Ever since Muller reopened the door to Winston that Bridges had shut, NZ First MPs have all lined up to publicly flirt with National while denouncing Labour for some petty reason.
Tracey Martin did it, Winston did it and Shane Jones did it.
Good.
NZ First has been nothing but a brake peddle for the real transformative change voters entrusted to Jacinda.
The best outcome for progressives to be able to get policy to do the things that need to be done is for Labour to able to form a Government minus NZ First.
So Andrew Little being given the nod to punch back publicly is welcomed….
Andrew Little says NZ First’s plan for rent relief was ‘laughable’ and quickly withdrawn
Justice Minister Andrew Little has accused Winston Peters of mis-characterising his position on rent relief for businesses hit by Covid-19 and mocked NZ First’s own proposals for the area as “laughable”.
While the former Labour leader claimed the coalition was in good shape, he blamed NZ First for a delay in reaching an agreement which he claimed was close to the one he originally proposed in April.
…3 consecutive opinion polls have given Labour 50%+.
This is unprecedented in MMP politics & represents a sea change in the psychology of the electorate.
A chunk of voters have permanently decamped from National after watching Jacinda’s incredible handling of the pandemic and feel she’s earned their vote.
Gratitude = loyalty and that’s why Labour have every chance in just over 100 days of being elected with a majority for the first time in MMP history.
That means it doesn’t matter what the hell NZ First want or don’t want because even if they manage to become politically relevant by the election and get over 5%, with Labour on 50%+, Jacinda doesn’t need Winston any longer and with the ongoing investigation into NZ First funding corruption, that’s a distance whose timing couldn’t be more perfect.
Bye bye Winston, you can go be mates with Todd Muller.
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” NZ First has been nothing but a brake peddle for the real transformative change voters entrusted to Jacinda.”
For all the effort that Chris Trotter put into trying to present Jacinda as having a vision for a transformative government during the last election campaign, Jacinda herself never said anything to support that idea, Not in terms of the economy and any change to the basic neoliberal settlement anyway. The promise of transformation that encompasses the essential economic reorientation all comes from Winston Peters . His hope that he could persuade Jacinda to consider the fundamental changes that this would entail is the reason we have Jacinda as our PM now. If as seems almost certain , Labour will not need a coalition partner after the next election it is to be hoped that they will have been strongly influenced by his advice in the crisis of world economy that he anticipated , and either continue to consult or act on what he has already suggested.
Without Winston Peters this would not have been a transformative government though Jacinda’s leadership in political affairs would still have won the support that Labour currently enjoys.
D J S
I think the words “climate change is our generations nuclear moment” indicate somewhat of a sea change. Giving birth to a child while being prime minister to me could be considered “transformational,” perhaps not in the masculine economic sense that I would understand (I’v not surveyed woman, I’v got no idea what ideas they’ve got in there head, but at +50% I can see the effects of those ideas coming out) so they woman do have ideas I just need special glasses because I can’t read them.
Labour would have been history without NZ First today so Jacinda needs to remember this.
There may some unwanted backlash from the electorate if she brakes unity in the coalition.
Winston is ‘one of the players’ that were responsible for the arrival of the MMP government remember????
National want MMP gone so remember that too.
Cleangreen, my belief is this is a very well orchestrated plan on behalf of Labour and N.Z. First.
They feed the media that they are both their own parties and disagree but without doubt will form a coalition come September. That way N.Z. First increase their vote and are seen as their own identity.
N.Z. first will win Northland because the National M.P. up there is useless and therefore we are fortunate to once again end up with a true coalition government, one where all parties are involved in decision making.
This is the best election year to vote for the Green Party! I have volunteered for the Green Party over many elections; every election year there have been a number of people who have commented about wanting to vote Greens, but gave their vote to Labour fearing National will gett into office There is a huge safety net for them to give their vote to the Greens this election. I know from reading this site that many are disappointed with the Greens. The Green Party has the Charter to guide them, and to steer them back if they get a bit lost; and every 3 years there is a new list of candidates. New candidates that have never been on the list, and those returning possibly being moved up or down.
Creighton – you seem like a voice of reason in particular your non woke tone. Good on you, can ‘old’ policy Greens come back? Maybe with more like you they can get their original popular voice back and go back to their trusted, environmental roots.
Good on you too Creighton! Though my own GP volunteering this year has got me slotted into a call-center computer booth once a week until September. I do miss the old fashioned leaflet runs which at least got you out in the fresh air (and rain, and wind as well, now I think of it).
SaveNZ; you have to distinguish between the media coverage of parliamentary Green MPs and the wider Green Party. The GP has never stopped their long tradition of consulting members to craft detailed policy. They just don’t have the voting power to institute much of it.
But what is your problem with a “woke tone” anyway? The 2017 GP MP’s implosion over Turei’s poor handling of the optics her beneficiary past seemed to have more to do with their low vote than that. It is getting a bit stale these days – like accusing someone of being an SJW in 2020! This was from January (a very long time in slang or politics):
“Rather than rejecting the concept of wokeness outright, today’s detractors often claim they are rejecting the word as a signifier of pretentiousness and “cultural elitism”. However, as Fox and others have shown, it is as much to do with the issues of racial and social justice. Criticising “woke culture” has become a way of claiming victim status for yourself rather than acknowledging that more deserving others hold that status. It has gone from a virtue signal to a dog whistle. The language has been successfully co-opted – but as long as the underlying injustices remain, new words will emerge to describe them.”
Not so fast at ruling NZF out look at this UMR poll released today in the last hour.
The poll has Labour still well ahead of National on 54 per cent, while NZ First was on 5 per cent and the Green Party on 4 per cent.
UMR Poll. Released today 5/6/20
https://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/news/article.cfm?c_id=1&objectid=12337509
NZ Herald
NEW ZEALAND
No Mullermania yet for Todd Muller in first poll since leadership change
5 Jun, 2020 12:46pm
3 minutes to read
Todd Muller says PM Ardern should make a Captain’s Call and move the country to level 1. Video / Parliament TV
By: Claire Trevett
Senior Politics Writer, NZ Herald
claire.trevett@nzherald.co.nz @CTrevettNZH
A poll taken by UMR the week after Todd Muller took over as National Party leader has shown no immediate change to the National Party’s fortunes while Muller has debuted at 13 per cent as preferred Prime Minister.
The poll results had National on 30 per cent – just one per cent higher than the 29 per cent it scored on the last such UMR poll under Simon Bridges’ leadership at the end of April.
The poll has Labour still well ahead of National on 54 per cent, while NZ First was on 5 per cent and the Green Party on 4 per cent.
UMR is the polling company used by the Labour Party, but this poll was one of a regular series taken for its corporate clients rather than Labour.
Muller has come at higher levels as preferred Prime Minister than Bridges’ had been on when he was rolled – Muller was at 13 per cent.
That was the same as Bridges’ highest ever score in the UMR poll last November – but Bridges had dropped to 7 per cent by April as voters reacted to his response to the Covid-19 crisis.
Ardern was miles ahead and has 65 per cent support as Prime Minister.
However, Muller is still relatively unknown and many voters are likely still making up their minds about him.
The poll of 1211 voters was taken from May 26 to June 1 and has a margin of error of +/- 3 per cent.
It started on Muller’s Tuesday of Troubles: the day on which Muller and deputy Nikki Kaye ran into trouble over the dearth of Māori in high-ranked positions in the reshuffle, and confusion over whether MP Paul Goldsmith was Māori.
The National Party leadership will have been hoping for a quick bounce in the polls for Muller, although his initial good start was de-railed by those blunders in his first week.
They will be disappointed at the result and hoping that it simply reflected the instability that surrounded the fractious leadership change.
Muller has spent the last week pushing for the Government to move to level 1 more quickly, and pointing to the differences of opinion on Covid-19 issues between the PM and NZ First leader Winston Peters. He has claimed it is a sign of a “dysfunctional government”.
The poll results are similar to other polls taken before the leadership change: the Newshub Reid Research poll had National on 30.6 per cent and the 1 News Colmar Brunton poll a week later put National at 29 per cent.
The Colmar Brunton poll was done while the leadership contest was rolling out – a factor which will have impacted further on the result.
It is understood National’s caucus is yet to be shown any of the National Party’s own internal polling by Curia since the leadership change. Two sets of polling will have been delivered since Muller took over on May 22.
National was polling in the mid 40s in February, before Covid-19 hit the country.
Former leader Simon Bridges had previously dismissed the UMR polls because of the link with the Labour Party.
”He [ Muller] has claimed it is a sign of a “dysfunctional government”…
Yes and that only goes to show the true democratic nature of the COL,- something that didn’t happen under the Key led National govt. Because National can not handle a true dissenting voice, which is why Key and his cronies were terrified of Peters and his party.
As time gets nearer I will decide which smaller party gets my party vote. As I did last time. It is not good for a democracy under MMP to have just one party in power. I will vote for Adern of course, being in that region, but as Labour appears safe, the party vote will go either to the Greens or NZ First.
Unashamedly.
Probably to NZ First as I voted Greens last time.
🙂
God that makes me happy. To see pinstripes peters be shut out in the losers box would be a dream come true.
The arrogant little pimple needs squeezing.
I remember the little shit all too well during the traitorous neoliberal uprisings of the late 1980’s and early 90’s. Him, full of faux power-yap as he squinted out abusive, dismissive brain fart after brain fart at a shocked media expecting a political renaissance but instead got a pin striped, confederate rogerclone and a fucking lawyer to boot. And spare me the ‘Aw, but winnie got us the Gold Card’ logical fallacy bullshit. That was to calm the waters after that dumpy old punk bolger had to bale out the Too-Big-To-Fail bnz and renege on his pre-election promise of a pension increase. Instead, what old Kiwis got was an increase in the age of entitlement as they watched dumpy bolger dip into their $300 million in tax monies to bale out the bnz which was bought by fay/richwhite group then on-sold to the fucking australians and I just found out, those AU banksters who now own our banks make a 20% margin from us above our AU counterparts.
That photograph of him chit-chatting with don ‘bare chest’ brash outside [that] cafe should never be consigned to history lest we forget.
Look? It’s this simple. Don’t believe a single fucking word that politicians tell you unless its for the common good of us all starting at the bottom then working upwards.
Fix homelessness. Fix poverty. Fix our state owned infrastructure. Fix agriculture. Fix our shambolic public transport systems. Fix all that. Then listen to rich people whinge. Or not. Or perhaps when the rich start whinging, we could ask them to show how they got their riches? I bet that’d shut them up.
I like your style Martyn. Come out swinging and watch out for the uppercut. We want a good fight in September and an all-fair fight would be good but there will be some resort to lining up and mud balls thrown.
That would be fun, letting the pollies work off their frustrations with paint balls on tele, or mud wrestling even.
To those who don’t know how to process thoughts, perhaps they could choose on physical prowess in some games. After all why listen to what the pollies say because they don’t run the country really, it is overseas hedge funds, pension funds, private equities, the Treasury and their buddies.
I think PM Ardern wins hands down compared to whoever is leader in 5 Eyes countries. Let’s stick with her and Winston can bow out, the greying example of exemplary appearance – he has served his Party well and always been a joy to listen to and watch. Try to vote Labour instead all you NZFirsts and show some stuctural planning. It will give them another three years to do something transformational and then you can decide who else to encourage – TOP?
We definitely need some people who are presently stuck in thinking about themselves to broaden their ideas, to put their minds to managing for the future. I was amazed at this man who couldn’t countenance controlling water usage in Christchurch. Nothing must change in his world, and everyone is foolish except him. We know that Christchurch is a Garden City but it also a sort of heaven where everyone says ‘No Worries’ it seems.
https://www.rnz.co.nz/national/programmes/morningreport/audio/2018749379/christchurch-gardeners-up-in-arms-over-proposed-water-charge
I just cannot for a moment imagine what lazy arrogant prick masquerading as a minister is leaking cabinet documents to National too. His well established contempt for loyalty and team work gives him away.
It would not be hard to catch an indolent thicky such as him out either.
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