Andrew Little’s Snooze of the Nation – selling Labour to the middle

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Andrew-Little

“What do we want’?

“Long term fiscal responsibility and economic solutions for small to medium business’ 

“When do we want it”?

“Zzzzzzzzzz”

It’s not so much what Little actually said, it’s where he said it, at an Auckland Business meeting. Labour’s gallop to the middle means Labour need to explain their values to the middle and the business community.

Listening to Little you quickly appreciate he’s less Obama and more like a grim home brands supermarket product.

Little has been boring enough today to not spook the middle so he’s done what he’s set out to do, for the politically active however it was a bit of a yawnfest and a reminder of what the next 3 years will be like as Labour move more and more to the middle and that is a Labour Party duller than David Shearer in a coma.

 

14 COMMENTS

    • New Zealand is a long way from Greece: economically, politically and culturally. The result of the Greek election is not a useful lesson for us.

      • Crap.

        There is a revolution building in this country and when it boils, over it is going to leave the 1981 springbok protests in it’s shade.

        It will be dirty and nasty.

        Sooner or later the people who are in the middle, are going to get squeezed so danm hard, they wont be middle feeders they will be bottom feeders, like everyone else.

        It is getting to the stage now, where there is no middle class in this country you are either a worker for wages or are self employed contract worker.

        You have no guaranteed hours you can be sack after 89 days no guaranteed meal breaks to name a few .

        Now you are not even guaranteed a state house when you need one.

        • Any chance you can tell us in what shape or form this “dirty and nasty” revolution will take, i assume by the Springbok comparison you mean thousands taking to streets rioting etc
          Seems a bit of a strange statement considering most of the recent protest barely manage to get more than a handful of people to them

  1. Election swings run in cycles. National will find it extremely difficult to secure a 4th term no matter the state of the opposition.

    Given that there will be an inevitable shift in support from National to Labour over the coming years, it is also unfortunate, and inevitable, that the shift will be attributed to the adherence by Little’s Labour to the middle ground. Little’s faction will claim his approach therefore vindicated, but in my view it will be a hollow claim.

  2. Labour is a lost soul.

    “Voices were shouting in anger, and they were all alike. No question, now, what had happened to the faces of Labour. The creatures outside looked from Labour to National, and from National to Labour, and from Labour to National again; but already it was impossible to say which was which.”

    my sincere apologies to Orwell.

  3. Without an appeal to the social moderates and fiscally conservative there’s no show any of the floating centre will migrate in enough numbers to get Labour into the mid 30s, and that is where they need to be. That’s a lot of voters to be swayed between now and 2017. Little grew up with the enemy, he was pamphlet delivering for the Nats as a child and his parents were card carrying Tories. Yawn all you like Bomber, but without this man the hard left is going nowhere in 2017.

    • I disagree, Yabby. “Social moderates and [the] fiscally conservative” (WETF they are) decide the outcome of elections in NZ, as everyone else are either committed to one party or another or disengaged.

  4. Martyn I think you need to look at that speech again. It lists four objectives, and supporting SMEs is one of those objectives. Little intends to give more speeches over the course of the month, with the next one being on housing. Today’s speech does not claim to offer a complete overview of everything Labour stands for – it is precisely targeted, with the promise of more to come.

  5. It may have missed your notice but the bulk of employed people in this country are employed by small businesses. Taking SME issues into account (even admitting that he has much to learn from business owners about those issues) is essential in improving the lot of the workers. It doesn’t mean Labour is not doing anything else (it had better not mean that!) but that this is one area of policy they’re working on.

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