0 Hide on the "Cunliffe experiement"

Rodney Hide could have got away with just one sentence in his Herald on Sunday column this morning; the very first one. Under the headline Lonely Cunliffe must soldier on Hide opines:

The David Cunliffe experiment has failed. Eight months into his leadership Labour is polling below what it was under Phil Goff and David Shearer.
The election is less than four months away.
The danger for Labour is that its poor polling will collapse its vote, as happened to National in 2002. Its low polling became a self-fulfilling and accelerating prophecy. Polls matter.
Labour's unimpressive showing may well cause even more votes to drain across to the Greens and New Zealand First.
That prospect will now be occupying the minds of Labour MPs and activists.
Cunliffe will soldier on. He has no choice. I know what it's like.
You can't give up.

Every day you have to find your smiley, positive face. It's tough. Lonely. Hard.

Hide is right; he knows what it's like. He's even been in the same position as David Cunliffe, as he describes:

Cunliffe has an added burden. His caucus didn't want him. He was thrust on it by party members and the unions. That wouldn't matter if he were succeeding. But he isn't. There will be a lot of "I told you so" going on. The lack of caucus support makes a lonely job even lonelier.

It was always going to be tough going for David Cunliffe when barely a third of the Labour caucus voted for him after the Labour's Got Talent tour last year. For every Labour MP who supported him, there were two who did not. The cards were stacked against him.

Labour is stuck with Mr Cunliffe now, even though he is, as Hide notes, polling worse than his two predecessors. With the election just three months and 20 days away, it's too late to change horses.

And that's not going to make the post-election wrangling any easier, should Labour be in a position to form a coalition. Hide reminds us of the options:

 

And yet it remains a tight race. Labour could poll badly but still put a government together, with considerable concessions.
The Green's Metiria Turei and Russel Norman would be deputy prime ministers and would dominate policy-making.
Winston Peters would be kingmaker and would demand his pound of flesh.
Hone Harawira would be Minister of Maori Affairs. The Internet Party would be in government being dictated to by Kim Dotcom.
It's not a pretty prospect. And that's Labour's other problem. Its polling puts other parties into the box seat, a prospect that turns off middle voters.
And then there's policy. Cunliffe will be asked about every nutty policy put up by the Greens, New Zealand First, Mana and the Internet Party. Does he support it?
Cunliffe can't dodge the policy bullet. That would add to the uncertainty of voting Labour. If he accepts the policy, he's not in charge. If he dismisses it, he risks a spat with a potential partner.
John Key escapes these problems. National is polling high. Plus he has incumbency. People know what they are getting with National. They can't be so sure with Labour.
It comes back to the polls. They put Cunliffe on the back foot and Key on the front. Cunliffe is now desperate. He needs a lift.
"I just need to push the polls up a bit. I need to change the story ... hmmm. Immigration. That always works for Winston. I'll give that a shot. I will dress it up as housing policy. The party's woolly woofters will be upset. But what the hell? I've got nothing to lose." It's called dog-whistle politics. Sadly for Cunliffe, the only ones who heard it were Labour activists.

Actually, it's good that Rodney Hide wrote his whole piece, and not just the opening sentence. That last paragraph should serve as a huge warning to the Labour Party.

Traditionally the friends of immigrants, Cunliffe's Labour Party risks alienating those who have chosen to make New Zealand home. However you can guarantee that if he has to, David Cunliffe will snuggle up warmly to an immigrant who is wanted by the FBI for alleged copyright offending, racketeering and money-laundering on a Mega scale.

 David and the GIMPs; can you imagine what a recipe for disaster that would be? But sadly, thanks to MMP, that's what we could wake up to on September 21st. That's a scary thought, and we thank Rodney Hide for the reminder.


 

0 The GIMPs revisited - by Curly Sue

Our resident song-rewriter Curly Sue has been at it again, reaching back into the mid-1970's to reprise an Elton John classic. Here's a very early version or the real McCoy by a rather follically-challenged Reggie Dwight:

Curly Sue saw our post yesterday about the GIMPs (Green, Internet, Mana, Peters), and the creative juices must have flowed almost immediately, because this arrive by e-mail late yesterday afternoon:

Davy and the GIMPs

Hey kids, you all can vote together
The spotlight's hitting Dotcom
His girth is known to change the weather
We’ll write off student loans tonight
So stick around
We’re gonna dust off Laila
The lolly scramble will astound

Say, young apathetics, have you seen them yet?
But they're so hot right now, D-D-D-Davey and the GIMPs
Oh but their line up is wonderful
Oh Davey he's really keen
They got goose step boots and Winston too
And they’re gonna dig up Alamein!

D-D-D-Davey and the GIMPs

Hey kids, plug in the “inter-web-thing”
They hope you’ll be blinded
And Davy makes them tricky
Rort MMP, and hope the youth come along
But left wingers doing it all for money

Is nothing but wrong

Say, young apathetics, have you seen them yet?
But they're so hot right now, D-D-D-Davey and the GIMPs
Oh how will they co-operate?
Oh the train wreck will be out of sight!
They got some union fruits and they’re cashed up too
Unfreeze Anderton from Carbonite!

D-D-D-Davey and the GIMPs

Say, young apathetics, have you seen them yet?
But they're so hot right now, D-D-D-Davey and the GIMPs
Oh but their line up is wonderful
Oh Davey he's really keen
Oh It does not compute; who’ll be the next recruits?

Corkery’s undies must not be seen!

D-D-D-Davey and the GIMPs

This isn't the easiest song in the world to mash, but we reckon Curly Sue has done a masterful job here. She and we hope you like it. If it helps the GIMP label to stick on Labour's potential coalition partners, who are we to complain? 

0 Quote of the Day - 30 May 2014

John Key sees right through the MegaMana sham. And he's telling the country; this, via the Herald:

Prime Minister John Key has ramped up his criticism of Kim Dotcom in the wake of the union of the internet Party and Mana Party, saying Dotcom was trying to "buy influence" and there was nothing Dotcom had in common with either Laila Harre or Hone Harawira.
He said he had little doubt Mr Dotcom was simply trying to get politicians in place who might be able to help block his extradition.
"You've got a guy who can't buy a house in New Zealand, but he can buy a political party. I think most New Zealanders would look at that and be pretty cynical about it. No one should be under any illusion.
"This is a very wealthy guy trying to buy a political party to stop himself being extradited."
He said Ms Harre and Mr Harawira had "zero" in common with Dotcom.
"Kim Dotcom lives in a house that is probably worth about $25 million. FBI records show the hundreds of millions of dollars that came with him.
"And you're telling me he's a natural bedfellow of Laila Harre and Hone Harawira? If you believe that then you believe Santa Claus is going to turn up 12 times a year just to make New Zealand a more joyous place."
The internet Mana deal is aimed at maximising the number of MPs Harawira can bring into Parliament with him if he holds his Te Tai Tokerau electorate.
He said he had not known the law allowed parties to stand as joint force and then split into separate parties after the election and "it seems a bit of a rort."

Key is dead right. And he's not finished either; read on:

He said the internet Mana Party's first joint policy of free tertiary education was "unaffordable and New Zealanders will know that."
"That's what you're going to see from the far left of politics. You'll be led by Russel Norman, Kim Dotcom, Mana, David Cunliffe, you're going to see extreme examples that New Zealand can't afford and fundamentally promises they can never meet."
Mr Key said he was not worried about the impact of the internet Mana Party on National because it would take votes from the Greens and "disaffected Labour voters" rather than National.
"From National's point of view it's of no great relevance. But if you're Metiria Turei, Russel Norman, maybe David Cunliffe, you might be just a little more worried."

David and the GIMPs will halt New Zealand's economic recovery in its tracks. Their big-spending policies will fuel inflation, and taxes and interest rates will go up. The people they purport to represent will take the biggest hit. Waitakere Man and his wife will be paying more at the pump for their gas as David and the GIMPs meddle with the Reserve Bank Act and force the exchange rate down. Food prices will soar, mortgage rates will go up, and the plunge in the exchange rate will make the family holiday that Waitakere Man had been saving hard for unaffordable.

Fortunately though, Waitakere Man realised in 2008 that Labour had lost its way, and he and his missus voted for John Key. In 2014, they have joined the National Party, and they are now campaigning to make sure that Labour gets the message as to how far it has strayed from what used to be its core constituency.

As for Kim Dotcom, Waitakere Man knows a rort when he sees one.