Posted by Blogger Name. Category:
Bill English
,
David Cunliffe
,
John Armstrong
,
Labour Party
,
Opposition
,
Rejuvenation
,
Shane Jones
Herald chief political commentator John Armstrong muses on Labour's bad week. Under the headline Labour's brutal week reveals Achilles heel, Armstrong opines:
Could things get any worse for David Cunliffe than they did this week?
It is quite conceivable they might, of course. Cunliffe's leadership of Labour still has a way to go before it hits rock-bottom. But this week's very public exhibition of the disunity which flows freely and abundantly from the deep schisms within the party may well have proved to be sufficiently damaging to have put victory in September's general election out of reach.
Senior Labour figures are bracing themselves for an expected hit in the opinion polls, but are confident it will be shortlived.
Before this week's disasters, Labour's own pollsters were said to have been registering the party's vote at around 30 per cent. That is very close to the 29.5 per cent recorded in the most recent Herald-DigiPoll survey.
However, usually reliable sources say National's private polling over the past week points to the real scale of Labour's horror story with support crumbling to a mindblowing low of just 23 per cent.
If National's polling is anywhere near accurate, and there is no reason to suspect that it isn't, Labour is in a word of trouble. The party is in the same kind of territory where the Bill English-led National Party was in 2002, and if it is indeed true that less than one quarter of voters will support Labour it seems impossible that David Cunliffe will be in a position to form a government.
There's a big difference however. In 2002, National had completed just three years in opposition, and there had been a significant clean-out from the Bolger-Shipley years. Labour is SIX years into opposition, and hasn't yet had a clean-out. Not only did most of its MP's serve Helen Clark, but there are still three from the Lange-Palmer-Moore era!
Armstrong continues, noting with reference to a danse macabre within Labour:
The start of the week was punishing enough in itself with Labour squirming in humiliation following National's cruise missile-like strike which removed the Opposition party's current prime asset from the forthcoming election campaign.
Labour's embarrassment at losing Shane Jones as a result of a quite brilliant piece of politics on Murray McCully's part left Labour powerless to hit back at National.
But that was no excuse for the outbreak of factional warfare in the form of the Labour left indulging in a danse macabre on Jones' still warm political corpse.
This would not have been in National's script. The governing party would consequently have been pinching itself at its good fortune in provoking such disarray.
For those in Labour's ranks still interested in winning the election, observing the self-destructive behaviour must have been the equivalent of watching members of the orchestra on the heavily-listing Titanic fighting over who owned the instruments.
There's plenty more in Armstrong's piece where he highlight's the monster that Labour created for itself in 2012 when the party changed the rules on how leaders were selected, seizing the power from caucus. This has left the majority of Labour's MP's saddled with a leader they either dislike or despise, depending on how involved they are with the ABC faction.It's well worth a read in full.
But it's clear that Shane Jones' departure, and the circumstances surrounding it have sent shockwaves through the bitterly-divided Labour caucus. This close to the General Election, that's not where Labour wants to be.
