WARNING: WARNING: POLITICAL CLUSTERFUCK MAGNITUDE 5
And it’s happened.
As The Daily Blog pointed out the day Julie Anne Genter foolishly threw her hat in the ring for the Mt Albert by-election last December, we now have a Political Clusterfuck of a magnitude 5.
That’s pretty high magnitude folks.
The Opportunities Party has cleverly put into play their Chief of Staff, Radio NZ presenter and local boy, Geoff Simmons, Â as their candidate and Labour are now suddenly in danger of losing this electorate.
The Greens should have NEVER stood in this by-election, the purpose of the MoU was to create the symbolism of unity and make the Greens and Labor look like a Government in waiting. It wasn’t so that they could trawl through the MoU for any loophole they could exploit at the expense of the other.
By fighting in a by-election they look like opposition parties squabbling.
But that wasn’t the worst part of the decision to stand, by entering the by-election, the Greens opened up the possibility of TOP standing and exploiting the fact National aren’t.
There were over 14 000 National Party votes in the last election, and with 4 left candidates running  (Ardern, Genter, Carolan and Bright) the chances of an outsider scooping up National votes and coming through the middle was always a real possibility.
The Greens couldn’t see that and this is what happens when chequers players try to play chess. Ultimately I think this is a staffing issue within the Green. This is a political party that hired the fucking Ruminator as their strategist for Christ’s sake! As if one of the most toxic elements of the Wellington Twitteratti could do anything but alienate voters! You may as well put the Wellington PSA comms team in charge of Labour Party recruitment!
I love Deborah Morris, I have nothing but admiration and praise for her as Chief of Staff, but I think she is being appallingly advised. It’s the person who has advised her on this that is the clown and that clown needs to be quietly shushed next time they have anything to say and replaced befor the election.
This is an immense fuck up that was pointed out at the time, and what did the Greens and Labour say?
“Oh this will be different”, they cried, “this won’t be a fight, it will be the age of Aquarius politics where Julie Anne and Jacinda will skip hand in hand to electorate meetings singing ‘Michael row the fucking boat ashore’ and between plaiting each others hair will have a wonderful policy discussion. You just can’t see that because Brosocialists are angry”.
Yeeeeeeah. Good one sisters.
Well that argument will evaporate quicker than a liberal Muslim in Trump’s Cabinet because now there is a candidate who can split the vote and come through the middle.
How fucking short sighted can the Greens be?
You think all that unity on display at the Joint State of the Nation is going to survive 4 weeks of endless media attention on this by-election? Nothing else happens in February and the second Jacinda’s lead looks in doubt, Party activists will turn on each other online in a feeding frenzy as Labour activists wake up to how badly the Greens have fucked them.
Remember, this was completely avoidable, it was supposed to be Jacinda’s coronation, a box ticking exercise to build momentum towards the election held later in the year. Instead Green Party ambition, ego or naivety – take your pick – has actually threatened the seat altogether.
The Greens need to stop hanging out with the Spinoff and Transport Blog (who of course will come out in support of Julie Anne Genter) because they’re inflated sense of influence has convinced the Greens they could have  shot in Mt Albert.
Here are the outcomes and political ramifications:
OUTCOME 1 – Jacinda wins with a 3000 majority and secures herself an electorate and some level of political stability holds. Only ramification is the wider perception within the nationwide electorate that the Greens and Labour are still squabbling. This is the best that can be hoped for.
OUTCOME 2 – Jacinda barely wins a majority and becomes political damaged goods while the perception to the wider electorate is Labour is far weaker than the Mt Roskill by election had suggested. This is bad.
OUTCOME 3 – Julie Anne Genter wins and Labour realise they’ve been played (remember Labour was blindsided by this Green Party decision) and punishment comes post the election when Labour and NZ First team up and leave the Greens with sweet fuck all for supply and demand. This is really bad.
OUTCOME 4: The gorgeous Geoff Simmons resonates with the Radio NZ heartland that is Mt Albert by winning National Party voters ANDÂ some Labour Party voters AND some Green Party voters which causes a shock win, changing the balance of power. The political ramifications of that are incalculable. This is fucking awful.
So four outcomes, 3 of which fuck Labour and the Greens.
Remarkable work, I need to go back in my twitter feed and pull up all the angry tweets from Julie Anne Genter who claimed none of this would happen.
Just when there was a glimmer of hope from Key stepping down, ego and stupidity have managed to win the day.
Yup can’t understand why Labour and Greens are both standing in the same electorate – they need to work out between them which party has the best chance in each individual electorate and stand only 1 candidate in each. Doing this should nullify Nats strategy in the last election of painting Labour and Greens as incapable of working together / end splitting of left vote / should pretty much guarantee next govt will be left.
@ JAMES BROWN – exactly! WTF – this is a by-election as well so it’s even worse!
The green idiocy in elections continues. Just wait, they’ll announce in Ohariu because they just can’t stand not to seem “pricinpled”. Go on get Dunne elected again, you doofusses!
In the age of trump there have been massive gains and equally massive losses in all sectors including politics, so betting on established politics won’t have have the gains they’re use to because they’re already full up and can’t hear any other policy. One poll running lower than Labour is public approval of parliament. So we’ve got TOPS with a lot of gains and Labour with a lot to lose. And polls about parliamentary approval ratings have been running a lot longer than TOPs have been around so I don’t know why this is all coming as a surprise.
I put it down to naivety, over thinking and lack of commonsense pragmatism from the Greens (whom I support). It should have been obvious that only Labour should contest it.
PS TOP is like the Green Party except for meat eating white males who can’t stomach the message coming from women, men they don’t see as being like themselves, and progressive Maoris (except that TOP is actually progressive in the latter but that’s being ignored)
A genuine question here, from a fellow woman…What is ‘the message coming from women’?. Take 3 women…Paula Bennett, Helen Kelly(RIP) and Tariana Turia – that’s 3 very different messages.
The message in Metiria’s SotU speech was “women do everything”. Spot the absence of balance? PS, I’m liberal female.
I like Gareth Morgan. I think he has integrity. He saved the Nix. And he rode his motorbike across Asia. All good so far. I do have a cat, but she is very old and might die any day soon. Although she is in rude good health. But I digress.
One of Morgan’s strengths is that he will gather around him a very able, strong team, who in turn will attract others like them. He is smart enough to operate strategically and achieve a few upsets, as we are probably about to see. All Billy boy has to do is encourage those 14,000 nat voters to vote for TOP, and Labour is toast. Simmonds, and TOP, is far more acceptable to national voters than the Greens, who would have been their only other choice if they had wanted to spoil Jacinda’s party. It will be a real challenge for Labour now, and I wouldn’t put my money on them to win it.
+100… my two cats say they don’t like Gareth and he is full of bullshit because they eat mostly rats and mice( enemies of birdlings) and rabbits and the occasional lizard ( birds are not very meaty …and they certainly don’t eat keas)…and cat biscuits
…but I say I would like to see Gareth win here …the Greens and Labour need a good shake up ( look what Labour did to Hone!…look what the Greens tried to do to the NZ flag!) …those Green and Labour girls are already in Parliament..they are just show ponies
… give Gareth’s BIG KAHUNA Party a go…let the fireworks begin!
yuk
Look at all the TOP policies – for every white middle class voter, there’s at least one that is absolute poison – even if they like the others, it’s made impossible to vote for them.
It’s why Morgan was such a Grade A Moron for unveiling his Maori Upper House policy. He just crushed his potential voter base.
Yes, possibly, but its a by-election….. and we all know what happens. Northland, safe national seat, famous last words and all that.
The altLeft is real.
Sabine confirmed
Confirmed if TOP gets momentum. I’m down.
Those 14000 national party votes have some where to park it. Iv already made my predictions and ToPs was my hedge bet if things went south. Now that my hedge is in, all I’m Gana do is keep quiet till the final tally.
#KeepPushingLabourLeft away from #muppeteconomics
If the Turkeys can be persuaded to cook Bill’s goose while hoping to achieve the opposite, it really will be an early Christmas for all.
You’re absolutely right!
We’ll have two women tearing each others hair out. Meanwhile Bill English will remain aloof and look presidential.
Glorious! 🙂
Beats Winston out manuvering National. Thank god he ain’t he only game in town.
Pre-election for the Greens and Labour generally involves the following…
1. Pour petrol over each others heads.
2. Light a match.
It[‘s def a bad move from the Greens.
Totally agree Greens are spending too much time with Spinoff and Transport Blog and totally losing the plot – alienating the environmental activist base who vote Green, by trying to woo some fucked up Blue Green voter who never leaves the city and knows nothing about the environment bar using greenwashed eco products and thinks that backing zero regulation development and hating homeowners (who they think of as NIMBYS) will somehow get them a house.
I’m not even sure these Green Blue voters exists outside of Spinoff and Transport Blog and Nationals chief strategists, but many of their sentiments are certainly at odds with traditional Green thinking.
In my view a lot of Green voters are old white homeowners, that spend a lot of their time on environmental causes, protesting and stopping poor developments and protecting heritage, especially in Auckland.
Unity and strategy should be the catch cry for Labour and Green. They are failing on both by this stupid decision to contest the by election.
Wow, it’s like I could have written that post too. Obviously a few of us out there who feel this way about the Green Party and the Spinoff. Thankfully, there’s now an alternative!
The Greens are idiots. Shame.
OUTCOME 5: National is missing from the political discourse by their own choosing. Labour, Greens, TOP hammer National as arrogant, smug seat-warmers waiting for a change in September. They can squabble amongst themselves on policy and capability in the by-election but all have a united message against National.
This is ekshully a bigger fuckup than Greg standing against the Silver Ponce.
Strangely enough (although I used to maintain Greg was the Police’s own worst enemy), I suspect since leaving, he may well have had an epiphany – and is genuinely concerned about the amount of weapons and P fried brains we’re seeing. I guess the question is more to do with how we deal with it.
But this decision by the Greens (along with the appointment of James Shaw who has what is best described as having ‘a corporate background and culture’) worries me. Disillusioned with Labour’s refusal to unambiguously distance itself from the neo-liberal religion, I thought I’d give Greens a party vote last election. Not now/no longer. And unless I see more of Met and less of James, I wish to Christ they’d stop sending me namby pamby shit. (I thought the priority was to “change the Gummint”)
So what’s left then (pardon the pun)?
Winnie actually does have a genuine desire to preserve (or should that be ‘resurrect’) NZ sovereignty, but I was concerned at his attitude towards others from the Asia/Pacific who’s suffered the same colonial influences as NZ has over the past C and a half. But then this popped up:
http://www.stuff.co.nz/national/88800228/peopletrafficking-crackdown-planes-into-new-zealand-are-the-modernday-slave-ships
and I had cause to contrast that against the Thiel debacle where citizenship has obviously been bought.
Just as an aside – one really does have to wonder who Transparency International is employing these days
I’m sick of voting for the least worst option, but no doubt come election time I’ll hold my nose (AGAIN). Let’s just say the Greens just dropped down the thermometer another 5 degrees
So we have a cat fight amidst someone who hates cats [ducks].
My thoughts on the by-election is that turnout will be low, and Labour will win, as they did in the Mt Roskill by-election.
People DO want a change and the majority will achieve that by swinging back to Labour (as has always happened in the past).
Unfortunately, With whole American election proving to be a much of a farce, the shine of our own looming election is very much tarnished.
Will people still fall for the same BS again?
Democracy? Seriously?
Well, well, well, Martyn does certainly have his feelers out there in the political social scene, he warned about this stuff up for some time now.
But wait, will these pro Nat voters in Mt Albert really vote for Geoff Symmons and TOP? Maybe some protest voters, or those wanting some honest change. But having heard Gareth Morgan on Radio Live today, and him talking about the “boomers” having had it too good and easy, signalling some major changes in policy to retirement and pensions, I doubt that many middle class Nat or Labour voters even would feel inclined to vote TOP.
Gareth does not only want to rid the country of cats, he also seems to favour asset and perhaps income testing for superannuation, or increasing the age of entitlement.
While some young generation voters, many of whom do not even follow politics and cannot bother voting, may feel tempted to support TOP, that one policy that TOP may push for will turn many home owners and “boomers” off from voting for Geoff.
Also did Martyn tell us about the great opportunity of Mana working with Kim Dotcom’s Internet Party three years ago, but we know what happened there.
TOP is a new party, and all new parties, they will have to struggle to get enough interest from media and voters. Gareth and Geoff may still do well, but I think they will not achieve a win in Mt Albert, it would indeed be a massive upset should that happen.
And if Geoff Simmons wins that seat for TOP (who first only wanted to run list candidates by the way), then this may totally stuff up the chance for a change of government in Septem ber this year, that is for Labour and Greens, both of them.
Let us wait and see, this will in any case a very interesting election.
I would say that it is more likely that it is Labour that is in meltdown, rather than the Greens. Because now instead of organising mock debates they may have to engage in real debate. And actually tell us what their policies are.
https://thedailyblog.co.nz/2017/01/31/the-great-auckland-pride-debate/
What was planned to be a policy free zone. With no scheduled debates between the candidates, now looks to be completely different.
Don’t share your pessimism.
Simmons may pick up some residual opportunist’s votes, but I believe most of his vote will come from National Party supporters who would otherwise not bother to vote seeing their own party isn’t interested.
Still think it will be a Labour win, but the result does depend on turnout and the willingness of voters to vote tactically.
Voting tactically in FPP elections is largely a matter of vote and hope. Now if we had STV we could REALLY vote tactically.
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