AMUSING NONSENSE FROM SHANE TE POU

Labour insider zealot Shane Te Pou writes regular Labour wonderfulness stories in the NZ Herald. I’m astonished the paper runs them as they’re so nonsensical and predictable. Then again, given the government is a source of so much mug taxpayer revenue in ridiculous full page adverts and payments to the media in various guises, I shouldn’t be surprised. But I laughed when I read the heading on Shane’s latest effort, specifically, “It’s increasingly evident Luxon is not up to the job.”

If Shane really believed that he’d shut up about it so as not to deter the Nats rolling Luxon.

I’m no National supporter and thus have an unbiased dim view of Luxon, but then again that same “not up to the job” heading could equally be applied to Jacinda.

The problem with our adversarial democratic political system is politicians are constantly torn in their decision-making between the public and their Party’s interest. That’s only human in their quest for survival.

In the post-war years, by a country mile, the PM who managed that conflict best was Helen Clark, followed closely in second place by John Key. I’d put Holyoake in 3^rd place but Keith had the advantage of a relatively trouble-free age. So too Syd Holland.

The common denominator those four shared was they managed three terms, perhaps this reflecting a smaller degree than normal of public dissatisfaction, a fate that ultimately befalls all political office-holders. As Enoch Powell famously and accurately said, “All political careers end in failure.”

Despite Shane’s efforts he better get used to the hard political reality that whether Luxon or a stuffed baboon is leader of the Nats, they’ll sweep into office next year in a landslide. The embarrassingly absurd deification of Jacinda in 2019-20 has been well and truly exposed as utterly hollow, a sentiment now widely felt. The old boxing adage, the bigger they are, the harder they fall, applies. To Jacinda’s credit, at the height of her “second coming” mania which gripped New Zealanders, in an interview with Britain’s Guardian newspaper, she admitted going to bed each night suffering from imposter syndrome.

So even if the Nats did replace Luxon with a stuffed baboon, the old saw that oppositions don’t win elections, rather governments lose them applies. The sole exception in the post-war years was Muldoon in 1975.

Jacinda’s constant foreign travel is reminiscent of Muldoon’s in 1983-4, when I suspect he knew the game was up. The endless photo opportunities shaking hands with foreign leaders was intended to impress the home audience. It didn’t and won’t for Jacinda. Her tide has well and truly gone out and I won’t be surprised should she pull stumps within six months to “allow a successor a decent run.” Depending on who replaces her might diminish or increase the landslide, but regardless, the government is history.