Andrew Little

Labour were a walking PR disaster area in 2011. In compiling my Redux series for 2011 I am gob-smacked by how many cock-ups they managed and a great many of them by their strategist Trevor Mallard.

Today a list of the Top 30 PR disasters in New Zealand has been released and when you look at it you can see why Labour lost in 2011.

4. Darren Hughes. In early March the police receive a complaint from an 18-year-old male. The incident is reported to be of a sexual nature and alleged to have occurred at Labour Party deputy leader Annette King’s home, where Hughes lived. Witnesses report seeing the complainant outside and naked that morning. Although Labour Leader Phil Goff knows about the police complaint for two weeks he takes no action and his office tells the media that no Labour MP is involved in any such complaint to Police. During this time both Darren Hughes and Annette King participate in a debate performed in front of the entire press gallery with the moot “Politics is a grubby business.” After being grilled by the media Phil Goff then admits Darren Hughes is at the centre of the Police investigation but defends Hughes stating it is a matter for the Police. He then refuses to accept Darren Hugh’s resignation (but changes his mind later on). Labour Party President Andrew Little only finds out about the matter when it hits the news headlines.

8. Phil Goff and the numbers. During The Press debate and in interviews on both Q&A and The Nation Labour Party Leader Phil Goff bumbles the numbers and fails to respond to questions with accurate figures that are the very basis of his party’s policy proposals.

13. Darien Fenton. Labour MP Darien Fenton launches a personal attack on Mad Butcher founder and philanthropist Sir Peter Leitch because he said something positive about Prime Minister John Key. She says that because he is “sucking up to John Key” and is a “sycophant” she is never going near him again and will be boycotting Mad Butcher stores. She then goes on to say she won’t buy anything from people who support Tories. After Darien Fenton apologies for her public outburst, Labour MP Louisa Wall quickly negates the apology by justifying her colleague’s attack on Sir Peter Leitch by stating:”We would have assumed Sir Peter was a working-class champion…if you look at what the National Government has done, it has taken workers’ rights backwards.”

25. Ruth Dyson. Labour MP Ruth Dyson uses tax payer’s money for a private trip for her and her husband to Ethiopia. She then agrees to refund the $16,000 once the media question her about it – stating she planned to refund the money all along.

26. Trevor Mallard. Labour MP and Election Campaign Manager Trevor Mallard accuses political strategist Matthew Hooton, Kiwiblog owner David Farrar, Minister of Finance Bill English and the PSA of apparently paying for Otago University political analyst Dr Bryce Edwards to make attacks against the Labour Party. The attack is launched after some political data showed Labour was down in the polls. Labour MP Clare Curran then joins the conspiracy theory adding that the young Nats and ‘non-Labour left’ are suspiciously ‘cosy’ with the academic Dr Bryce Edwards.

27. Carmel Sepuloni. Labour MP Carmel Sepuloni insults National MP Paula Bennett after she thinks she has won the Waitakere seat off National. However, five days later once the special votes are counted Paula Bennett wins back the seat for National leaving Carmel with egg on her face.

Heh, I caused a fair few of those.

John Key mentioned Labour’s real problem yesterday in his address in reply speech:

“David Cunliffe doesn’t like David Parker. David Parker does not like Grant Robertson. Grant Robertson does not like Clayton Cosgrove. Clayton Cosgrove . . . he’s not real fond of Andrew Little. Andrew Little doesn’t like Shane Jones. Shane Jones doesn’t like anybody in the Labour Party. Phil Goff does not like David Cunliffe, and Annette King doesn’t like anyone that Phil Goff doesn’t like. And I say to myself, it’s not hard to see why they chose someone who’s spent half his life in war-torn places like Somalia and Bosnia, because that’s what the Labour Party’s like now.”

It might sound flippant but it shows that Labour after a term without the steel of Heather Simpson to control caucus and the ambitions of pretenders Labour is now akin to street gangs with knives drawn giving each other the eye.

There isn’t any caucus unity, and just watching their body language yesterday as David Shearer stuttered and fumbled his way through 30 minutes of yawn inducing faux-rhetoric said more than their silence during the speech.

David Shearer might have stared down armed Somali warlords but having the big guns of UN peacekeepers or US Marines at your back in no way prepares you for the sharp shanks of political competitors waiting for you to trip up.

You have to laugh at Andrew Little. He stood as a carpet bagger in New Plymouth and managed to perform so poorly he turned the country’s most margin seat in 2008 into a safe National seat by 2011.

On Saturday night Mr Little failed in his bid to wrest the New Plymouth seat from National’s Jonathan Young and Labour suffered its worst defeat since the 1920s.

“It was certainly a sense of great privilege to be coming in on the list but it wasn’t the sense of elation that I might have thought of years ago when I thought ‘Yes, I want to commit to becoming an MP’.”

You’ve got to love the entitlement mentality that thinks scraping in on the list is a “great privilege”.

Any designs Andrew Little had on the leadership of Labour pretty much ended with his woeful showing in New Plymouth.

Potential aspirants for the leadership of Labour “achieved” interesting voting figures on Saturday

Didn’t Parker do well!

Lesson 1: Parties without good infrastructure do poorly on election day.

Labour had their worst result since they were a third party in the 1920’s, mainly because of Andrew Little and Phil Goff neglecting the party. Little raised not a cent from non union sources, and is probably Labour’s worst president ever. He left Moira Coatsworth with an impossible task. Goff needed to show leadership and build a strong, well funded party, but he never even tried. The height of Labour’s stupidity was winning almost 150,000 candidate votes than party votes.

ACT was a disaster from the moment Don Brash didn’t clean out all the troublemakers that were undermining him. He needed to build a strong infrastructure around him, even if it meant a bit more blood letting. He didn’t and as I said for many months before the election, ACT is doomed. Paying a $3000 a day Australian consultant plus a staffer to baby sit you in the green room after an election loss probably isn’t good use of ACT fundraisers money either.

Poor Andrew Little, pretending to be a local and now his Mum sounds like she won’t be voting for him:

When Mr Little announced he would contest New Plymouth’s seat as the Labour Party candidate, Mrs Little said she wrote a letter to Mr Young saying her political beliefs would fall on neutral ground this election.

But with only four days until New Zealanders head to the polling booths, Mrs Little said she still hasn’t decided whether she will vote.

“What am I to do? Obviously my loyalties lie with my son but my husband and I were always National Party supporters,” she said.

It was Mr Young who brought up Mrs Little’s dilemma at a National Party meet-the-candidates meeting in Okato yesterday.

“I was speaking with Mrs Little recently – she’s a National Party member you know – and I said to her that I understand her loyalties lie with her son but I’ll be rather peeved if I lose by one vote,” Mr Young said.

Pretty bad when you are living with her and you still can;t convince your dear old mum and your own leader won’t even visit the electorate.

Labour has been pinged repeatedly for flouting road rules. They simply don’t care. The Police also seem to care little about our electoral alws.

It has become farcical in the extreme where we have one political party wilfully and flagrantly breaching laws with impunity.

This is a photo from New Plymouth of a STOP ASSET SALES sign about 20m from an intersection parked on the road.  The vehicle it was attached to was an EPMU branded vehicle.

Andrew Little thinks that visits by Phil Goff are not helpful, not only that he wants John Key to come back to the electorate to help…probably why Labour are now putting John Key on their ads and not Phil Goff.

Andrew Little’s cost justification for ignoring New Plymouth raises some impertinent questions:

At the candidates’ meeting, he is asked if he will still move there if he does not win the seat but gets in on the list. He answers no. It is a question that has come up before and he’s managed to come up with a cunning excuse – that it will save the taxpayers’ money if they don’t have to pay his Wellington accommodation and commuting costs.

If Andrew Little won’t make a commitment to New Plymouth if he doesn’t win because it will save accommodation and commuting costs, is he now encouraging all scum List MPs to base themselves in Wellington?

Is this now Labour’s standard attitude towards the provinces?

Faced with a polling disaster of his own, Andrew Little has started debranding:

At that meeting, Mr Young diligently stuck to his party line while Mr Little largely avoided his party line.

He did not mention Labour leader Phil Goff or most of his party’s main policy planks. Instead, he talked about the port, oil, gas and dairy farming. He promised to push for roading realignments north of the city and to “shake every tree and push every button that needs to be shaken or pushed to get the funding for it”. He proposed ramming a tunnel through Mt Messenger.

Debranding won’t work, neither will promising millions in spending he can’t and won’t deliver. Little’s main problem is no one believe him about his commitment to New Plymouth:

He is also aware that he is a carpet bagger – he lives with his wife and 10-year-old son in Wellington and is bunking with his mother for the campaign. He has promised to move to the electorate if he wins, but the locals have made it clear he needs to establish his credentials, hence the emphasis on local issues.

At the candidates’ meeting, he is asked if he will still move there if he does not win the seat but gets in on the list. He answers no. It is a question that has come up before and he’s managed to come up with a cunning excuse – that it will save the taxpayers’ money if they don’t have to pay his Wellington accommodation and commuting costs.

Weasel words tend to collapse your vote not enhance it. Of course this is yet another prime example of someone not wanted by the local constituency but they sneak into parliament with a high list ranking. If Labour drops a few more points though Little is trouble there too.