Hamilton West by-election massacre for Labour: Winners, Losers & Predictions
The Hamilton West by-election was held to cause maximum damage to Labour as part of Dr Sharma’s kamikaze revenge attack run.
Hell hath no fury like a migrant Dr scorned.
The resulting self mutilation of Labour was far more damaging than imagined.
Labour went into this with a 16% majority, they lost by 16%, that’s a 32% swing against Labour.
That’s fucking devastating.
There are of course political winners and losers.
WINNERS:
Tama Potaka – As the former CEO of Ngāi Tai ki Tāmaki, Tame Potaka is ironically a man who has epitomised the success co-governance can achieve while winning for a Party screaming against co-governance! His emphatic embrace of draconian ankle bracelets on children marks Tama out as a future leader of the National Party because his willingness to turn the harshest elements of the State on the poorest people (despite being Māori himself) are the very types of politicians that angry white voters love the most. Watch Tame leap up the National Party hierarchy.
Violent Crime – It is such a glorious vote winner. It doesn’t matter that crime is historically lower than at other times and is a mere ramification of the stress Covid generated, it scares the bejesus out of people and National smashing Labour with a 32% swing highlights how powerful it is. If you thought post-covid social damage generating the Ram Raids were bad, you ain’t seen nuttin yet! Buckle up, the stresses and strains going on everyone with a mortgage and pushing prices beyond peoples ability to pay will cascade down causing an explosion in desperation and need mixed with misplaced algorithmic bravado and social media notoriety mixed with depression and full blown alcoholism to create an explosion of violent crime. You thought shit was bad now? Imagine 150 000 job losses and 10% food inflation with a 30% jump in rents! Things are about to break and that is going to frighten people into demanding a response from the State that is disproportionate.
News media covering crime – The ratings bonanza for crime porn news coverage has just saved every news producers job in NZ’s desperately underfunded newsrooms. If it bleeds it leads will become the mantra and the nation will howl in fear and anger and resentment screaming ‘something must be done” while driving ratings through the roof. The 2023 crime spree will be brought to you by ‘KiwiBank – banking made safe’.
Get tough on crime cheerleaders – Here they come, the Something-must-be-done-Get- Tough-On-Crime cheerleaders, all promoting terrible things to be done to the worst people. Some Politician, either Luxon, Winston or Seymour will finally break the political consensus and demand NZ Police be armed at all times and the frightened News viewers will scream “Yas Kween”.
Political Apathy – A pitiful turn out of around 30% heralds what may be a dynamic of next years election, an electorate too grumpy to engage.
National’s ground game and volunteer base – They had an enormous ground game in Hamilton and their volunteers were more fresh faced and excited than the Labour activists.
LOSERS:
ACT – Win 10% when they could have won 15%. This is a set back and another reminder that ACT have an enormous job to win over National voting boofheads in 2023. ACT keep seeing their electorate as rural or provincial when their are actually drawing support from a psychological electorate who see ACT as a Right wing values party.
TOP – Walked away with about 2.4% of the vote, 5% would have been a win on the night for them. Naomi Pocock is a good candidate for them, they just need to keep chipping away at this and show a possible win in Ilam.
Labour – Things have been so bad for Labour that even a small loss here would have still been a victory, but a 32% swing against them? They have been destroyed by this result. Poor Georgie was a great candidate and has earned a second shot at the seat next year.
Dr Sharma – His kamikaze revenge plan has succeeded in destroying him and hurting Labour. As for his political future, we will never see him or his party in any significant role in NZ politics ever again.
Predictions:
The People of Hamilton West will be wooed in December and forgotten by Christmas. They will have an opportunity to put their working class pain and their working class anger directly to those who would harvest their support. It was a bitter fruit and it will taste toxic.
Tama Potaka’s talent to call for harsher sentences on Māori while being Māori will win him Winston Peters level adoration from an angry white electorate and he will rapidly replace Mark Mitchell as Police spokesperson.
National will learn violent crime and promising retribution is the way to win 2023 so expect ACT and National and NZ First to all compete to arm police first.
Labour will freak out and start dumping anything they think is controversial and in doing so will look even weaker.
Hamilton West won’t get safer.
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Do you think the Hamilton (East…but the driver wasn’t local as he was unaware that he drove down only no-exit road in Fairfield) Friday night shooting was a stunt for the National party?
The election went exactly as I expected. The only good thing out of it could be that Hamilton gains a doctor. He might be a lying little turd and taking his word for anything might be questionable but at least he has the piece of paper to say he can do it. Then again he might think that doctoring is beneath him now.
We can forget about any payrises if National wins power next year. Or sick leave, or holidays, or anything
And the winner… (of the petulance, self aggrandisement, entitlement & party undermining Award) is…Gaurav Sharma!
Various Parliamentary parties have made selection mistakes of course, in unlikely to win seats, or lowly list placings…but this one by NZ Labour was a classic, I guess at least Mr Sharma did not beat a defenceless teen with wooden bed legs…
He was toast anyway. The difference is it just cost us a fortune this do it this way.
Given Sharma’s ethics one can only assume he is a shit Doctor as well.
He will probably end up standing for National.
Yep he has the same low ethical standard and was freeloading at the new National MPs after party.
Does the Labour Party ever have any responsibility for anything, ever?
This could have been avoided by almost anything but the hissy silent-treatment, closing ranks we witnessed. The leadership chose instead haughty refusal to speak to Sharma. Very mature.
This is the result. Wasted money but worse for Labour and even worse for any public idea that we might be represented by adults.
Valid perspective what+now
Tbf 10 percent is a win for Act esp when it coincides with a big swing towards National. Means they’re developing a pretty solid core vote.
Yes, Labour will freak out.
No, dropping anything controversial or even offering next weeks lotto numbers will not change the upcoming disaster. A lot of political careers in Labour are about to end, from the PM and Deputy PM down and yet, I think they still don’t get why!
The phone is now officially off the hook.
Why do you support US style healthcare?
“Hell hath no fury like a migrant Dr scorned”
Ekshully, as much as I think the guy has an over-inflated view of Hisself., I think I reject the premise of your assertion.
Not even sure why we should accept why a migrant shouldn’t feel aggrieved, ripped off and treated like shit after being lied to, exploited, had the rules of the game changed on them, ignored and a host of other shit when we’ve pretended to be a caring, sharing, kind and compassionate nation (that punches above its weight).
Since 2016, I’ve been telling them to steer clear of the place. There are better places to be
Dr Sharma arrived in NZ when he was 12 years old. I’m not sure that makes him a “migrant doctor”.
The Green Party should have put up a candidate. Then Labour would probably have got the same number of votes as doc Sharma.
“and their volunteers were more fresh faced and excited than the Labour activists”.
Duh, doesnt Labour read The Daily Blog? Given that they shat on many of their loyal supporters as evidenced by your readership, your comment is to be expected.
And I want to pick you up on your comments on crime. I dont think you are right. Because much has been made of it, I have been ratting out various statistics where I can. Surprisingly, it’s very hard to find out the truth on this.
Couldnt get data on kids but I saw a few things that inferred violent crime is on the rise and the next day David Farrar? Curia comes out with a graph that shows Violent Offending was at 50K per year 2016 – 2018 and has risen 2019 – 2022 to something around 68,000. If that’s true its and increasing, that’s approx. a 36% increase in violent crime. And I dont think ramraids are considered violent crime BTW.
You only need to look within your own communities to see crime is rampant. We have seen road rage incidents locally and people getting knifed on shopping streets. The kids are getting beaten up at the bus stop and at the mall on the regular. Heck even at our local Catholic Girls College (8th decile) we had a 14 yr old break a 13 yr olds back while everyone stood around – her crime, talking to a boy the other one liked.
There is an obvious increase in crime across NZ. But the problem is politics and media muddy the waters so much that nobody really knows what’s going on. The police arent doing their core job, not attending call outs, not present in communities, dont want to take people in and it looks like the courts push down the nature of the offence in exchange for keeping people out of prison. (Kind of similar to the US)
Nobody knows the extent of the problem but the Labour party’s dislike of measurement means much of import is passing under the bridge without anyone the wiser. Occasionally we see these distortions played out in media but increasingly you only become aware of it by word of mouth or when you encounter it yourself.
But why it’s happening (Most countries are experiencing an uptick in crime) and what or who is responsible is another question entirely. And these are the questions we most need to solve in order to come up with effective solutions. Can we please stop assuming we know what’s happening and why and get a thorough diagnosis first. And then let’s do what is actually going to fix the problem. All this back and forth on crime is drearily reminiscent of the misinformation/disinformation farrago, so much ideology and assumptions and political point scoring with little regard for the facts.
The public perception that crime is on the rise is because it’s recently become more visible: Suburban dairies and shopping malls rather than behind closed doors or in “out of sight, out of mind” suburbs that you’d only want to drive through if you were playing grand theft auto.
Sharma suffered from a textbook case of “candidate-itis” and confused voter support for the party he was in for support for him personally. This was what ultimately doomed him politically in a similar way to the political fate of Jami-Lee Ross before him.
Tama Potaka and Harete Hiponga now comprise the Nat’s Maori caucus.
Wow!Watch out Willie, this dynamic duo are on your case!
Perspective
An electorate of 66,013 eligble voters. Only 15,187 voted. Hardly deserves the headline ” massacre”. Suggests that near 50,000 knew it was a waste of money and time.
Even if some main voting booths in large suburbs only opened on election day and if the postie deliveredpapers just a few days before.
The Potaka family now have to move into Hamilton West ! Yet the conflated slanging and denigration he gave today of us , and saying what he knew Hamilton West wanted from a couple of meets with business ….. he’s as fake as Luxon !
Back in May, slick-boy Luxon said about his learning te reo, ” he hoped improving his skills would help him be more inclusive and connect with ORDINARY people.” Well Luxy boy you got an “ordinary ” mate in your caucus now.
Where’s Potaka going to reside ? Will he ship his kids off to Ham East private schools because he couldn’t really have them mixing with us crime ridden ‘ bottom feeders’.
Pick a suburb for the whanau .
https://www.trademe.co.nz/a/property/residential/sale/waikato/hamilton/maeroa/listing/3867431025
https://www.trademe.co.nz/a/property/residential/sale/waikato/hamilton/nawton/listing/3846068606
https://www.trademe.co.nz/a/property/residential/sale/waikato/hamilton/frankton/listing/3883976960
https://www.trademe.co.nz/a/property/residential/sale/waikato/hamilton/hamilton-lake/listing/3865884257
https://www.trademe.co.nz/a/property/new-homes/house-land/waikato/hamilton/rototuna/listing/3623740088
Having grew up in ham east, in a pretty rough part of nawton, I can reliably tell you, that the only suburb in Hamilton east that our new MP could possibly desire to live in is the Forest Lake area.
As for his kids, well… They’ll have to commute to the other side of the city. But at least they won’t get mugged at the local high schools. Or maybe they could go to the local ones, they’d either get tough or get a regular beating.
Oops, meant ham west.
The scene is set for the ’23 election.
That this election was a trainwreck for Labour is only just the beginning. It’s not that Labour have run out of ideas, but that the ideas they do have are really, really bad ones. Almost as if they’re designed to alienate the average voter. As someone further up the comments said – the phone is off the hook and they’re ploughing on with this nightmare regardless of their internal polling results. (One wonders at the internal machinations within the caucus)
In addition, we face a year of bitter recession with slumping house prices, a credit crunch and tumbleweed in the high street.
As a psychologist friend explained to me after the previous election, anyone voting into office on the basis of emotion (adulation) will be removed on the same basis (revulsion).
Slumping house prices,like you say that’s a bad thing! You need more psychologist appointments.
Maybe I do! LOL
House prices affect the general demeanor of the public. Although it’s not really cash in the bank, rising house prices do make homeowners feel richer and similarly falling house prices weigh sentiment down. If values continue down, there will be a crop of new homeowners with large mortgages who are in ‘negative equity’ territory, whereby their debt to the bank is larger than the value of the property.
My point was that this negativity gets directed at whoever is in government at the time.
They (Labour) won the last election that is a mandate to rule Richard. The GST rise and $25 million flag debate
did National have a mandate with their huge majority according to our media.