When the US Government warned the rest of the world that, when it comes to securing regime change in Venezuela, “nothing is off the table”, most observers assumed it was talking about some form of military intervention. (An impression encouraged by a video-clip of National Security Advisor John Bolton’s hand-scrawled aide memoire “5,000 troops”.)
WHY ISN’T JACINDA ARDERN channelling Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (AOC)? This is not a frivolous question. Labour found itself swept into a winning position at the end of 2017 almost entirely on the strength of Jacinda’s extraordinary appeal – especially to voters under 40.
BACK IN THE DAYS when I boasted much more hair and carried far fewer kilos, I was right into (as we said back then) writing songs. One of those songs, The Other Side of Town, opened like this:
Well, the street has been my teacher
And poverty my nurse
Oh dear, how my family and friends chortled. “You wouldn’t know how to live out on the street if your life depended on it!”, snorted one.
WHAT IS IT? This weird, emotionally energetic style of politics that promises “transformational” change and then, mysteriously, fails to deliver…
The carrying of the resolution thus represented a rare assertion of the interests of private sector workers within the CTU – as well as an important breaking-of-ranks within the usually dominant “Big Four” public sector unions. Together, Wagstaff’s opponents have delivered a stunning blow to his presidential mana, greatly reducing his chances of being re-elected to a second term as leader of the CTU.
The questions that arise from the Hanoi Summit are all about diplomatic and journalistic consistency. The United States and the Western news media both need to explain why the measured diplomacy and largely accurate reporting on display in Hanoi, has been so conspicuously absent with regard to Venezuela. The naked diplomatic aggression and outright lies which have characterised the West’s treatment of the Venezuelan Government could hardly be more different from its handling of the DPRK’s “Supreme Leader”.
POLICE NUMBERS just topped 13,000. Forty years ago there were fewer than half that number – considerably fewer. Astonishingly, we now have almost as many cops as we do soldiers. At last count the New Zealand Defence Force numbered 14,921. Put those numbers together and the state’s coercive potential turns out to be not far shy of 30,000 highly-trained and fearsomely-equipped men and women. Those who allow expressions like “revolution” and “class war” to trip so merrily off their tongues should be required to explain where their 30,000 highly-trained and fearsomely-equipped men and women are currently hiding – just waiting for the word.
What the world is currently witnessing in the UK, is the “pre-emptive split” that simply has to happen if the looming, uncontrolled, disintegration of the British Right, and the left-wing victory such an unmediated break-up would permit, is to be circumvented.
THE LABOUR-GREEN TECHNOCRATIC LEFT is clearly preparing to die in the very same ditch in which the Right hopes to bury the proposed Capital Gains Tax (CGT). This is unfortunate, since one of the more annoying, if unintended, consequences of such folly is likely to be the fall of the Coalition Government. Assuming, of course, that Winston Peters and NZ First are willing to die alongside their Labour and Green comrades. The sheer improbability of that happening is really the only ray of hope illuminating what is otherwise a pretty dreary situation.
LATER THIS WEEK, the recommendations of the Tax Working Group will become public. It is highly likely that a Capital Gains Tax (CGT) of some description will be near the top of the Working Group’s “To Do” list. How should Labour handle this extremely hot potato? The tax which all the experts tell us we have to have has much to recommend it theoretically, but, in the bluntest of practical political terms, it could very easily destroy this government.
