the mean time, another generation will have had their lives blighted by the right.

What now?

By the time I post this, I suspect David Cunliffe will no longer be the leader of the Labour Party.  He's on his way into a conference with the party's governing council, and he's called a press conference for afterwards.  Those are not great omens.

As I said on election night, I'm indifferent to whether Cunliffe, or Robertson, or Shearer, or Old Uncle Tom Cobbleigh is the leader.  I don't particularly like Cunliffe and I think he comes over as arrogant and (unlike most people) I think he did badly in the debates, waving his hands about and trying to shout over Key and being poorly prepared for blindly obvious attacks.

But when the talent pool is as small as Labour's is, you can't really go about changing your leader every five minutes.  It's  a measure of how few options Labour have that some people are seriously talking about bringing back David Shearer for another shot.  One wonders, what are thinking?  One wonders, what dead animal will he present to parliament this time?

People seem to be fixated on the importance of the leader.  Cunliffe's advocates seemed to think - I remember the conversations on The Standard - that his elevation to the top job would see the party surge to above 40%.  Quite seriously.

I don't blame Cunliffe for the debacle on Saturday night.  It would be beyond the ability of even the most profoundly useless leader - and Cunliffe is/was not profoundly useless - to accomplish that feat, and in just eleven months.

Labour were up against a dreadful political perfect storm - incumbency, a growing economy (though watch this space), the miasma of Dirty Politics which prevented the party getting their own campaign underway, and the profoundly difficult issue that they were massively behind in the polls.  Floating voters obey the laws of gravity.  They will tend to be drawn towards the greater mass.  I'm no mathematician, but I think 45% is bigger than 25%.  And their own overwhelming, systematic incompetence.  Let that never be forgotten.  Like who thought it was a good idea to announce the New Zealand Inc policy - which was interesting and important - on the same day as Dotcom's Big Reveal?

If there is one issue that should always be front and centre of every single Labour campaign it is education.  I'm trying to think of times when it was mentioned in the campaign.  I'm struggling.  I'm sure it was but ... Not exactly with feeling.  It is one issue that the left own and on which National is eternally vulnerable - charter schools!  Novopay!  Classes of over 40!  Branding children losers at 6!  And it is the Great Issue that unites left and centre - because everyone, pretty much, sends their kids to school, or employs people that have been through school.

Now we have an ACT associate minister of education, who will likely be used to front for every hideous policy National want to inflict on New Zealand.  He won't mind the opprobrium heaped on him - he's safe in Epsom, where people are hardly likely to oppose charter schools or bulk funding or support teachers' unions.  It's looking grim for the rest of us, however.  While mouthing sweet nothings over child poverty, Key's government will push through changes that will gut the education system and reinforce the pattern of inter-generational poverty, failure and despair that has blighted New Zealand since the 80s.

I don't care if David Cunliffe is still Labour leader in half an hour's time.  Because it doesn't matter who is.  Until the party sorts out it's prodigious crap mountain, whoever leads it is never going to be Prime Minster.

Stumbling towards Power?

Let's be honest about it.  Labour have absolutely nothing to celebrate just now.

The last few days have been fantastic for the left and in particular for a certain Mr D Cunliffe.  But before we get too deliriously joyous, let's acknowledge an unpleasant truth.  We (the left) don't deserve this.

Dirty Politics is the work of a very small group of people - Nicky Hager, the hacker or hackers who obtained the information which they passed on to Hager, and of course, the likes of Slater, Ede, Collins, Odgers, Farrar, Williams and the rest, who so generously provided the original dirt and scandal.

Hager has, in two weeks, managed to do what Labour has completely failed to do in two terms of opposition.  he has destroyed John Key's veneer of easy-going nonchalance, his reputation of being someone who doesn't doesn't do politics, but does it in a different way - somehow being above the ugly broil.  His likeable air of being the Prime Minister it is okay to like, the politician you might not be mortified to be seen in public with, a nice chap with a few million but who hasn't let it change him, has been shredded.

(I'm not saying that Key is any of these things, but it has been the quality the man has managed to project over the last several years.)

Hager managed this.  Labour - with all the resources and energy available to it - failed to achieve anything like it in over six years of trying.  Hager showed that Key is not only vulnerable, but very easily wounded - something that Labour systematically failed to do since he became leader.

Even during the leader's debate last week, Cunliffe was so caught up in his 'Vote Positive' delusion that he failed to turn the knife in the squirming Key.  Instead, he airy said that new Zealanders wanted to talk about policy and such like.

Well, no, Dave.  First of all, cynically, the people watching a political debate while the All Blacks are playing on another channel are likely to be the die-hard political junkies to whom Dirty Politics really is important.  In the petty world of political obsessives, this is the second coming plus the invention of the wheel plus the black death.

More importantly, Dirty Politics really is important in the greater scheme of things.  New Zealand's democracy has been under sustained attack by the forces of the right for years.

That.  Really.  Matters.

Though perhaps Cunliffe's reticence on Dirty Politics in understandable.  After all, Labour can't exactly hold its head up high.  Not because of the flimsy "The left do it too!!" defence offered up by the Poltroon-in-Chief Key, but because Labour have been so successful in not talking about this particular elephant (or should I say giant Slater?) in the living room for almost a decade.  With National cheerfully dismantling New Zealand democracy and setting new lows for corruption and abuse of office, Labour's attitude has been to allow them just to get on with it, as they have squandered opportunity and energy in the own going psychodrama of left wing disunity and infighting.

If anyone should be Prime Minister in a months time, it should not be David Cunliffe.  It should be Nick Hager.  If National are ousted (note, I did not say, "If Labour win") it will be because of his efforts and the work that he has done to expose the corrupt, destructive and anti-democratic practices of the self-serving 'elite' that have seized control of the National party.

Which is why a Labour led government is almost a frightening prospect.  They haven't earned it.  It will have been gifted to them.  And having received it in such circumstances, what on Earth can they be expected to do with it, other than continue to blunder and stumble?  If such a shoddy bunch of malcontents, time servers and incompetents finds themselves mysteriously in possession of the treasury benches, how will they manage to avoid losing them in short order?

So I welcome the potential demise of Key and his corrupt cabal of cronies.  But I don't look forward with much joy to the prospect of a confused Labour party rather nervously picking up the reins of power.  Faced with the daunting prospect of actually having to Do Stuff, rather than just Talk About Stuff (unlike bloggers, politicians occasionally have to make good on their fine words) and confronted by a vehemently vengeful right wing, it may not be a pretty sight.

Sorry to spoil the euphoria, David, but Goliath isn't actually going to take this lying down.  If Labour win, they need to be very bloody ready for an absolute shit storm.  And nothing in their last decade of abject political incontinence and indiscipline suggests that they are.

Labour Green coalition: more venting + general spleen aimed at the Labour caucus

Another round of atrocious polling for Labour, and another round of desperate, "If we add Labour, the Greens, Mana and NZ First together, we only need a swing of about 4% to FORM THE NEXT GOVERNMENT!!"

It used to be just,  "If we add Labour, the Greens, Mana and NZ First together, we can FORM THE NEXT GOVERNMENT!!"  Indeed, I can recall the days when it seemed possible that it might just be Labour and the Greens needed.

And there were times before that when Labour used to be the largest party in Parliament, I tell you!!

But the drift away from the left has been going on for so long it can not be ignored.  And the more coalitions and esoteric combinations get talked up, the more the support for the left bloc declines, and the more wildly fanciful the proposed ways the left can win power get.

(The idea of actually getting out there with  whole bunch of sane, practical policies that people like, expressed clearly by people who really seem to care and who want to make the country better, seems to elude many.)

This has been going on so long now that it takes a few moments to remember that Labour And The Greens is not actually a political party, but to radically different political parties and there is no certainty the the will form a coalition, even if it is just  monogamous couple, and even less certainty if what is proposed is a polygamous monstrosity featuring Labour, the Greens, IMP and NZ First.  And Uncle Tom Cobbleigh and all.  I'm sure t some stage, the Maori Party will be included, and people will suddenly remember that Peter Dunne worked well with Helen Clarke ... It seems there is no limit to the optimism of the left when faced with the direness of the polling numbers.

(The other response is t proclaim the polls are incorrect, not just wrong, but deliberately so and are being produced in order to make National's victory more likely.  I kid you not.)

But let us, for the moment, focus just on the idea of a Green / Labour tie up, as it seems to be the most likely least unlikely way of Labour achieving some sort of victory in September.

It is a possibility, but by no means a certainty.

Lumping the two parties together as if they were one is to make the classic mistake of assuming that the Greens have to go with Labour. They don't. Labour haven’t exactly made it easy for them. Their policies aren’t exactly going to set green hearts racing, and they will not be too willing to make concessions, as they don’t want to be portrayed as ‘beholden to the radical eco-Nazis.’

The Greens might well decide against a coalition with Labour. The voters clearly don’t like it – he more it gets talked about, the smaller both parties’ support gets! Faced with putting an unwieldy coalition of three or four antagonistic parties into government (and getting the opprobrium that would go with it) and ‘constructive opposition’ to a minority National government, they might be better off going with the latter.

Labour have treated the Greens badly over the course of several elections. they might think it is time for a bit of utu.

The Greens want to preserve the Green party.  A short term alliance with a deeply unpopular Labour party and two or three other antagonistic parties is likely to produce a dreadful government that will struggle to achieve anything and will be deeply loathed.  The Lib Dems in Britain have suffered dreadfully for putting in the Conservatives; the Greens would become even more loathed than that if they put in a Labour Party that was polling 25%.

Bear in mind that both parties have seen declining support in recent polls.  The more the Lab-Green coalition gets talked up, the less inclined people are to vote for them.  Labour supporters who want a strong government, left or right, and who reject the flakey kooky enviro-whacky Greens (and there are som of those out there) looking to National, on the (dubious and short sighted) reasoning that they've been in charge for six years, the country hasn't fallen to pieces and at least they are getting things done without having to be beholden to crackpot fringe groups; and Green voters are perhaps feeling disappointed that their party is being treated as a de facto extension of Labour, rather than a distinct entity representing their interests.  After all, there must be reasons why they are voting Green rather than Labour in the first place, and if they feel these needs are not being met an more ...

With all this in mind, the Greens might prefer to hang back and wait until the situation changes and they can form a less demented, two party coalition; or until they actually replace Labour as the main opposition party.  Which no longer seems as fanciful as it once did.

Given that Labour's policies are not massively more pro-environment that National's, the Greens might feel they were not worth supporting -  a harsh lesson to Labour on the reality of the disparate nature of the left these days, and the need to be more accommodating to left wing partners.

After all, Labour have consistently treated the Greens shabbily, and there is no reason for the Greens to think that will change now.  Not just utu, but survival instinct may prompt the Greens to frown, purse their lips and say, "Thanks ... but no thanks" when Labour offers them a chance of a quick grope and snog.

Bottom line is, Labour can not and should not be counting on the Greens to get them across the line.  It's a measure of how shamefully useless they are that this is the case.  A substantial portion of National's vote is soft, made up of centrists who might instinctively vote for Labour, but who have been come inured to National because, bluntly, Labour are not offering them anything worth voting for -  a tired, scheming caucus, out of touch leadership, a vague and muddled policy program.  And this at a time when National have been blessed with the most formidable political operator in New Zealand's recent history, and a caucus scarily intent on winning and holding power.

It's almost as if Labour have decided to sit this one out.  Not Cunliffe - he knows he's only got one shot - but too many of the old crew are sitting back and happy enough to draw their salaries.  And too many of the 'new blood' are reluctant to be associated with what looks like a doomed campaign.  Might be  career limiting move, you know.

Idiots and scum the lot of them.

There is no (more thn usual) media bias in New Zealand

At least, no more so than anywhere else.  Yet in New Zealand it seems to present an insurmountable obstacle.  Whereas in other countries, the left just gets on with getting popular and - occasionlly at least - getting elected.

Hell, if Ed Miliband can lead the Tories in the polls, after just four years in opposition, it shouldn't be that difficult for NZ Labour to challenge John Key and his tired, corrupt bunch of cronies.

Yet it seems to be too much to ask.  And so the predictable wail goes up - the incessant refrain of media bias. A recent example fom the Standard being this complain from Karol (who is highly skilled at discerning media bias where normal people might tend to over look it because it ... er ... isn't there.

In this case, the offending article being an Op Ed piece by Tracey Watkins, examining the political career of Laila Harre and the jigsaw puzzle that make up the left of NZ politics.

The article that provokes Karol's wrath is actually a fairly complimentary piece about Harre’s achievements and experience, and an accurate historical commentary on the history of the Alliance. And I'm willing to bet that if Watkins hadn’t written this piece, people would be whining about how the left were being ‘shut out.’ If she had written a puff piece about how wonderful and ace Harre and everything left was, then she would have been lying and doing a disservice to her readers.

The more articles like this, the better. It makes IMP look more serious and interesting, and reduces the perception that the party is just a bad joke by Dotcom. Stop being such a bunch of sad, paranoid complainers, the left! This isn’t media bias. This is responsible reporting.

Real media bias is the Daily Mail smearing Ralph Miliband to hurt his son’s election chances; or the Telegraph’s grotesquely skewed coverage of the expenses scandal a few years back; or the attempts to hurt Harriet Harman or Jack Dromney by trying to connect them to the Paedophile Information Exchange.

If you think a judicious profile of Laile Harre is ‘bias’ you don’t even know the meaning of the word.

The left is fragmented. That’s a fact. It will probably become more fragmented and will finally evolve into several strands, of which Labour will be the largest, but nowhere near as dominant as it has been or even is now.

Anyone who pretends the left isn’t fragmented is deluded. It is one of the fundamental problems we have to address. Contrast with the right, which is able to command a solid 40%+ of the vote.

Floating voters and potential switchers are disinclined to vote Labour because they no longer look like a party of government. The sooner Labour acknowledges this and sets out a common agenda with the Greens, IMP and others, the better.

Unfortunately, it probably won’t happen for a couple of elections.

 Another issue that has provoke fury on the Standard is the return of the dreaded wyrm, sorry worm.

Apparently, political debate that guage the audience reaction are not a good thing because they cheapen the debate and turn politics into a win/lose game (er, isn't that the point? We win, they eat that, they win, we eat that?).

 I think this is a convoluted way of saying they think the left will fair less well at the hands of the worm (as it were) than the right wing parties. Cunliffe will struggle against Key, because he manifests the same unlikeable tendencies of the later Clarke. He doe snot come across well, and has yet to articulate a clear, gripping idea of what New Zealand should be like.

It shouldn't be difficult. The message of the left is a sure fire winner. We want children to grow up in dry, warm homes and attend well resourced schools where everyone gets a quality education which doesn't depend upon being born into the right family. Workers should have well remunerated jobs, and be able to do them in safety and with the security of knowing they have a solid union behind them looking out for their interests. And we all get to be free, equal citizens of a just nation that is based on the rule of law and openness, which cares for the environment and serves as a role model to other nations to aspire to.

Yet this simple message seems to have eluded Labour since some point early in the century; they've been running scared since 2005.

As a result, people have lost interest in them, and simply vote National because they seem like a better bunch of managers than the other lot. If they bother to vote at all.

So, I for one welcome the return of the worm. I’m mostly in favour of things that will attract public interest in the election, as both major parties seem intent on making into a stunningly dull affair.

But, really, why would you?

There is a post over on The Standard by 'Blue,' calling on people to get out and vote National out on the 20th of September.  Though not explicitly couched as a call for people to vote for Labour, it effectively is.  I doubt Blue would be too cheered by the idea of the missing million showing up and casting their vote for John Key.  So it is calling for people to vote for a Labour lead government.  I massively support the goal, but find the substance of the message dis-spiriting.

The poster blames pretty much everything for Labour's malaise and voter's lack on interest, from the police to "a triple whammy of dodgy polls, Government-manufactured ‘scandal’ and hysterical opinion pieces."

But I think that is all missing the point. Part of the problem is (unintentionally) summarised in the title of the post - people might be inclined to vote National out, but they sure as Hell can't think why they might want to vote Labour in.

They might not trust John Key any more, but they sure as Hell don't trust Cunliffe. They might not like where New Zealand is going, but Labours alternative is not winning much support. It isn't registering. It isn't making people's ears prick up and think, "Yeah, we need some of that!"

As for the 'dodgy polls,' spare us the excuses. If Labour are tanking in the polls it is because the electorate Just Don't Want To Vote For Them. It might not be as dire as 23%, but it certainly isn't much better. Labour have managed to move backwards from the glory days of David Shearer. No policy, no unity, no leadership, no vision, no message, just a weak bunch of time serving vacillators who are thinking they'll be back no matter what, so why bother trying?

New Zealanders are still voting for John Key because they think he is better than the alternative. That's a bitter truth but one the Labour party will need to face up to.

Until Labour can actually put together a coherent series of arresting, exciting policies that stand up to scrutiny and don't sound intimidating or confusing ("They're going to force me into Kiwisaver? Then put up the rate?") they haven't a hope. And they won't d that until about half the MPs in caucus have been ejected and replaced by real people, not political professionals and nonentities. And that's only the first step.

It's pathetic that two defeats and another in the offing have not percolated through to the senile brain of Labour. It isn't working, to borrow from Saatchi & Saatchi. It might be unfixable. We might be looking at a new, post-Labour left. Which is a shame, as it will take a couple of electoral cycles at least for that to work itself out. And that means another couple of years of Key and then a term and a bit of Bill, at least.

Maybe Labour really needs to be hammered in September. National experienced that in 2002. Maybe Cunliffe will be Labour's Bill English, who failed because he couldn't win the support and trust of the radical right fringe of his party. It was brutal, and it nearly ushered in the now unthinkable idea of Don Brash as Prime Minister. But it lead to the formation of a new, disciplined, focused and united party, Hell bent on winning power. Unfortunately.

Perhaps Labour needs that sort of near-death experience, so it finds the will to re-invent itself. Or maybe it just needs to be put out of our misery.

Even if Labour manages some sort of victory in September, it will be nothing to celebrate about. The party of the working class, the party that is supposed to champion the 99% of New Zealanders who aren't stinking rich and who don't own gold speedboats, polling 30% and jobbed into power by the Greens and Winston Peters?

It's an indictment of the uselessness of the Labour Party that it has come to this.

What is Labour's problem?

I've just had another look at the recent One News-Colmar Brunton poll - the one that gave National 51% of the vote and Labour more than 20 points behind, at 30%.

Looking beyond that painful picture, there is a list of issues concerning New Zealanders.  They were:

• Education, identified as a key election issue by 40% of the electorate.
• Health - 37%.
• Jobs - 30%.
• Child Poverty - 27%.
• Wages - 25%.

This is quite astonishing, because all five are areas Labour should absolutely own.  Fair access to education and health are fundamentally leftwing issues.  Employment opportunity, security and workers' rights ditto - why do you think it was called the Labour party?  Child poverty, absolutely a leftwing issue.  Wages ties in with employment and jobs.

Labour should have been making the running on these issues for years by now.  Not because they are potential vote winners, but because they are the building blocks of a just, fair, socialist society.

Instead, we've had ... nothing much.  Kiwi Build.  Something about power bills.  A smart idea about using savings to balance economic pressures, which probably sounds alarming to the average voter ("They're going to put up my Kiwisaver rate whether I want it or not?").

Other than that, a yawning chasm of indifference from the leaders of the so-called people's party.  The election is coming up fast.  The government should be utterly on the ropes - it is incompetent, corrupt and vacillating.  The only thing keeping its ratings so impossibly sky high is that the alternative major party of government looks even less plausible.  They don't look like an alternative government.  They don't even look like a credible opposition.  They look like what they are - a bunch of over educated elitists waiting for their turn to play with the levers of power and happily drawing their salaries in the mean time.

Their lives won't be made substantially worse when Labour are trounced again in September.  Hell, some of them will probably find their career prospects enhanced as they seek more remuneration in the private sector.  they won't be living in run down, damp, unhealthy rentals, or working on inadequate minimum wages terrified of losing their jobs, or sending their children to desperately under-resourced schools staffed by exhausted teachers trying to educate far too many students.

So you can understand the lack of passion and urgency in Labour.  This is not about them, or their people.  They're part of the problem for the left, for progressive parties and socialists.  Unfortunately, they will have to be part of the solution as well, for the foreseeable future as they still bring in about 30% of the vote, and will be more amenable to working as part of a progressive coalition than National (though it isn't as great a difference as it should be - I can almost imagine National working with the Greens at some point.  Almost.  A possibility that seems to elude Labour, who boorishly seem to insist the Greens are simply a kooky extension of the left.)

But the left, sadly, needs to start looking to the future and beyond the Labour Party in its current form.  Perhaps it can re-invent itself, but it seems unlikely.  Vested interests aren't very good at looking after anyone's interests other than their own, and not particularly good at that, either.  They'll carry on assuming they are one of the two parties that are imbued with the divine right to rule New Zealand, as their support dwindles further and further.

Which is - oddly - why I welcome the inflation of National's poll ratings.  It is the evidence of voters simply giving up on Labour.  As voters are inherently a conservative bunch, many will give up, initially, one main party for another.  They understand (unlike fanatic activists) that Labour or National has to form the foundation of the next government.  And they are so disgusted with Labour that they switch to National, as the default alternative governing party.

But their loyalty to National is only going to be temporary, as everything that is wrong with Labour is found in National in concentrated form.  Indeed, National make a virtue of all the things that are alienating voters from Labour.  So, after handing National an undeserved but probably inevitable third term, and being treated like garbage as a reward, the voters will look else where.

I have no idea what the political landscape will look like in ten years time.  It is just possible some charismatic class warrior will seize control of Labour and revitalise the party.  But wasn't Cunliffe supposed to be that guy?   (Though I've always been sceptical of Cunliffe's progressive credentials)

It hasn't worked, and probably won't work in the future because of the deadening hand of the vested interests.

The reappearance of Laila Harre on the political scene -  in one of the strangest political marriages ever - perhaps provides a clue.  Perhaps the future will look a bit like the Alliance, only this time it won't be crushed by Labour antipathy.  If Mana and the Internet Party can find some common cause, and Laila Harre finds it not too ludicrous to join the fun, perhaps some loose knit but formal left bloc is conceivable.

Post 2015, a few disheartened Labour MPs - the ones that actually become MPs for the right reasons - might find their way into it as well, as the party drifts into the mid 20s and the government benches seem to drift further and further away.  And suddenly the voting public will notice that there are smart, passionate and essentially normal people in politics.

And finally Labour - a pointless rump polling 15% - regains power as a junior party in a new progressive government.

Insane?  Maybe.  But not as insane as continuing to vote for Labour and expecting them to suddenly to decide to change their behaviour.  That's a classic example of doing something repeatedly and expecting a different out come.

Labour isn't working.

Can't be fixed.

Time to do something different.

On the left

The strength of the left has been its ability to tear itself to pieces more effectively than the right could ever do.  This is seen all across the world, not just in New Zealand.  I think acceptance of sometimes quite divergent opinion within a unified party is what we need to sort out before we can hope to take the fight to the right.  In Britain in the 80s, Thatcherism triumphed because the left was split between Labour and the SDP.  Because it was a FPTP system, Thatcher was able to win massive majorities on a declining share of the vote.

Obviously, things are a bit better under MMP, but I disagree with the suggestion that the fragmented nature of the left is not really a problem.  If nothing else, it makes welding a coalition together more fraught; it also creates the problem of ideological dilution - there are some elements (and voters) of NZ First that are natural left territory, but the party itself is tainted with right wing madness and special interest pleading as to make it toxic; and there is the issue of perception - even if the dog is not being wagged by multiple tails - that the minor parties are getting undue influence and issue of stability will always be a factor for some voters; and the risk of unwise connections, as exampled by the recent dalliance of Mana and the Internet Party.

So I feel very disappointed when I see people continuing to rave about the supposed malign influence of Mallard-Goff-King, because a) I don't actually believe it, b) these are some of our most effective and recognisable performers, and c) it shows we still haven't learned the lesson and learned to accept the idea that people will have somewhat different ideas of what it means to be Labour, or the best ways to achieve leftwing goals.

This isn't to say the fault is the minor parties on the left; Mana is looking to Dotcom because it has been systematically excluded by Labour. and the Greens were blocked from coalition throughout the Clark years.  To win, Labour needs to accept all strains of reasonable and sane leftism, and all strains of reasonable and sane leftism should be looking to form links with the larger party.  Perhaps formal unification is impossible - but more co-operation and development of joint policy is essential.  This means Middle New Zealand has to accept that Mana and the Greens are not swivel eyed eco-warriors and racial agitators; and the left needs to accept that Middle New Zealand is also part of Labour.

False flag?

There has been much heat, and very little light, resulting from John Key's casual suggestion it might be time for New Zealand to get a new flag.

While most political parties nodded in agreement with key, the suggestion prompted a sadly predictable response in the leftish bloglands, with comment-mongers on The Standard decrying it as a clumsy attempt to distract people from Nationals apparent electoral woes (though it's rich for a party Labouring (pun intentional) at 33% to be pointing out anyone else's polling problems).

But I think the frothing is misplaced.  Sometimes a cigar is just a cigar.  And sometimes a politician wondering about whether we should have a look at changing the flag is just that.

I honestly can't see how this could be a diversionary tactic.  I credit John Key with more intelligence than that.  After all, he's wiped the floor with us twice now.  Or are you suggesting that's so easy even an idiot who thinks the public will be completely befuddled by a ploy so obvious can do that?

I think Key has been so effective in colonising the middle ground (and some on the left so quick to abandon it in favour of a small-but-ideologically-pure corner of the debate) that he has driven many on the left quite mad.  Everything has to be part of a Grand Conspiracy (possibly featuring a Needlessly Large Weather Machine and a Secret Base inside an underwater volcano).  Which tells you a lot about how desperate he has made us.  Every action and utterance by John Key is analysed and deconstructed to find the true motive, the real dark seedy manipulative purpose because, you know, it is impossible Key might just genuinely be wondering about whether we should have a look at changing the flag.  It's got to be something else.  There has to be an ulterior motive!  And we have to be the first to spot it or at least the ones braying most loudly about it.

If Key had a motive beyond just wondering about whether we should have a look at changing the flag, I suspect it probably would be causing mischief on the left.  Because - like it or not - he's got our number.  And the paranoid ramblings and aghast wailing emanating from the blogatariat prove it.  An casual comment from Key, and the left is veritably turning itself inside out in an effort to show how caddish - and yet stupid - Key is, lobbing this debate into the middle of an election year.  An so a lot of time and energy is wasted in Exposing John Key's True Motive in wondering whether we should have a look at changing the flag.

A less demoralised and desperate left would have said, "Yeah, we've been saying that for years, welcome to the party, John."  After all, mos of us would probably support replacing the flag , or at least talking about it.  Gnashing our teeth at how duplicitous Key is just makes us look sad and hopeless.

In this case, I think he genuinely believes it is a debate worth having; and election year would be the obvious time to do it, as you'll get a better response than with a stand-alone referendum.  As most of us would largely agree with the end, and the means, I don't really see what all the fuss is about.

Cunliffe's cock-up

Hat tip to Karol on the Standard for highlighting this.

David Cunliffe has been speaking his branes on the history of Labour Party:

Since Michael Savage’s day, Labour has stood for a sense of security, that we could have the basics covered by working together and that would give us the chance to make the best of our lives.

That really is an apalling re-write of history. What happened to the 1980s, David?  Huge swathes of New Zealand – usually those with least – were not civen a chance to make the best of their lives. They were given redundancy payouts and left to rot in communities with no jobs, no future and no hope.

Any man who can mouth that falsehood should be barred from even looking at the levers of power, far less touching them.

That line has done more to make me doubt Cunliffe than anything the other candidates, National, Kiwiblog, Whale or ever the endless dittohead comments on the Standard has done. He’s either practising in deceit, like every other politician, saying whatever needs to be said to achieve his ends; or he’s actually deeply naive / stupid / deluded about his party’s history.

The sad thing is, even if he’s both deceitful, and naive / stupid / deluded, he’s still probably the best candidate of the three.

But I suspect 2014 will see me making up about 1% of Mana’s party vote in Palmerston North, again.

Nefarious Machinations of the Nightbeasts claims already in

A rather cryptic title for a short thread observing that, over on The Standard, Fanatics 4 Cunliffe have already started muttering about how the leadership is going to be handed to Robertson, or Jones, or - all together now - Anyone But Cunliffe through some devious plotting by the 'old guard' in caucus.

Good grief. So if Cunliffe loses after an open contest where votes are divived between caucus, the membership and the unions, some people will STILL not be happy with the result?

I think he will win – though a bit less certain since Robertson seems to be quite hungry – and I want him to win. But I can’t believe we can already see the factionalist refusniks already starting their wailing and gnashing of teeth.

Obviously, for some, it seems the only fair 'election' would be the coronation of David Cunliffe.