Deconstructing Headlines

What’s that weird, totally unfamiliar feeling I’m feeling watching Jacinda Ardern take over Labour?

Hope.

Jacinda is a product of her generation, and because most of the pundits are older than her, they judge her by their own generations combativeness and cynicism.

Which is why they don’t get her.

Matthew Hooton and Patrick Gower have had their pay day with destabilising the leader of Labour once again and Andrew Little has stepped down.

Andrew Little is a good man and would have made an incredibly decent Prime Minister, I believe he has been let down by his advisers and communications team and that once he lost Matt as his backroom head kicker, he was open to undermining by the factions. 

The King looks like he’s dead, long live the Queen?

…we have a suicide rate that may be 3 times higher than officials acknowledge, we have a suicide rate that continues to spike, we have a mental health service that is so underfunded that it is functionally broken and we have a Government who have only this month admitted Government policy has failed.

Whatever the outcome, it needs to be forced or seized in the next 24 hours. 3 damaging polls in a  row demands action or it will become a self-fulfilling prophecy. The truth is that National are sinking and running out of political allies. Labour-Green-NZ First could still be the next Government. 

Andrew Little has 24 hours to find his mojo. Clean sweep his advisors and bring in an aggressive new team to ram home that there can be no change of Government without Labour, or fall on his sword.

The 3 big take aways from the latest TVNZ Poll are

Labour have to ram home the reality and truth that there can be no change of Government without them. Voters are wanting change, Labour have forgotten to remind everyone that they are the essential ingredient that is necessary for that change.

The good news in all of this is that Labour-NZ First and the Greens are close enough to forming a Government to make this election a fight worth fighting.