Chris Trotter calls for the sacrifice of the leader

Chris Trotter thinks that sacrificing Helen Clark for Phil Goff may just help Labour survive the next election. I don't think doing that will be enough. Labour and the Greens gave us the anti-smacking bill. 250,000 signatures have been gathered calling for a referendum on this issue. The ruling party is bloody lucky that's not 250,000 pitchforks!

However, a change of leadership and throwing the Greens out on their ear and a reversal of last year's two most hated pieces of legislation might be enough to call off the mob.

Thanks to Barnsley Bill for the link.

Asking the inevitable question
FROM THE LEFT - CHRIS TROTTER

There are some questions that should never be asked. Deplorable words which, once spoken, can bring down whole empires.

"Can the King be put on trial?"

"Are East Germans now free to cross into West Berlin?"

"Should Helen Clark go on leading the Labour Party?"

That last question has not been seriously broached in a decade. Not since May 1996 has anyone dared to challenge Helen Clark's near total control of New Zealand centre-left politics.

That control is based upon three key attributes: her encyclopaedic knowledge of the many quirks and quibbles of the NZ Labour Party organisation; her network of friends and allies – extending into nearly every corner of New Zealand society; her first-rate mind – augmented by a hitherto invincible bodyguard of finely honed political instincts.

Together, these attributes have kept Helen Clark safe from all potential rivals.

She has also enjoyed what the Chinese call "the mandate of heaven" – that peculiar combination of good fortune and good management which produces the unanswerable arguments of political and economic success.

Three victories in a row; three successful minority coalition governments; eight consecutive years of economic growth, falling unemployment and rising living standards: these are not achievements to be sneered at.

But, what the Gods can give, they can also take away. And it is very difficult to read the events of 2007 as anything other than proof of Euripides' famous observation: "Those whom the Gods seek to destroy they first make mad." For what else was Helen Clark's dogged defence of Sue Bradford's "anti-smacking" legislation – if not sheer political madness?

After the experience of the 2002-2005 parliamentary term – when Labour's social liberalism had served to mobilise the Christian Right against the Government – the Caucus had been told that for the next three years everything would be going quiet on the social reform front.

There would be no more bold social initiatives like legalising prostitution and civil unions; no more instances of middle-class do-gooders telling working-class battlers how to live their lives.

Between 2005 and 2008, the Prime Minister insisted, Labour was going to concentrate on delivering tangible economic benefits for working families, and on combating global warming. Social liberalism would be sitting on the back burner for a while.

It was a very sensible strategy – and the great mystery is why the prime minister was so willing to deviate from it in order to keep alive a private member's bill [Sue Bradford's anti-smacking bill] vehemently opposed by upwards of 70 per cent of the population.

Her handling – or non-handling – of the legislation reforming electoral finance was even more ham-fisted.

From the beginning of 2006, when Don Brash unleashed his attack dogs against Labour's campaign over-spending, Helen Clark's only viable political response was to commission a comprehensive inquiry into the conduct of the 2005 general election.

Sure, Labour's reputation would've been damaged but National's reputation would've been damaged much more severely. (Just think of the evidence Nicky Hager could have laid before the inquiry!)

Inevitably, the inquiry's recommendations would have formed the basis of a bi-partisan legislative programme to reform New Zealand's system of election funding. Severely compromised by the evidence, National wouldn't have dared to oppose them.

Instead, Helen Clark allowed Mark Burton to introduce the Electoral Finance Bill, a grotesque political cudgel with which Labour will be mercilessly beaten right up till Election Day in November – probably to death.

So, here we are, at the beginning of 2008, with Labour in the electoral dog-box. A worryingly large chunk of Labour's core constituency has become alienated from the Helen Clark-led government, and it is to be seriously doubted whether they can be persuaded back while she remains Labour's leader.

This vital chunk of culturally conservative, economically stressed voters, a great many of them married men in their thirties with young children, large mortgages and high aspirations (both for themselves and their kids) could represent as much as 5 per cent of the electorate. And, at the moment, John Key has got 'em.

If the Labour Government is to have a serious crack at winning a fourth term, it has got to get these voters back.

It won't get them while Helen Clark is prime minister.

Put Phil Goff in charge, and it just might.

I think Trotter ought to try his hand in fiction. He seems a bit wasted as a political analyst. He's saying what the left doesn't want to know and the right already have a good idea of. In a very colourful way. I like that bit especially about Labour being beaten to death with the EFA cudgel...

Related Link: Chris Trotter - From the Left ~ Dominion Post