The Greens should count their blessings. The necessity to publicly publish the party list this week was driven by the fear that the mole within the Greens who leaked their internal list to David Farrar would do so again, and the less than savoury tactics by some Green Staff from Wellington at the Auckland conference when deciding the list hasn’t made the tensions between the Auckland Greens and Wellington Greens any easier.
One tired voice on twitter was claiming last night I always bag the Greens and was trying to goad the Green MPs and candidates who write for this blog to leave. As someone who has voted green most of my life, I yawned. My use of the term ‘Emerald Stormtrooper’ is aimed at those Green Staff members and supporters who seem to think they run the Party rather than serve the Party. It is those ‘Emerald Stormtroopers’ who leak to Farrar’s blog that I dislike, not the Party, its MPs or its policy.
Thankfully for the Greens, attention has been elsewhere.
The Party List they have made public is of immense importance to any possible Labour Party Government led by David Cunliffe because if Cunliffe wants to lead an effective Government, he must seriously look at his options.
The quiet reality is that if one looks at the current Labour Party caucus the immediate realisation is that this is not what a brains trust looks like. Labour’s inability to kick out the old guard and bring in new blood means that there is so much dead wood in Labour you could rebuild Christchurch three times over.
Would you really want a Labour Government full of dead wood who won’t be able to competently run a Ministry? The Greens offer some hope.
If Labour, Greens + MANA are the majority, the Greens must push for a 30 to 40% Cabinet line up, and if Cunliffe was wise, he’d give it to them. The Green Caucus has the intellectual grunt that is missing in the Labour Caucus and allowing them to do more of the heavy lifting would give Cunliffe the room to push that Labour old guard to the fringes while gaining exceptionally talented and smart Green MPs.
The progressive Left can’t just plan to win an election, they need to plan how to run a Government if they get the opportunity. Foresight like that provides confidence and confidence attracts support. A focus on putting out the daily fires caused by Shane Jones or self inflicted mistakes doesn’t produce that confidence.
I suspect Cunniliffe will consider a coalition with the Greens, but will the old guard within Labour consider it?
If Labour + Green + MANA are the majority…. then surely they’ll have to?
Will they?
I seriously think that the old guard within Labour (who really should just f**k off and join Act where they belong) might just cause enough trouble that they’ll prevent a coalition actually forming. Really. What then?
They had better not fuck things up with their crap, because if I have to put up with this government for one minute longer than necessary, I will be a very unhappy camper. If that happens I will NEVER vote Labour again. I have only just started voting for them again and then only to get DonKey and his greedy bunch of idiots out.
I don’t think it’s quite as simple as throwing the neo-labs out; the process can be much more constructive. Every Labour MP should be invited to demonstrate their value to the party – this should both appeal to these self-styled meritocrats and combine pragmatism with procedural fairness.
Where do old Labour Party MPs go when their time is up?
National’s creatures disappear to the family farm or directorships or other juicy positions. They still get their ‘hit’ of importance and power.
What do Labour Party people do – generally? (Apart from Liane Dalziel and Paul Swain?)
And who is mentoring the next crop of incoming MPs?
Clarke’s incompetence on managing the deadwood is going to haunt the party for years to come. Why? The old development system of using good union people has died. Killed off by legislation and not replaced. There won’t be any Dennis Skinners or Bob Crows coming through in the foreseeable future.
Time the party president did her homework.
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