Lefter 36 ~ here we go, here we go, here we go …

Here we go to nowhere.

I wrote it months ago, and I feel I must write it again: If Goff was a clever man, he would have set up a succession plan and enacted it. Instead he’s continued with his delusion that he’s Prime Minister material, and unfortunately the party has gone along with this. At least in public – it’s quite possible that the angry pronouncements from first Chris Carter, then from Damian O’Connor are the tip of an iceberg. (It’s ironic that Carter would have been part of O’Connor’s ‘gaggle of gays’.)

And that’s just two men who succumbed to rage after getting their noses out of joint. There are many Labour incumbents who are much better at keeping their heads down. Having had lots of practice.

Much more troubling is that one of Labour’s top financial advisors announced Labour was in trouble, and also laying the problem at Goff’s door.

This, if nothing else, should have galvanised the party but instead, it seems to have made the internal blocs into even more isolated silos struggling to maintain their nebulous positions in a Labour Party that, to all intents and purposes, is dissolving into an amorphous blob.

But this stupidity has continued for so long, Labour has pretty much guaranteed that a party that has reneged on every single promise it has made can nevertheless easily coast back into power. (Yes, that’s National.) Labour had a platform in February, but let it go …. ensuring that from now, National literally needs do nothing to stay in power. It doesn’t need policies, it doesn’t need to make progress, and it doesn’t need to stop cutting benefits while pumping money into financial disasters, even despite the fact some are clearly of its own making.

Because financial disasters are presided over by New Zealanders National does understand. Rich white people.

For it’s plain to see: National will put money after money, but keep cutting it for the poor and workers while making their lives harder in every way possible: instant dismissals, tougher sick leave and growing constraints on opportunity and education.

The stupidity of all this is mind boggling. It’s what you’d expect from a Third World country – but hey, that’s what we’re rapidly becoming. It’s so obvious that New Zealand is failing that our Finance Minister is even touting NZ’s low wages as if it’s a good point; a feature that’s making us competitive. This is ignoring the fact National promised to solve the wage gap (now 30%) with Australia.

Hah.

There is more than one stupidity at work, of course. While Goff flounders from one unseemly crisis to the next, looking ever more ineffectual, the New Zealand public still thinks Key is doing a good job. This is stupid because he patently is not. Yet just because he shows up on TV every five minutes, grinning his imbecilic grin and mangling his way through even the most innocuous of sentences, the New Zealand public still thinks he’s a good guy.

Good Lord!

Either way, I have no faith in either of them. I never had any in Key, but I did hope Goff had some vision. He clearly, by this juncture, does not. He also appears to listen to, then enact, only the most execrable advice.

Meanwhile, his party faffs about, lacking the cohesion to do anything, lacking the gumption to put an alternative forward, and now having left it far too late anyway.

This is a gift – to National, which does not need gifts.

Now National can literally forget Labour while it concentrates on the dissolution of the Maori Party and Act, thinking this will lead to National having a clear majority after the next election.

Meanwhile, Labour presides over its own shabby and unseemly public decline.

Fellow citizens, when National gets its second term, you will see what damage an unfettered National Party can really do.

For believe me, National has evil plans for you aplenty.

Meanwhile, we simply don’t have a left wing party.