Who Is Pulling Sharma’s Strings?

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GAURAV SHARMA’S DEATH-DIVE into the Labour mothership may strike many traditional leftists as fortuitous. Certainly, his decision to force a by-election in Hamilton West will inflict far more damage on Jacinda Ardern’s radically elitist government than any number of old-school leftists could possibly hope to achieve. This should not be permitted to obscure the fact, however, that, in 2022, it is the Right, not the Left, that is driving New Zealand politics.

Just how decisively the Right is shaping our politics will become clear in the run-up to the Hamilton West by-election. Though National may consider the by-election outcome a foregone conclusion, it is likely to be disabused of any such notion relatively quickly.

Between them, Act, NZ First, and the new parties of the Far-Right have the potential to siphon-off enough votes to place the contest’s outcome in serious doubt. The lazy assumption among political commentators that National’s strategists will be able to browbeat its right-wing rivals into giving it a clear run at Labour smacks more of wishful thinking than sound analysis.

If National wants a clear run, then it will have to give its rivals some pretty unequivocal assurances about what it will – and won’t – do in government. Even then, the arguments for delivering National a sharp lesson in the raw power of ideological conviction may prove hard for its right-wing competitors to resist.

A political novelist would look at this evolving situation and explore the question of exactly who informed Sharma that Ardern was planning to waka-jump him less than six months out from Election Day 2023. Sharma insists that it was a member of Labour’s New Zealand Council, but, honestly, that seems unlikely. The New Zealand Council of the Labour Party has been pretty effectively “scrubbed” ideologically. The notion that there is someone sitting around that table harbouring dark thoughts about Ardern and her colleagues, and spilling the beans to Sharma, is most unlikely. Easier to believe is that someone – a genuine enemy of the Labour Government – is pulling Sharma’s strings.

If such a person exists, then he or she is almost certain to be a right-winger. But, just how far is that person, and those s/he is working with, prepared to go? Is the idea of a Sharma-led “centrist” party his own, or was it planted and watered by his unnamed “friends”?

It’s an important question. A group of seasoned operatives who knew what they were doing might actually pull together something that looked enough like a genuine centrist party to draw-off a useful number of Labour votes. Then again, why would they invest so much energy and cash in a guy who’s never going to be more than a political footnote?

The only plausible explanation is that the political force best placed to draw off Labour votes – the Greens – have been so thoroughly battered and bullied by Labour, that they no longer possess the necessary political courage to demonstrate their indispensability to the “left-wing” cause.

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A surging and ideologically rampant Green Party, slashing into Ardern’s record from the left, would make it next-to-impossible for Labour to retain Hamilton West. Not that a genuine Green Party would care. It’s only goal would be to show that if 2023 isn’t a Labour-Green victory, then it won’t be a victory at all.

Sadly, only the most unrealistic of optimists could foresee such a welcome recovery of electoral nerve. Most likely the Greens will meekly agree to sit-out the by-election. Meaning that, if there’s any vote-siphoning to be done, it will have to be done by the Right.

Viewed from the perspective of the non-National Right, the best possible outcome of the Hamilton West by-election would be a narrow (the narrower the better!) win for Luxon’s team.

A romper-stomper victory for the National candidate is the last thing the non-National Right wants. A win like that would reassure National that they have no need to make serious policy concessions to the parties on their right. It will convince Luxon and Willis that they can continue fudging on the Treaty and Three Waters, and double-down on John Key’s successful formula of doing whatever it takes to win and hold the suburbs. Knowing that, if National holds the suburbs, then the rest of the Right has no real option but to make do with half an ideological loaf.

Ensuring that National’s candidate only just makes it would put an end to all the party’s thoughts of an easy campaign in 2023. The idea that it will be enough to just shuffle along a few paces to Labour’s right, and muddle-through as usual, will be scotched. National will have no option but to respond to the gravitational pull of all those political forces unwilling to accept Labour’s radical elitism. The results are unlikely to be pretty.

But that’s what your country gets when it lacks a mass movement, grounded in the working-class, and dedicated to social equality – not radical elitism. The penny has yet to drop in Aotearoa-New Zealand that identity politics is not left-wing politics. Labour and the Greens are by far the slowest learners – dangerously slower than the Right.

 

65 COMMENTS

  1. “The penny has yet to drop in Aotearoa-New Zealand that identity politics is not left-wing politics.” Indeed. Imagine when the Right start using Trumps of Colour.

    • tell me christian nationalists aren’t obssessed with identity politics, or anti pro-noun warriors…the rightard SJWs just have different obsessions but it’s the same small minded thought processes

  2. “The penny has yet to drop in Aotearoa-New Zealand that identity politics is not left-wing politics.”

    That’s what I’ve been saying for some time: The current government isn’t Socialist anymore. It exhibits the characteristics of the National Socialists. Namely authoritarian and race obsessed.

      • ” It never was socialist ”

        The last seriously socialist Labour government was Kirk-Rowling in 1972-75 and a nationalist Muldoon who pretended to be a Tory but never inflicted the misery of market economics until perpetuating the crisis in 1984 that bought any remaining socialism to an end.

        Adern , Robertson are neo liberal pretending to be Labour who accepted the economic narrative that simply will never deliver for the economically repressed constituency they expect to vote for them so they can continue delivering for the ” others ” in other words shaft what used to be their lower class supporters.

    • Really? Mandates that were put in place temporarily and are going out the door. What is authoritarian about this government? You say this and then in another comment you will say they want to give everyone a hug instead of being tough. Doesn’t sound very authoritarian to me. Despite all the bullshit from Luxon big business can pretty much do what it likes. As for race didn’t you say the other day that we should just forget about treaty settlements because you “were not there”?

      • “Mandates”, lockdowns, gun confiscation, hate speech law, internet censorship (both real [in the aftermath of the mosque terrorism] and advocated at the UN), protest suppression, …

        • Confiscating certain types of weapons. You can still kill things. Protest suppression? Are you f’ing serious? They were offering to park their cars for f*cks sake. How long were they there?

          What hate speech law? There isn’t anything in law with the exception of the Human Right Act. Debating how to tackle an issue does not make you authoritarian.

          • Wheel. Jacinda Ardern advocating global censorship of freedom of speech to the UNO has been cited as authoritarian by political commentators in the UK, Australia, and the USA.

            Establishing a weird Centre of Excellence headed by publicly intolerant persons gets this government off the hook for its own need and desire to control the social narrative; you may recall the floundering about what constitutes hate speech, and trying to toss it all into the laps of the New Zealand police.

            However the simplest and cruellest example is perhaps their determination to disembowel the Commissioner for Children and thus silence independent and frequently constructive comment and criticism of their own inadequacies or shortcomings. Seems pretty authoritarian to me.

    • “That’s what I’ve been saying for some time: The current government isn’t Socialist anymore. It exhibits the characteristics of the National Socialists. Namely authoritarian and race obsessed.”

      Actually, that is not at all what the quote from Trotter meant. It’s a cheap shot to pretend your argument and his are the same.

      The fact is, associating identity [woke] politics with the left serves the political right better than any other group. That’s why the right pull it from their dog whistling tool kit so often.

    • Agree.
      The neoliberal hard-core absolutely and unequivocally supports the tenets of Neoliberalism, whatever party we infiltrate, be it, the Labour Govt. from 1984 to 1988, or ACT and National between 1988 and 2022 +++

      We couldn’t fulfill what neoliberals achieved in USA, and UK in NZ because of Mudloon, and didn’t in New Zealand because of the piss-weak David Lange government. They were more interested in protecting the unions and having ‘a cup of tea and a settle down’.

      We absolutely cannot institute more perfect neoliberalism without National and ACT’s coalition.
      Get rid of socialism and the Lab/Grn and vote NACT.
      You know it’s the RIGHT thing to do to equalise New Zealand. A fair tax for the rich and poor – 20% personal tax. 20% GST (except NZ food) and 20% business tax.

      This will help NZ have a groundswell of a fairer and wealthier society for all.
      Especially when we drive diesel tractor on our protests, because it has been scientifically proven that diesels are less polluting than petrol, because we don’t drive as fast.

      FAIR TAX is the key to New Zealand’s progress as a society.
      No diesel tax – farmers should be exempt!
      Groundswell has absolutely and unequivocally nothing to do with the feral Freedom movement!

    • Wow Andrew, the Hitler-National-Socialists argument.
      If you can’t win the argument by facts, and triangulation of facts. accuse the opposition of deeds worse than Hitler.
      Next it will be Argumentum ad HannibalLecterum.

      Hannibal Lecter will replace Trevor Mallard on the Labour list?

      • Where was Hitler EVER mentioned AAE?
        You Labour trolls are so uber-sensitive, you see Hitler where he was never mentioned.

        Chris Luxon needs to stay the course on National’s fairer tax system, unlike his UK counterpart Liz Truss. David Seymour will help Chris make New Zealand a business-friendly country again and help lift wages for all Kiwis

        Even though we have many capable women in National and ACT, managing the economy, it’s great to have someone strong like Chris Luxon when we have worldwide Communist forces at work that makes it difficult for women in power. Chris will be ably assisted by David Seymour in 2023. Fair taxing by National and ACT will make New Zealand a great country again.

        20-20-20 with National and ACT for a brighter, fairer NZ

  3. Chris like many a seasoned operator likes to warm up a bit, give the fans a show, before delivering the knock out blow–“But that’s what your country gets when it lacks a mass movement, grounded in the working-class, and dedicated to social equality–not radical elitism.”

    Indeed.

    The egotist Sharma will certainly be a footnote like so many others–ROC, Mauri Pacific, Jami Lee Ross etc. his personal arrogance, in line with a few professional disrupters has certainly created a hot political focus point.

    Professional disrupters are usually right opportunists, as Wayne Brown’s advisors and campaign manager show,

  4. Who Is Pulling Sharma’s Strings? Who knows, but maybe everyone in this country who is unhappy at the way Jacinda and Labour conduct politics and run the country? That’s a lot of strings pulling! Small example: PM office apologises for incorrect child poverty facts. Note that Jacinda herself as the minister has not apologised. She considers herself untouchable and infallible. So yeah, keep pulling those strings.

    • ” So yeah, keep pulling those strings.”

      Pulling strings good, ponytails not so much.

    • why should she. If it was your kool aid flavour you’d be saying she’s running “a tight ship” with no measure given to mutineers but yeah – jamie lee ross and simon bridges are your shining lights of principle, who, just like sharma, are too shallow to bite the bullet and walk the plank.

  5. Definitely the gweens. Theyre good at (self) sabotage, canceling. So this makes a lot of sense that they’d do this to Labour and themselves too!

    What a masterstroke!

  6. “National will have no option but to respond to the gravitational pull of all those political forces unwilling to accept Labour’s radical elitism.”
    That really sums up the current situation in NZ, the Govt does not represent the people.

    Incidentally I find it somewhat dumbfounding that an elected MP can be liable to the ‘Waka Jumping’ legislation. Such an MP is the representative of the voters of an electorate and is responsible to those voters alone. Corporate MPs are naturally liable to waka jumping claims because they are soley corporatists. Can’t help thinking the STV system is where we should be going as MMP is designed to give non-representative govt. Annalenna Baerbock’s ” I don’t care what the German voters think”.

  7. Ha,ha – Matthew Hooton for the win!!

    Not sure that I agree that the mole is on the right, in each case, their predictions have been proved true so is it just spot on political guesswork or is it another quietly bullied (or treated as irrelevant) back bencher? I guess it could be a politically motivated Parliamentary Services staffer?

  8. “The penny has yet to drop in Aotearoa-New Zealand that identity politics is not left-wing politics.”

    The insistence that woke ideology isn’t left wing politics is absurd denialism.

    The socialists need to own their woke dogma.

    Pretending the woke nutjobs are some type of right wing conspiracy won’t cut it.

    Lift your game.

  9. My take on Sharma is he’s a small fish in a big pond. That equates to limited power and relevance in a place where power and relevance means so much. Safe to assume Ardern’s inner circle aka Cabinet enjoy considerable power and the full backing of Ardern. That could leave a Labour MP well down the pecking order but with lofty ambitions feeling powerless and resentful. Mr Sharma is clearly frustrated and resentful. Even more obvious is he craves attention. To light that fuse all he’d need from his electorate, especially constituents of Indian descent is for them to express a dislike / disapproval of Ardern and co along with support for him. Nek minute.

    I genuinely believe Ardern and co had no intention doing what Sharma claimed they were planning to do. They were on the same page with their responses of surprise. Far more likely scenario would be Sharma feeling smug he’d run a fairly successful hit job campaign on Ardern and then realizing there was another potential hole in his plan that could leave him completely powerless. He decided he had enough support to call for a headline grabbing by-election. Rather than be brutally honest about things he instead justified his play by pointing his finger elsewhere…….again from the spotlighted Podium.

    There is no way Sharma would throw his own political career under a bus…….. unless he felt considerable support for himself and little support for Ardern.

    Regardless of where I am in NZ, the yarn subject will invariably get around to politics eventually. I can tell you it’s extremely rare for any people to express support to me toward Ardern and her Government. Frustration and contempt are the two feelings most expressed. That is a complete turnaround from what I experienced in 2020. If I were Ardern I’d be most concerned about one common denominator. Almost everyone I talk with assumes everyone else view the Ardern Government in a similar way to them. There is normally not one failure or perceived failure that riles them up more than another. It’s pretty much everything they touch.

  10. “A romper-stomper victory for the National candidate … will convince Luxon and Willis that they can continue fudging on the Treaty and Three Waters, and double-down on John Key’s successful formula of doing whatever it takes to win and hold the suburbs.”

    Good on you for calling out the Nats here. A romper-stomper victory for the Nats would be a very negative outcome not just for “non-National right” but for the entire country. I’ve seen a Luxon apologist making the case that Luxon is just boxing clever by playing for the centre, and leaving ACT and NZF to cater to the critics of the government’s ethnostate agenda. I’m not buying it. Luxon is from the woke corporate world, and I fear if he got an absolute majority in the general election next year, he would make deals with the iwiocracy, and happily sell ordinary Kiwis down the river – following in the footsteps of his mentor Key. Another right-wing commentator took a more sceptical (and I think, more credible) view of the Luxon-led Nats’ pitch to the electorate: “a better status quo”. Which translates as tax cuts, no 3 waters, no Maori health authority, but no challenge to the revisionist treaty or the ongoing ideological makeover of our institutions.

    Seymour or Peters need to be dealt a strong hand if we’re to stop the rot. And yes there will be a price (Friedmanite economics), but it’s a price we may have to pay to save our democracy.

    The other gem is “identity politics is not left-wing politics”. Try telling that to Liz Gordon or Frank Macskasy. But perhaps more to the point, identity politics is ruinous!

    A question for you, Chris. Why does NZ not have a Conservative party? Our current lack of a true social democrat party is less remarkable, as “Labour” parties throughout the anglosphere have nearly all morphed into wokeist parties. But Australia has a rough approximation of a conservative party (the National Party), and the “Liberals” are significantly more conservative than NZ’s Nats.

  11. Sharma as a political footnote? Being on the bottom of the gumboots, dog excrement trampled into history? If his strings are being pulled he is simply someone’s ‘useful idiot.’

    Ardern said: “We’re having a by-election so that he can come back and do the same job.” The man who got all excited about misspent taxpayer money and complained to Parliamentary Service is having an election said to be costing the best part of a million dollars.

    He made claims, provided no evidence, Parliamentary Service investigated and found nothing untoward.

    Sharma is allowed to be in cloud cuckoo land but he shouldn’t treat us as if we should just moronically accept his bullshit. National’s Tim Macindoe had a majority of 7,731in 2017. He probably won’t win by as much if he stands in December but it should be comfortable.

    • I agree, Macindoe at least had integrity as an MP and didn’t feel entitled.
      Sharma had bullying claims against him, with staff stating they wouldn’t work for him, Labour investigated and placed Sharma under management control. Sharma felt entitled to cry wolf.

      • Someone ate his packed lunch bert.
        So many lunches are eaten, or nibbled “in error” by workmates.
        FFS
        ‘Build a bridge, get over it Shamster!”
        Welcome to NZ, welcome to the free-world of woke-free and proud!

        Next, Labour will be setting up a “wo(r)king group” to look into lunchtime-bullying allegations.
        National and ACT know what the problem is.

        Setting up a “woking group” every-time someone let rips drops a beery fart at the smokoe table and one of the LGBTQIA workmates want a $25,000 compo claim for nasal assault! They need to work on the freezing works chain for few weeks, and get areal, working class life.

  12. Labour’s already got a good candidate lined up to run in the seat. The guy who missed out to Sharma last time and who was working in his office for him. He knows the issues that caused this whole problem with Sharma intimately so is unlikely to repeat them. He may occasionally turn up pissed but that’s not likely to affect his ability to do the job.

    • That sounds like good personal politicking. Work in the contender’s office and you’ll get to know the ropes. So many flits about town have the political nous how to make like corks and bob to the surface in different locations.

  13. Song – ‘I wonder why you keep me waiting [Sharmaine, my Sharmaine]?

    I wonder if I keep on praying
    Will our dreams be the same?
    I wonder if you ever think of me too
    [Sharmaine, my Sharmaine?]
    A little message from the NZ voter to political player with us being Piggy in the Middle.

    From 1958 Jim Reeves – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Tm0SMjy_zpA

  14. I dont even know if Labour is left wing anymore. They sure arent helping the poor or disabled other than lip service and run arounds.

  15. Sharma can afford to play this game assuming he’s still a medical practitioner and employable. Labour have had it cruisy since Ardern picked up the reins. Provided Labour keep Ardern up front it won’t matter if Luxon has a little win in Hamilton. But I guess Labour do have to contest this by-election and hope for some good luck or divine intervention…

    • Vincent
      Er…Ardern will become Labour’s biggest problem soon. She stands as figurehead and mouthpiece for Labours lack of performance and ineptitude. She will become the Minister of Failure. Best illustrated by her own miserable performance as a minister of child poverty. So to say A little win doesn’t matter…? You mean like the recent little wins in all the mayoral elections?

      • You could be right SK.. Ardern has given us a glimpse of what might be if we could think ‘What about the citizens!’ But she seems to have turned into a political flasher, showing off a shapely policy and attractive white grin, then down come the curtains. The vaudeville show is followed by a freak show with titillating glimpses of violence that shock and awe. The crowd is pulled in but the show suffers from a Covid backlash and becomes unprofitable.

        People who are led forward on high hopes only to have them dashed, go through the itemised stages of grief for the dying. But the last one listed is Acceptance and Ardern and Labour would have a hard job to be
        accepted by the unentitled masses. also the thinking middle class, even if they upped their game. They have had the ways explained to them as necessary, but Labour are fully-fledged super-grifters* now, following their western USA doctrines in all elements of the nation.

        What are the 5 stages of grief According to Kübler-Ross?
        A Swiss psychiatrist, Kübler-Ross first introduced her five stage grief model in her book On Death and Dying.
        They include:
        Denial.
        Anger.
        Bargaining.
        Depression.
        Acceptance.
        7/06/2022
        Five Stages Of Grief – Understanding the Kubler-Ross Model
        https://www.psycom.net › stages-of-grief

        *noun informal•North American
        noun: grifter; plural noun: grifters
        a person who engages in petty or small-scale swindling.
        “I saw him as a grifter who preys upon people”

  16. You know what, maybe Parliament needs a strong India voice. They can always vote him back in and ditch him next year.

    He should be running as: “‘A Plague On Both Your Houses” – very apt as it’s from Shakespeare.

  17. ” It never was socialist ”

    The last seriously socialist Labour government was Kirk-Rowling in 1972-75 and a nationalist Muldoon who pretended to be a Tory but never inflicted the misery of market economics until perpetuating the crisis in 1984 that bought any remaining socialism to an end.

    Adern , Robertson are neo liberal pretending to be Labour who accepted the economic narrative that simply will never deliver for the economically repressed constituency they expect to vote for them so they can continue delivering for the ” others ” in other words shaft what used to be their lower class supporters.

    • look at the push back at 3 waters – a simple, fairly benign centralization of services. Imagine if they abolished property rights and instigated a co-operative labour model. they’d get lynched and the capital would just roll over them. like it did Kirk, Muldoon and Whitlam. The money men would just spite the population like in Venezuela and Cuba. New Zealand would become a socialist pariah living on scraps. Better to play smart against those odds. or are you not really talking about socialism but just want more of the bourgeoisie cake?

  18. What would happen if Labour didn’t run in the by election? Sacrificing one seat of their majority in the house presumably for a Nat win. Then there would be no Kudos for national or sharma and it will all be recontested in one year anyway.

  19. FFS, nobody will be behind it, Shama bought up concerns but they were ignored and he got angry with the situation and controlling Labour who used the wrong type of tactics and created a situation that should never have got there.

    Shama is like many millennials who expect to be heard again and again, Labour seems to be enabling those who trigger easily to spread through the wokeforce. This is the inevitable result.

    • You insult millennials with that statement. He is an extremely ‘precious’ example. Sharma is an overindulged little chubkins who has spent his life throwing tantrums when he doesn’t get his own way. Proof that all political candidates should enjoy the rigours of corporate hiring practices and have a comprehensive personality test before selection.

  20. Sharma,a pawn, the other side have sucked into, act so hurt blame their culture insulting yours, a place for you with us.

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