Speaker: An Open Letter To David Cunliffe
610 Responses
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BenWilson, in reply to
It is the reason scientists insist on as unbiased a data collection system as possible. It is why I think any decisions made at this point, without proper data analysis by Labour, is unbelievably moronic.
That's a little harsh. Do they have some analysis juggernaut on hand for that? What kind of analysis are you talking about, and how long should it take, how much should it cost?
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BenWilson, in reply to
Isn’t the whole point of attack politics some attempt to distance the political machinery from the attack dog? Given that the link has been clearly made, National should be running a mile from him. Anyone who allows themselves to be tainted by association with Slater will face considerable derision and criticism, the Nats feeling bullet-proof now notwithstanding.
This is my thinking. Key survived revelations of his association with Slater, but I doubt that pushing it would seem like a good idea. Especially if Slater starts on some homophobic crusade. My pick is that if Robertson did get chosen, then Key would either tell Slater to pull his head in, or he would distance himself from Slater as much as possible. And that might be very hard to pull off, because I don't think Slater would take kindly to being shoved away. Key is actually stuck with the guy now, and we've only seen the beginning of how toxic that could prove for National. I'd think they'll just buy Slater's silence on that attack line. Might not even be very expensive.
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That’s probably because Labour wanted a lot more government spending that even with higher tax rates would have required more borrowing , a higher deficit and more public debt. It was not a profitable angle from which Labour could attack National.
Only if you can't read and follow through on a budget.
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giovanni tiso, in reply to
This is the most salient point. Labour really needs to clear out the oldies that are there on reputation, not form. The likes of Goff, King, Cunliffe and Mallard all need to retire.
All of the people you mention are rock solid Robertson supporters. The cognitive disconnect between "the party needs to rejuvenate" and "let's go Grant Robertson!" is frankly staggering.
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(Sorry, Cunliffe, isn't in the Robertson camp actually. He's also younger than our very unpopular the Prime Minister. But yeah, let's just say he needs to go, because it sounds good.)
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Joe Wylie, in reply to
Labour men are eunuchs.
I suppose someone who uses “PC” unironically is not going to realise how offensive that is, but, um, it’s really offensive.
Once you get over the initial 'is this jerk really this freaking stupid', yeah, it is.
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Ian Dalziel, in reply to
Public servants...
Key would either tell Slater to pull his head in, or he would distance himself from Slater as much as possible. And that might be very hard to pull off, because I don’t think Slater would take kindly to being shoved away. Key is actually stuck with the guy now...
... he'll be sanguine about that, and lower profile...
He needs folk like Slater, and further along the food chain Peter Dunne and the new 'poodle', David Seymour, they can be propped up as the face of the stuff National might like at a small remove - like Charter Schools, but if the money starts to flow....
Yer either of the beholden,
or off the beholden...
No passenger rides for free! -
Sacha, in reply to
Labour wanted a lot more government spending that even with higher tax rates would have required more borrowing, a higher deficit and more public debt.
Rubbish.
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Joe Wylie, in reply to
Labour wanted a lot more government spending that even with higher tax rates would have required more borrowing, a higher deficit and more public debt.
Rubbish.
Don’t mention the bailout of South Canterbury Finance, unless you want to spoil a lovely bedtime story.
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Mr Mark, in reply to
"The cognitive disconnect .... is frankly staggering"
Yep. Goff, King et al - the core of Labour's Right faction (Neo-Liberal, somewhat socially-conservative (relatively-speaking), anti-Clark Moore supporters through the 90s). Both had serious thoughts about joining ACT in the mid-90s. Mallard probably best placed in the Careerist Soft-Left faction (Clark-supporter through the 90s and early zeros but increasingly aligned with the old Establishment Right faction).
All of them united by their core ABC membership. Robertson supporters until it suits them otherwise.
It's Cunliffe's supporters who want to de-select these old Rogernome fossils in 2016.
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For what it's worth, the change in Party Vote as percentage of people on the Electoral Roll (2014 vs 2011, 2014 before specials) in Ilam is entirely consistent with the general trend for Labour. And with an overall trend line that strong, I don't think it's local issues affecting turnout much.
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Andrew C, in reply to
Especially if Slater starts on some homophobic crusade
Robertson doesn't drink beer, he probably drinks shandy don't you know.
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Mr Mark, in reply to
"So I fear there may be a hint of partiality" on Dann's part.
Yeah, I get the impression James is pretty ambitious and has therefore hitched his wagon to the Robertson juggernaut. Probably hoping for a reasonably high List spot or Safe-ish Electorate somewhere down the line.
Hence all the overblown rhetoric, bordering on 19C Melodrama. Begone ye foul Demon !!! And never set foot again through the Party's doors as long as ye shall live !!!
Unintentionally hilarious stuff.
And, in that context, it's amusing that Keir should take Jenny Kirk to task for "absolutely outrageous and inflammatory" rhetoric, while at the same time suggesting that Dann's rather unpleasant attack on Cunliffe is simply "the kind of honesty and directness that Labour needs"
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Kumara Republic, in reply to
I think most everyone but Trevor believes he’s due to retire from parliament. Occasionally useful as electorate MP (mine, incidentally) but absolutely terrible in the house and the party.
In that case, maybe demoting him to the backbench would be the least worst solution.
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Kumara Republic, in reply to
Robertson doesn’t drink beer, he probably drinks shandy don’t you know.
Pathetic is the only word I have for it. Is that the best the Oily One can come up with? Reminds me of the antagonists from Foreskin's Lament.
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Andrew C, in reply to
Is that the best the Oily One can come up with?
If you're gay and you don't want to seem like you're, well, gay, apparently watching rugby isn't enough either, you have to actually play rugby.
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Kumara Republic, in reply to
That’s probably because Labour wanted a lot more government spending that even with higher tax rates would have required more borrowing , a higher deficit and more public debt. It was not a profitable angle from which Labour could attack National.
I could tell you about Rio Tinto, SkyCity, Warners, Big Oil, Big Trucking, Puhoi-Wellsford... And with apologies to Rob Muldoon, Bill English wouldn't recognise a current account deficit if he tripped over one. The real elephant in the room is private debt to foreign banks, mostly in mortgages and credit cards.
Regardless, the Treasury says hi. I dare you to call them a bunch of raging socialists.
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Russell Brown, in reply to
Pathetic is the only word I have for it. Is that the best the Oily One can come up with? Reminds me of the antagonists from Foreskin’s Lament.
I gather he also went out this headline this morning with the headline "The King is Dead, Long Live the Queen" and a pic of Robertson with a tiara added.
So, yes: Slater is still a lamentable excuse for a human being.
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Russell Brown, in reply to
I could tell you about Rio Tinto, SkyCity, Warners, Big Oil, Big Trucking, Puhoi-Wellsford… And with apologies to Rob Muldoon, Bill English wouldn’t recognise a current account deficit if he tripped over one. The real elephant in the room is private debt to foreign banks, mostly in mortgages and credit cards.
Labour was also at pains to be fiscally orthodox going into the election. They really weren’t proposing a spending spree.
This Pattrick Smellie story comparing the National and Labour policies for The Listener is very interesting, especially for what English says.
For the moment, English has National’s ongoing high opinion polling and Labour’s apparent lack of traction to back what might otherwise sound like hubris from a long-serving minister.
Yet he reckons for all the noise, Opposition parties aren’t contesting Government spending as aggressively as he’s used to.
“One of the Opposition’s problems is they’ve been expecting by the time they got to this election that a centre-right government will have eroded its political capital with slash-and-burn policies. I think they’ve only figured out in the last six months that didn’t happen.”
In other words, although Labour has moved ground substantially on fundamental economic policy settings, National may have moved into the centre in enough areas to obscure the extent of the policy differences between them.
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Sofie Bribiesca, in reply to
So, yes: Slater is still a lamentable excuse for a human being.
And proves the point that he would try vilify Grant from the first day.He had to get back to work undermining Labour.
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giovanni tiso, in reply to
I gather he also went out this headline this morning with the headline "The King is Dead, Long Live the Queen" and a pic of Robertson with a tiara added.
That was last week. He's also repeatedly tried to get imaginary dirt on Grant's partner. Must be tough being back to irrelevancy.
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Joe Wylie, in reply to
Yeah, I get the impression James is pretty ambitious and has therefore hitched his wagon to the Robertson juggernaut. Probably hoping for a reasonably high List spot or Safe-ish Electorate somewhere down the line.
Well I wouldn't really know about that. What I do know is that James Dann's been one of the few Labour insiders to consistently maintain a level of activism on the post-quake issues that really matter here in Chch. For the wider Labour Party it's been a pretty dismal track record:
Lianne Dalziel demoted as recovery spokesperson under Shearer, prompting her move to local government.
Narrowly defeated Chch Central MP Brendon Burns who, despite having shown himself to be an effective advocate for the quake disadvantaged, was given a losing list spot in 2011.
After a false dawn as recovery spokesperson, Clayton Cosgrove went missing in action.
Megan Woods, who holds relatively undamaged Wigram by the grace of Anderton and will never forget it, has offered almost zero solidity with the badly affected East. The one time she did put her head above the parapet she couldn't apologise enough.
No-one within Labour, be it Cunliffe, Robertson, or anyone with real seniority, has taken a sustained and consistent line on festering issues such as insurance. The official Party obituary on Chch central's conversion to a solid National seat is that Tony Milne ran a great campaign. As I haven't lived there since the quakes I wouldn't know, but I understand that James Dann was a contender before being given the Ilam short straw. Frankly it's hard to believe that he'd have done worse.
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izogi, in reply to
Labour was also at pains to be fiscally orthodox going into the election. They really weren’t proposing a spending spree.
It's a real shame they weren't able to communicate this.
I spent the election period with the inlaws and extended family on that side, which happens to be a farming family. On several occasions I was treated to a barrage of Nat vs Lab cliches during the in-house political discussions, not least of which was how National are good economic managers compared with Labour always being about spend spend spend, throwing money away on bludgers. Dirty politics is too complex to care about, what-the-hell-is-whale-oil?, plus all politicians are and have always been dirty anyway. Worrying about spying stuff is silly because we're not doing anything wrong. etc. When my partner briefly hinted she'd already advance-voted against Peter Dunne in Ohariu, it was met with an exclamation that it was a bad thing to do because he was "on our team".
I chose to enjoy my time there rather than have a falling out with the inlaws. They're wonderful people, very generous in person, and I think they already respect that I don't always agree, and arguing wouldn't have achieved anything.
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bmk, in reply to
More data would be fantastic, but we got to work with what we got. I talked to 1000s of voters during this election. The mind-numbing consistency of the feedback I received from votes - that they didn't like Cunliffe - weighs heavily on my mind.
I agree with this totally. I've traditionally been a Labour voter as have most of the people at my workplace. I even supported Cunliffe when he became leader but as I got to know him, I got to detest him. It's just the sight of his smug, smarmy, fake face that made it that there was no way I could bring myself to vote for him.
And everyone I talked to said the same thing. I would make sure not to proffer my opinion till I heard theirs and I always heard the same thing "I used to vote Labour but I can't vote for Cunliffe". Instead I heard people saying they were going to vote Key or Winston. This is a workplace that would have unanimously voted Labour under Clark but can't bring themselves to vote for Labour under Cunliffe.
To put it in real perspective; every single member of my team is in a union. Not one of us voted for Labour. When you take 9 members of a union and none of them will vote for the Labour party ... well then you have a problem. And when everyone says the reason is Cunliffe - well that starts to become more than anecdata.
I truly believe there is no way Labour can win until Cunliffe is gone, I know I won't be voting for them until he is.
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Ianmac, in reply to
I truly believe there is no way Labour can win until Cunliffe is gone, I know I won’t be voting for them until he is.
Well bmk it is your right and your choice. Of course what you say must be true because all the Right wingers are saying the same thing. Of course it is not because they see David as a threat is it? How about you?
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