Shock James Shaw vote rocks the Greens coalition boat
The Green Party’s James Shaw says he is “still processing” his shock ousting from the co-leadership and is yet to decide if he will contest the job again.
Under Green Party rules the position is contested when at least 25% of delegates vote to reopen nominations. A vote is taken every year.
Shaw said he received 75 votes against 32, but that was enough to trigger a contest for the co-leadership.
Congratulations Comrades, you had more ability to plot out a basic take over strategy than I gave you credit for and you haven’t listened to anything I’ve said to you.
I’ve spoken with these factions before and I’ll tell you what I told them, “you should have done this last year like I fucking told you to”.
You can’t burn Chloe’s political capital on a takeover that splits the wider membership and she bleeds out at the ballot box in 2023.
Yes there needs to be a far more radical Green Party, yes James Shaw is a clown, yes Chloe would be amazing – but timing Comrades, timing! The time for this courage was 12 months ago, leaving it this late risks implosion!
Like I told you all this week.
As the father of 100 coups in various political factions in NZ over the decades, my advice is you can’t take someone out simply because you gerrymander the numbers, you have to have an entire change of direction ready to implement.
You have no new policy for Chloe, you have no new strategy and no new messaging.
You have to have the solutions in hand and a new leadership vision and strategy ready to roll out.
Remember Todd Muller?
He had no idea of what the fuck he was going to do once he had the leadership.
If you simply replace James with no new policy platform, then this is a move for power, not progress.
I’m all for coups, but they must establish a new tranche of change, if it doesn’t do that, it’s just power stealing for the sake of ego isn’t it?
With all due respect to my Comrades in the Underground Green Left, you’ve all been played by fucking Hooton!
He is the architect of the Death Star, the Union representative for South American Dictators and the Sith, he is a player of the Dark Arts at the highest level, and the fact he talked about you behind his paywall made you feel special didn’t it?
He manipulated you all and he’s currently doing the the victory lap at the, ‘I-can’t-believe- how-clever-I-am-and-how-dumb-they-are’ Nazgul Consultancy Express…
…you’ve been breadcrumbed into a minefield by Matthew Hooton. Nothing good ever comes from that decision.
Matthew Hooton has played you like a fiddle, here is the fiddle…
…if I were being scathingly critical, I’d say “You clowns can’t even get a fucking coup right – Jacinda’s already pledged support to Shaw to remain as Minister, meaning YOU GAIN NOTHING by dumping him other than looking divided & pissing wider membership off with a Whare of Cards ego power-play – the time to do this was last year”!
That’s what I would say if I was being critical, but let’s examine the Chessboard and game out the options.
Ok.
Here are the scenarios.
1: Continue walking into the Matthew Hooton built trap and kill James Shaw and replace him with Chloe, with no new policy, deep divisions in the wider Green membership and a message to the wider electorate of division in the Greens. This scenario risks making the Greens look like a University Feminist Party with environmental pretensions.
Like this…
…in a culture war election, the wanky wokeness which Marama Davidson is claiming is their means to victory, is going to beat the fucking bejesus out of the Greens. They just don’t understand how alienating they currently are. The Left are haemorrhaging male votes, knifing off the last remaining Heteronormative White Cis Male for a non-binary co-leadership model will electorally have the effect of Ebola on most male voters.
2: Don’t take Shaw out, cut a deal that allows him the dignity of fighting this last election and he steps down right after that and allows an open leadership challenge. Use the time to activate youth vote and actually have a policy platform ready to go when he does step down.
3: Take out Shaw, have a barnstorming election process that doubles as a grief counselling session for pissed off members and have an entirely new policy platform that throws everything at the issues that must matter most – green economics with real material change in peoples lives that goes beyond the performance art of identity.
The problem is the Greens don’t know if they are Arthur or Martha anymore, and if they did they would require a 6 month hui to debate which pronouns to use.
Marama is already on record before the AGM saying alienating middle class identity politics is the future of the Greens, which in a way could be true. An army of eye twinkling woke micro aggression policing neophyte’s is one future if you want a Green Stasi I suppose!
I’m no political expert but a movement that sees everyone less mentally ill than themselves as privileged and everyone more mentally ill than them as toxic doesn’t win elections.
Replacing James with Chloe with no new policy and just more alienating middle class identity politics is a sure fire way of being 7% on Election Day 2023.
If you are lucky.
Meanwhile the 1% are laughing while the planet is burning.
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1945-1960: American share of global GDP = 50%
Currently: American Share of global GDP = 15-20%
Chinese share of global GDP = 20-25%
I dislike these faux comparisons. On the other hand I really liked Shaw. He captured what it was to be a politician of responsibility at a time when the economic engine of the world subsumed itself into China’s century.
A lot of it has to do with economists inability to calculate inflation but more importantly their inability to calculate growth. Neveromd about asking a politician for examples of growth rate calcs. The hardest thing which the most wonderful and powerful economy to ever grace planet earth was turning 20’th century dirt farmers into 21’st century consumers.
The past is dead. No matter how hard we try it’s just impossible to recreate the conditions in which stoicism was the norm (no one wants another World War).
Said another way it’s easy becoming the world’s largest economy when you’re the only economy left over from the war. Turning that into an equitable society just comes from a different place.
It’s not really an ideological debate or backatading or whatever capitalism vs communism nonsense. It’s about collectivism vs individualism and the loss of meaning and appreciation of the original sins. In this case destroying over developed capital.
I mean who would have thunk that capitalism baby (technology) would eventually destroy private capital. The rise of Bitcoin is an example, so is Universal Basic Income.
You, you Green Party have 3 months to come up with something that makes it okay for the next generation to explore the final frontier of the human experience – The Internet.
Perhaps there is no reason for accepting innovation in finance except that every other alternative is brutally worse.
“the Greens don’t know if they are Arthur or Martha anymore”
Haha, nailed it Martyn.
Golriz was on the other day insisting that men can give birth, Marama is more concerned about her “trans whanau” and they both spew hate about colonists (AKA white people) and women wanting to protect their private places. It’s a belching sewer pipe of hate and a freaking madhouse, quite why anyone would want them anywhere near the levers of power is beyond me.
Agree DG.
Loved that you used the add with the wahine in Green Martyn.
James should leave them to it. maybe stay on as Climate Minister. I am not sure the climate plan is that great, but he’s certainly worked his guts out.
I would like the Greens to be free of James, so they can go fully woke so the electorate sees them for what they really are. BTW if Shaw goes, expect to see Davidson gone after next election, replaced by Dr E Kerekere. A name change into the Trans/non binary party would be appropriate
Anker. Nope. With Kerekere whose ancestors’ diverse sex lives were repressed by colonialists, they rebrand as The Purples. From their vegan ashes an authentic ( great buzz word) Green Party may arise like a phoenix, or a Winston.
Agree DG.
Loved that you used the add with the wahine in Green Martyn.
James should leave them to it. maybe stay on as Climate Minister. I am not sure the climate plan is that great, but he’s certainly worked his guts out.
I would like the Greens to be free of James, so they can go fully woke so the electorate sees them for what they really are. BTW if Shaw goes, expect to see Davidson gone after next election, replaced by Dr E Kerekere. A name change into the Trans/non binary party would be appropriate
Seriously:
Golriz was on the other day insisting that men can give birth
The is really frightening and downright stupid. Where and when did this happen.
It was a twitter exchange, I’ll see if I can find it for you.
Can you give the link to that quote from Golriz DG. I would like to hear/ see that.
Chloe is more useless than Shaw and more polarising. Marama has become a horrible joke.
But I’m beginning to think that when the current Greens obsession with themselves and their neoliberal advisors takes them out of action, hopefully a brand new Green environmental party (or one without the current Green MP’s) will form with real environmentalists running it.
Now’s the time for ex Greens to form a new environmental party, many voters are waiting for a new party that focuses on this, not identity.
When the greens are signing off more foreign water bottling, gives Natz their questions, wants to form Stasi police groups to police thoughts while Rome burns (NZ’s shootings/ram raids), separate race based health systems (with all that added bureaucracy), putting drug smugglers, violence and gangs on pedestals etc, adding in 200,000+ more residents when the current ones don’t have enough health care, education, transport, housing, something is wrong. They couldn’t even get their signature policy, legalise dope, through.
Earth is burning, but they are still fighting to make sure that everyone is talking about ‘chest feeding’.
Note the big propaganda from Russia about anti vaxx, black lives matter was targeted at NZ, OZ and Canada, likewise the ‘trans’ identity movement – soft power tactics to disrupt these countries by dividing people and stopping policy to help the maximum amount of people in these countries and stop oil propaganda.
Identity and lifestyle choices becomes a distraction to more pressing issues such as 40 degree heat in the UK and Europe and parts of India now is too hot to live in. Pacific Islands are disappearing. Droughts and weather events are everywhere, leading to food and water insecurity/war.
The effects on not being too worried about stopping climate change yesterday, also effects trans, black lives etc, and is going to kill and put in poverty a lot more people than the current woke worries obsessions on cancelling historic events, most of which are not even happening in NZ and don’t effect those alive today.
saveNZ Yes. Dumb Davidson should have gone long ago. I quit the Greens because of Davidson’s shocking anti-white diatribe to the traumatised Muslim community when she and a couple of others hijacked the tragedy in Christchurch to toss their own destructive brand of racism around.
They’re social meddlers and tinkerers. During lockdown when the police were in Wellington’s Courtney Place about 2am trying to avert a rival gang showdown, a girl popped out of the Splash Strip Club and asked them to tell her what they were doing there. It was Chloe on a night out with her girl friend.Politicians need to butt out of police operations, especially dangerous ones. During the Parliamentary protest Mallard called the cops in but when the police asked that the sprinklers be switched off this request was denied and Mallard’s idiocy worsened already- difficult dynamics. Separation of powers should be precisely that.
We need an environmental party and it used to be the Greens but now they’re every wo-man and their dog.
Spot on Save NZ
The Greens are nothing more than a vitrue-signalling open borders party now. Ricardo should team up with Seymour and Stanford and make the Open Borders Party. I’d rather vote for the Killer Beez.
James Shaw is the main reason many environmentally concerned persons vote Green. He doesn’t frighten the horses. He is a normal sort of person compared to some others; he’s not a gender-bender, and he deserves a medal for coping with some rather extremist females.
Out in the everyday world, we’re weary of extremists, racists, ageists, and socially divisive politicians. Cannabis Chloe may be the darling of Auckland, and her youthful dismissal of the experience of her elders may endear her to the undergrads, but having the gift of the gab isn’t enough. It’s not worked out that well for Jacinda Ardern.
Wow, the only one in the Greens walking the walk, and not all talk. It was refreshing to have a politician more concerned about the cause than their own ego. He would be the hardest working politician in Wellington at the moment and the Greens don’t deserve him. The legalisation as Climate change minister will have the longest lasting impact of any legislation ever introduced into parliament. ‘climate change – climate change’ James Shaw seems to be the only one who understands what is going on here. Even as masterful
as Chloe is with the political rhetoric, she seems less focused on the two C’s – climate change, and no one in the Greens has their head around the detail of it as James Shaw does – at times he seems like the only adult in the room.
Even when he was physically assaulted, the guy just gets up and carries on.
If James goes then I go – I will say it on the Daily Blog now, if these kind of antics, and disloyalty to your hardest working members is successful then I will never vote for the Greens again. It can obsess over the small stuff forever, petty and indentity-less while the world ‘f**king burns. You are making me turn green in disgust!
To quote James Shaw
“It is hard when there is a group that’s organising against you. But… I have been so focused on my job as Minister for Climate Change, doing what we need to do to fight the climate crisis, that I really don’t have a lot of time for factional organising.”
I agree D-Man,
I disagree, others work hard too. The climate change legislation is totally pathetic as is Shaw. I think of all the work done by Jeanette and Rod et al and I am truly horrified about the demise of a party they have got caught up in so much stupid shit. As a long term member I have quit. For me Te Pati Maori is the only party with an excellent climate change policy, written by Jack McDonald who publicly called out James a long time ago and left, he is young and was quite high on the list. Foolish for James to have ever got the job – should have been Kevin Hague but then he was Forest & Birds champion. Too many flakes including Marama in there now.
Who in the Greens is really focusing on all of the seriously scary statistics we have around poverty, housing, etc. Don’t forget they have never ever been JUST AN ENVIRONMENT PARTY, part of their kaupapa is around social justice.
International talkfests like Cop26, don’t seem to be working.
“The Democratic Republic of the Congo has announced it will auction oil and gas permits in critically endangered gorilla habitat and the world’s largest tropical peatlands next week. The sale raises concerns about the credibility of a forest protection deal signed with the country by Boris Johnson at Cop26.”
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2022/jul/23/democratic-republic-of-congo-auction-oil-gas-permits-endangered-gorilla-habitat-aoe
Climate change seems to be increasing at a rapid pace and Russian and oil propaganda are targeting green and left groups by a distraction strategy of identity!
Targeting Black Americans, Russia’s IRA Exploited Racial Wounds
A new report documents how Russian online propaganda had a much more sustained, deliberate focus on black Americans.
https://www.wired.com/story/russia-ira-target-black-americans/
Russian disinformation in the time of Covid-19
https://theconversation.com/russian-disinformation-in-the-time-of-covid-19-142309
“According to Sarah Evert of Carleton University, young people between the ages of 18 and 29 are more sensitive to conspiracy theories. The biggest supporters also have much more activity on social media than individuals who do not adhere to such theories. They share much more information about conspiracies than the majority of normal users and are also much more likely to discredit scientific advances or true information – by commenting extensively fake news for example – than users who do not subscribe to these theories.”
Kiwi journalist caught up in misinformation campaign puppeteered by Russian trolls
https://www.stuff.co.nz/national/122661504/kiwi-journalist-caught-up-in-misinformation-campaign-puppeteered-by-russian-trolls
MSM media now get their ‘news’ via social media so essentially much of the media is now running fake or conspiracy stories rather than factual news – it’s a massive echo chamber of non news stories that are then influencing government policy based on foreign paid propaganda groups.
I don’t see the current NZ Green Party as the way forward for the left (economically or on social issues).
James Shaw always seemed like a soft neoliberal to me. But Chloe Swarbrick also seems to me to be economically more centrist than left, plus very much into gender ID ideology.
Plus, putting hopes in her leadership attracting more young people who are radically left will only deliver more of the same identity politics that have gripped the current NZGP. The distinctive demographic that votes more NZ GP than other parties are students. That is likely why the NZ GP commissioned a survey of renting experiences for students, rather than for low income people in general. And probably also a reason why Davidson is highlighting social issues.
Gender ID ideology arose in the neoliberal US, and the wealthy drivers and funders of it have specifically targeted youth and Universities. That is where cancel culture and pronouns, etc are strongest.
Plus, many young students are attracted to environmental politics because it directly impacts their future and can be graphically explained. However, many who are attracted to the GP do so for the environmental and social policies, and do not understand, or want to understand, that it is capitalism that is preventing strong anti-climate change measures. And it is neoliberalism that is driving the expansion of gender ID ideology.
Oh. How did my username get shortened to ‘k’?
If you have sinned, I mean despot-serial killer-billionaire type sinner and when you die and as punishment for those sins, does going to hell mean having to sit through an entire Green Party conference?
Were I religious and the ministers sermon preached that as a direct consequence, I would cleanse my soul and change my heathen ways forthwith!
Hallelujah!
X-ray “ Does going to hell mean having to sit through an entire Green Party Conference?” Probably not.
God invented black holes to post-humously accommodate politicians, estate agents and pedophiles. Other pronouns probably disperse fairly evenly throughout the various circles with a potential for social mobility, but the black holers spend eternity specking off off and away throughout the ever-expanding multi-verse, with no comeback. That’ll learn them.
The salient calls for a new Green party rings lots of bells on the left.
However, the alternative to the madness driving the social and current environmental world to destruction will not be achieved by just another ‘Green Party’.
The necessary organisational and political alternative must be an Eco-socialist one.
Only the struggle for a revolutionary transformation that ends the capitalist-driven economic, political and idelogical domination of our lives and the concomitant threat to our presence as a species on this planet can change our future into one where humanity and the planet thrive in unity.
Let’s have a political vehicle fighting for Eco-Socialism.
The ecosocialist project is necessarily a joint feminist, environmental and socialist one. The ravages of colonisation must also be redressed.
Patriarchal class society where property-owners rule over the rest of us has existed for only few thousand years of our more than 300,000 years of existence as homo sapiens on this earth. It is time for the end of the rule of property and money.
It is time for “a revival, in a higher form, of the liberty, equality and fraternity of the ancient(s)” as Lewis Henry Morgan wrote in his ground-breaking “Ancient Society” as far back as 1877.
Let’s aim at the advancement of the human project beyond the present dead-end.
This requires a revolutionary alternative!
what a bunch of sheep molesters above–CB excepted–have even one of you ever supported or voted Green?
If not, the remarks are nothing but malice and concern trolling at best. The Greens conduct their party affairs and internal democracy a lot more transparently than the natzos or Labour what ever people may think of their policies, which are also available to read in great detail.
The Daily Blog has been crapping on the Greens from a great height for several years now, so it is a bit of a stretch to think they would do anything but the opposite of what TDB suggests in respect to anything!
Come Election 2023 a solid 9–10% Green Party vote will likely be there, and more possibly if they push economic issues like the treatment of students and restart Climate Strikes.
You seem to be boasting about having stayed a Blue-Green Party supporter long after Sue Bradford and other actual Greens realized it was lost.
You are the lost one, sir or m’am, not the actual Left.
Tiger Mountain. I used to vote Green and I donated to the Green Party, 2x. I dumped them following the Auckland Muslim Vigil, when Marama Davidson, told the assembled crowd and television cameras that Pakeha/ Colonialists etc were responsible for the Muslim massacres in Christchurch carried about by an evil little Australian runt. It wasn’t fair on the bruised and bereaved immigrant Muslim community painting their Pakeha neighbours as haters, and the connection to colonialism was tenuous, to say the least. I think it was the last young female speaker who proclaimed, “ White people hate us,” a downright lie.
I don’t care about Davidson recommending that white males delete themselves, that was just dopey, and reclaiming the word “ Cunt, “ because apparently someone called her one and hurt her feelings, was a piece of social engineering or linguistics not part of the job of a party political leader and perhaps also indicative of someone with skin a bit too thin to be a political leader, IMO. I also consider her handicapped by a deficient knowledge of our shared history.
I just wish the Greens would get on and change their party name. They are utter sellouts and it annoys me that my hippie living friends from way back (mainly Takaka way) keep voting green because they still think it is the environmental party
Better to look at Te Pati Maori who have the best climate change policy of any party, written by an ex green who publicly took on James Shaw.
Fantail. I persuaded a bunch of old ducks to vote Green and have been chastising myself about it ever since although I suspect that at least one duck stuck with Winston and lied in her gleaming dentures. I apologise about this all over the place now – and cross the road if necessary.
Prefer if Davidson went. Shaw and Swarbrick would be a better look but yeah nah, politics.
Agreed
Best thing they’ve ever done. Shaw buys into the harmful neoliberal consensus. I love Marama but hope there’s some way Chloe can become co-leader.
I think you will find that they all believe in capitalism and growth growth growth.
Lol at BMW Jimmy. 5 years of being “Our Glorious Leader’s” poodle got him nothing but a Ned Starked by wokeborg. Don’t cry for him I see him being a nice little prop for a corporate that does a lot of Government business on $300k a year.
There is 10% of the population that will vote green even if they burn Jimmy’s genitalia in a ceremony on parliament grounds. Doubly so given next year we will be in recession.
This is a side show to the looming economic collapse around the corner.
Tankie go back and read the 2017 greens/labour confidence and supply agreement (https://www.parliament.nz/media/4487/nzlp___gp_c_s_agreement.pdf)
and answer me this: All those line items in there that JS has delivered, was anyone else going to achieve half of that?
Don’t bother me with the ERP is this or the CCC is that or the 2050 target is too far away to be meaningful. Without JS we would be no further ahead on climate today just like housing, poverty, health and so on.
Entertsaining post and informative on reality. I’ve got over the grief about the disappearance of the Greens down a sinkhole, or was it them that got stranded on a sliding bit of cliff in a landslide having to be rescued with difficulty, anyway at least they bring a hollow laugh into a gloomy day.
And why was James Shaw a clown I ask? He seemed to deserve more respect than that, trying to move environmentally those narrow-eyed business types serenaded in Mac the Knife, while sticking in with that bunch of creme-de-menthe cocktails. He will be glad to be out of it and to turn to chardonnay socialists.
Oh, the shark, babe, has such teeth, dear
And it shows them pearly white
Just a jackknife has old MacHeath, babe
And he keeps it, ah, out of sight
You know when that shark bites with his teeth, babe
Scarlet billows start to spread
Fancy gloves, oh, wears old MacHeath, babe
So there’s never, never a trace of red
https://www.azlyrics.com/lyrics/bobbydarin/macktheknife.html
James got more than 50% support which is a majority isn’t it? Like the 50.1% who voted against drug reform, or Labour’s 50% 2020 election majority and subsequent mandate.
I think young Jimmy will be secretly pleased to be out of that group of toxic fucktards, namely the NZ/AO Green Party.
He’ll be easily snapped up by a multinational corporation to front there sustainability profile.
James should seek advice from the National party on leadership changes, they are professionals at it.
But which leader within National are you referring to Bert?
Clearly James had to go! He was too white, too male, too reasonable and insufficiently tattooed.
The Green motto: “Making the world a better place, for me and my Volvo”
LOL
The Green Party drifting off on the tide of woketopia. Likes gulls doesn’t like buoys and now no shore in sight.
Poetic and prophetic and…
I hope James starts up his own successful party if he gets the boot. The guy works hard and has diplomacy where it counts. Plus he has valuable political experience it’s a shame to loose his input.
Pity if he does go though, I thought him and Chloe would have been a better team than his shared leadership with Marama.
If Chloe does get a chance at leadership I hope she pushes hard the legalization of cannabis , much cheaper medical cannabis options , retail selling of lower percentage level CBD products (likened in the UK and US) It needs to gets thoroughly addressed this time around.
Calling women ‘pregnant people’ in any policy relating to women. Removing the word women, even mother, has lost Greens plenty of women votes to. The fact that James is a middle aged white male, is not his fault and stop being so prejudiced, Green members wanting him out. I predict a loss of at least five seats at the polls without Shaw’s leadership.
Yes agreed Martyn the wealthy few are having a great old time watching this with their pop corn this is their type of entertainment. “Oh look at what’s happening to the greens darling” LOL.
Greens just crazy enough to send all white males to ‘re education camps’ and then release them when the economy collapses.
Enjoyed Hootons input on the TWG last night. The old Values Party is making a play at ousting the Soc Credit element.
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