I WON’T SAY HE WAS BAD. That wouldn’t be fair at all. By any standards, James Shaw is an impressive politician. He’s just not as good as he seemed to be the day (30 May) he was elected the Greens’ Co-Leader. One of the reasons he looked so impressive that weekend was the quality of the keynote speech he delivered to the Greens AGM the day after his election. Writing for The Press, I characterised that address as containing: “some of the most impressive political rhetoric I have encountered in more than 30 years of writing about New Zealand politics.”
To say that I was disappointed to learn Shaw had not written the best lines of that speech would be an understatement. Foolishly, perhaps, I had allowed myself to believe that the Greens had voted themselves a leader of truly Churchillian virtuosity. Chatting to the man himself at the Ika Seafood Bar & Grill on Tuesday evening, however, it soon became clear that he belongs much more to the JFK than the Winston Churchill tradition. Kennedy had the remarkable Ted Sorensen as his speechwriter. Shaw is verbally equipped with the powerful prose of the scarcely less talented Danyl McLauchlan. It was McLauchlan who penned the following, truly memorable, lines of Shaw’s keynote speech:
“There is no name for this system. Nobody speaks for it. Nobody voted for it. It happens in the spaces between speeches and elections. It happens behind closed doors or over dinner with lobbyists. We have a political economy of friendly deals and whispers. Of overnight polling and focus groups.”
It is, of course, much to Shaw’s credit that he was able to recognise in the Wellington biologist, blogger and novelist a talent for political communication that was clearly guaranteed to enhance his career prospects. Shaw’s excellent maiden speech to Parliament had singled him out early as a person to watch. That McLauchlan had a major hand in drafting it, now strikes me as entirely unsurprising.
But if Shaw is savvy enough to have acquired one of the best political rhetoricians in the country, what about the rest of the political package? Does he come across as a leader who knows where the currents of twenty-first century culture are carrying political parties? And, is he ready to steer the Greens in that direction?
That he was elected by his fellow Greens on the first ballot, with 54 percent of the vote, strongly suggests that they think he does – and is. It has been clear (at least to me) that the Greens have, for some time, been growing increasingly irritated with their left-wing label. Since 2005, New Zealand’s overall political trajectory has been towards individualism, market-driven economic and social solutions, and an increasingly authoritarian state. Though many Greens have staunchly resisted these trends, a substantial number – probably a majority – have accommodated them. These rightward-floating Greens constitute Shaw’s political base: their expectations and his political future are inextricably linked.
What I found so curious about Shaw’s performance at Ika’s Tuesday “Salon” was his apparent reluctance to embrace these expectations. Now, it may simply have been a case of the wrong audience. The sort of people who turn up to Laila Harré’s restaurant are pretty much the left of the Left. That the Greens are about to embark on a journey to the Right is most emphatically NOT what they want to hear. If that is the explanation for his staunchly conventional presentation of the Rod Donald/Russel Norman version of Greenness, then I’m underwhelmed. As a Green politician, Shaw is anything but staunch and conventional. His experience in the corporate world projects itself ahead of him like a force field. And, in a party chock full of small businessmen and women, it’s a force field they want him to use. I would have been much more impressed if Shaw had used his hour upon the stage to challenge the assumptions of his largely “Old Left” audience.
Because the brutal political reality confronting the Greens is that the party’s residual collectivism is radically out of step with the young, tertiary-educated professionals who constitute the Greens’ electoral base. These voters do not want to be told that the market-driven system that employs them is fundamentally incompatible with planetary safety. They want to vote for Green Capitalism – not Red-Green Socialism. Even the trend towards increasingly authoritarian government and the National Security State may be turned to a Green purpose. After all, the sort of measures required to effectively combat climate change can only be implemented effectively by a strong state that brooks no opposition.
Shaw shied away from my suggestion that he may soon find himself being courted by a John Key as eager to woo Green voters as he had once been to draw former Labour voters into National’s ranks. But if all goes well at Paris at the end of this year, and National finds itself obliged to take climate change seriously, then a new relationship with the Greens is inevitable. It is then that the people who voted for him will expect something more than staunchness and conventionality from their champion.
Were I James Shaw, I would be asking Danyl McLauchlan to begin working on the speech immediately.
well outed there Chris
Chris, upon first reading we could be forgiven for coming to a belief that your article is in fact a ‘call’ for the Green Party to, well, to become just another ACT-lite political organization fighting for ‘the middle’ just as National, Labour, NZFirst and the smaller flakes of New Zealand politics with grim desperation continue to do,
You have drawn a conclusion from the election of James Shaw as co-Leader of the Party that is inherently mistaken, the assumption that Shaw’s 54% of the vote in the Leadership contest is a vote for a rightward leap in Party policy will only have any veracity should he be able to fulfill the stated intention of ”doubling the Party membership in a year and double it again in another”,
I would suggest that the Green Party has, until such time as the next ‘economic shock’, which may be a lot closer than we would care to imagine, overtakes our economy, pretty much reached the ‘glass ceiling’ as far as electoral support goes,
The ‘proof of the pudding’, the test if you will, for James Shaw as co-Leader is not i would suggest ‘in the rhetoric’, such a test will occur at the 2017 election,
It was not James Shaw who individually saw the Green Party ‘hold the line’, maintaining the Party vote at it’s previous level at the 2014 election, it was the Green Party membership voting for a policy platform that is and always has been ‘Solidly LEFT’,
The kudos for such a result as the electorate slid further to the right have to go to the Leadership of Metiria Turei and Russell Norman,
The prognosis for the Party should James Shaw succeed with any wish that he actually has to have the Party move to the already crowded right of the political spectrum, a contestable point, is far from grand,
Your article Chris would suggest that 46% of the Party who did not vote for James Shaw would allow our electoral vote to support a right-leaning Green Party,
Rest assured Mr Trotter a large swathe of the Party vote would simply abandon the Party should James Shaw, even if he had a mind to, drag the Party to the right,
Should the solidly middle class James Shaw be able to break the glass ceiling and expand the Green Party electoral vote while adhering to the current Party policy i for one will be applauding his leadership….
The dirty politics black ops team are systematically destroying all coalition parties….with the sole purpose of making it an FPP election in 2017.
National and the Joyce Black Ops team are destabilizing every minor party in NZ. The New Deal Destabilisation will make the Mana/Internet 2014 battle look like the day after the 1914-18’s Battles of the Somme.
The left are so disorganized and lacking in money, that National came in and mazired them with socialist policies like “free doctor’s visits” (we forgot to tell poor Labour voters that prescriptions might cost $300 a prescription under the TPPA.)
Colin Craig fell on his own wiliness/willie-ness(sp?); the Greens voted a right-winger as deputy; Winston’s minions are revolting.
By the 2017, election will be fought between FPP National, racing Team New Zealand, and 5 disparate coracles coloured Red, Green, Purple, BlacknWhite and Peter Dunne legalise everything for medical purposes colour party, in the Waitemata harbour.
Unless the left start talking to each other NOW!
Chris?
Frank?
Martyn?
The writing is on the wall for an FPP election, with glorious leader FJK and Andrew Little’s Party and all the smarmy puns that the Madmen with heaps of milk powder and housing money in the Rockstar Economy can buy.
Stuart Little. Dolittle. Little llite blue.
Get left and organised? What do you all have in common? Who’s the common enemy? Who’s the big bad wolf? Who’s for profit and who’s for people? And FFS get rid of anyone in the left that has any hint of neoliberal leanings, or who are TPPA apologists.
So Wira Gardiner (Mr Hekia Parata) paid funds towards Shane Jones’ Leadership campaign in the Labour Party?
http://www.3news.co.nz/politics/key-plays-down-national-members-labour-donation-2014042208#axzz3ehzIs000
And Shane Jones is being touted as Winston’s successor? Even the daily blog post saw a few dots
https://thedailyblog.co.nz/2015/06/27/life-after-winston-on-the-future-leadership-of-nz-first-part-one-pretenders-to-the-throne/
C’mon people there aren’t many dots to connect between black ops National, NZ First issues and Shane Jones, the blue wolf in red clothing?
I think Chris you are on to something there.
I to am less than impressed by the Greens in Parliament of late since Russell was “replaced/denounced.
We don’t see James Shaw coming out of the sprinting blocks to attack NatZ over their awful record on the environment.
Or NZ’s lacklustre efforts to curb carbon emissions in line with their being a signatory to the UN Climate change accord, – that they will willingly then scuttle to on our taxpayer account trip to Paris come November to say “they are doing their part”.
Like heck they are!!!!
As they pour massive public funds into roads and leave rail to die all while the greens largely sit on the fence apart from a brief feeble excuse of one interjection from Julie Anne Genter yesterday in her question to the speaker “why if Rail is another form of land transport, is no money coming from the Land Transport funding for rail” ? and that question was shut down by the caustic Natz hierarchy of Speaker David Carter without a rousing response from the Greens and where was Their leader what’s his name?
You were surprised he didn’t write his own speech? Is this your first Rodeo?
A tall poppy has the temerity to be emerging, ergo, chop it down quick.
“It has been clear (at least to me) that the Greens have, for some time, been growing increasingly irritated with their left-wing label.”
No less I suspect than James Shaw is being irritated by his unsubstantiated right-wing label.
Y’know, all of this ongoing Shaw dragging the Greens right stuff is really insulting, unhelpful, and an attack to not only James’ integrity but the entire party’s integrity. Please. Stop.
I see that saying Trotter is completely wrong about James Shaw and the Greens means the comment is deleted. Better denial and delusion than the truth eh.
I always knew that James Shaw was more of a Kennedy type than a Churchill type. There’s nothing there that even remotely resembles Churchill.
I like where the Greens are going. They have James Shaw as the newly elected co-leader and they have Gareth Hughes who has written an article explaining why he voted against the Harmful Digital Communications Bill.
I’m sure Johnny boy has every word, that comes out of his mouth, scripted as well. And when it isn’t, it’s obvious. But nobody seems to give a damn. As long as James says the right things at the right time (no pun intended), it doesn’t really matter.
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