Brian Edwards

ᔥ Bowalley Road

Labour’s civil war has spilled over into public now. Chris Trotter has joined Brian Edwards in castigating David Shearer for his gagging of David Cunliffe:

DAVID SHEARER’S DECISION to muzzle his rival, David Cunliffe, is deeply worrying. Right now, there’s nothing Labour needs more than an open debate about its future. That its leader, and the coterie of courtiers with which he has surrounded himself, was willing to go to the extraordinary lengths of preventing Labour’s spokesperson on Economic Development from appearing on The Nation reveals how ruthlessly Shearer’s faction intends to stifle all dissent.

Mr Shearer’s petty, politically self-destructive decision can only be interpreted as Mr Cunliffe’s punishment for delivering a speech to his New Lynn electorate’s Women’s Branch highly critical of Labour’s fraught, 25-year association with neoliberal economics. Clearly, the disparity between the Labour Leader’s three uninspiring “positioning” speeches, and the compellingly radical content of Mr Cunliffe’s April 29 address, had rankled.

It sure has. Moana Mackey can now add another couple to the count from what I hear.

This sort of overt factional squabbling has not been seen in the Labour Party for more than fifteen years. Throughout Helen Clark’s record-breaking reign as leader open dissent was almost always cast as treason. Such limited ideological debate as did occur was hidden deep down in the party’s organisational bowels, far from the public gaze. It was a political style more suited to breeding courtiers than comrades, and Ms Clark’s sudden departure, coupled with the effective coronation of her successor, gave the Labour Party no serious opportunity to decompress. Now it appears to have the bends.

There was no squabbling under Clark because the caucus feared Heather Simpson. No one feared Stuart Nash and no one yet fears Alistair Cameron.

Courtiers make poor campaigners. As Game of Thrones addicts know only too well, power is not always to be found among the wielders of swords. As often as not it lies in the hands of eunuchs and whoremasters: the manipulators, tricksters and casters-of-shadows who keep their daggers hidden and seldom venture beyond the palace gates.

Which is why Mr Shearer’s muzzling of Mr Cunliffe is so very worrying. Seldom has Labour been blessed with two such impressive champions. Both men should welcome the open and principled debate needed to set a new course for the party: one suited to the powerful currents in which New Zealand (and the rest of the world) now find themselves. It’s also needed to ensure that Labour is not secretly corrupted – as it was in the early-1980s – by a “Leadership Group” who were only too willing to promise one thing and then deliver its opposite.

Oh dear…Chris Trotter has called the advisors “eunuchs and whoremasters: the manipulators, tricksters and casters-of-shadows”. This is not going to play out very well at all.

ᔥ Brian Edwards blog

Brian Edwards is brutal on David Shearer’s gagging of David Cunliffe. Perhaps he is still mad at getting the axe for media training…well that is what Labour MPs are quietly whispering around the beltway if anyone asks them why Brian has gone feral.

Anyway, ‘the top team’ didn’t like Cunliffe’s brilliant speech and he was apparently bawled out by Shearer and others and told the  speech was’ naive and stupid.’ That tends to be the price you pay for idealism. And, according to the extremely  well informed Duncan Garner, the  price may be high for Cunliffe who has been ‘put in his place, somewhere down the bottom of the pecking order’.

This is so utterly stupid that it beggars belief. Cunliffe is not only intellectually brilliant, he is by far Labour’s most accomplished debater in the House and on television and radio.  No-one in the Labour Party can hold a candle to him as a media spokesperson. Stammering and stuttering seem to be the main criteria for that at present.

ᔥ Brian Edwards

Brian Edwards writes an interesting post about the wisdom of commentary, and blows his own trumpet (justifiably). But his comment on the un-trainability of David Shearer is interesting.

Brian is a considered commentator, for him to opine so publicly shows that he (and Helen Clark) are over David Shearer:

This morning my co-commentator on The Nation and fellow media trainer Bill Ralston joked about Shearer, ‘He should have had some media training.’ But it was a joke. Media training would have made not an iota of difference to Shearer’s fortunes. He would have proved untrainable.

That sounds harsh, but it is not intended to be. Shearer is simply miscast as the leader of a political party in opposition. To change his image, he would have to change his personality and that, in human terms, could only be a change for the worse. Shearer is genetically challenged as a Leader of the Opposition. The killer instinct and the showbiz gene are both missing. He can be reasonable but he can’t project.

Media training is a waste of time for such politicians. Worse, it’s transparent, an ineffective cover-up job that listeners and viewers can recognise and see through. And that is damaging.

Bill Rowling, whom I mentioned in the earlier blog, was a strong personality who looked weak on television. Attempts to make him more forceful made him look like a weak man trying to appear forceful.

A similar fate was met by the rather wooden Geoffrey Palmer, who was Prime Minister for a year and who, I’m told, received media advice from some Australian gurus in the art. The advice was apparently to be physically more animated and smile more. The effect, however, was to make him look remarkably like the American Eagle on The Muppets.

Media trainers need first and foremost to be skilled diagnosticians. A wrong  diagnosis, followed by inappropriate treatment can be fatal to the patient’s prospects of survival. Sometimes, as in the case of David Shearer, it is kindest to admit that there is no cure and wish them a happy life – perhaps doing something else.

ᔥ Brian Edwards

Brian Edwards is excited by the prospect of New Zealand’s first openly gay Prime Minister. It seems a little premature just 4 months after David Shearer was picked to lead Labour but there is now open speculation about the future of his leadership amongst Labour types:

So let’s just indulge in a little speculation. Between McCarten’s and Hartevelt’s front-runners – Little and Robertson – who might make it to the finishing line? I’m going to plump for Robertson. Yes, Little enjoys the support of the unions and is a forceful debater in the House. But it’s hard to see this rather dour, uncharismatic unionist as the face of a rejuvenated Labour Party. At 41, Robertson, on the other hand, who lists his interests as ‘watching too much sport, playing a bit of indoor netball and squash, cooking, movies, listening to New Zealand music and reading New Zealand literature’, projects a youthful, energetic, upbeat  and thoroughly modern image. And he’s fiercely ambitious.

What else?  Oh yes, he’s gay. His life  partner, Alf, is a bus driver. The two were ‘married’ in a civil union ceremony in 2003.

So are we ready for a gay Prime Minister? I can only speak for myself. I find the idea invigorating. Other than prejudice, I can’t really think of any objection to it. And we Kiwis are for the most part an open-minded lot. After all, we had no trouble electing the world’s first transsexual MP.  And we didn’t seem to mind a mincing John Key.

It’s true that gay Prime Ministers are thin on the ground. Jóhanna Sigurðardóttir, elected Prime Minister of Iceland in 2009, was not only the country’s first woman Prime Minister but also Europe’s first openly gay head of state. She was followed in 2011 by Belgium’s Elio Di Rupo. When asked whether he was gay, the new Prime Minister replied, ‘Yes. So What?’ That strikes me as the only sensible answer to the question.

Yesterday the Sunday Star Times ran a puff piece on what David Shearer has to do to be relevant…and they asked a whole bunch of irrelevant people about it. Cactus Kate wasn’t impressed, particularly with Brian Edwards, the highlights are:

Ross Vintiner – a dead former Prime Minister’s Press Secretary. A dead former PM who was ousted after a classic case of style over substance.

Matt McCarten – when did he last vote Labour, let alone support them? An old-styled trade unionist, one of the three left living who will outlive all the others.

Mike Williams – boring, grumpy old man who made a fortune off Directorships in stooge arrangements with his mates in Labour.

Brian Edwards – who just the other week was saying he would vote Greens? Former trainer of some Labour leaders, not the current one. Now spends his time in the suburbs looking for luncheon sausage and tracking down other drivers in road rage incidents.

Deborah Pead – a PR “professional” who in this article pushes beauty products from her own bloody clients.

Ricardo Simich – advises Shearer on how to look better for his working class voters, through the eyes of a well-dressed well-mannered and suave single gay man who organises functions and events.

Her advice is ignore all the people above and do…nothing:

Under MMP David Shearer doesn’t actually win the next election, John Key has to lose it. The best thing David Shearer can do for the next 2 years and 8 months is absolutely nothing. I think he is smart enough to know that.

Don’t upset anyone, don’t announce any major policy planks, don’t take a position and don’t whatever you do, ever move Labour to the left or right. When you fuck up something, ignore it and continue, no one will notice when you are otherwise succeeding in doing absolutely nothing.

…

So when David Shearer comes across as a say nothing, do nothing Leader there is method in the madness. I say he is best to do absolutely frickin nothing and he is trying very hard to do that now. Other than nodding and agreeing with every expert here and within the Labour Party itself and then duly ignoring them.

ᔥ Brian Edwards blog

Brian Edwards has struck a dilemma…one I am sure is playing out throughout the remaining base of the Labour party:

I find myself wondering whether I want to be bothered with the Labour Party any more. Increasingly, it seems to me, the Greens reflect the philosophical and moral values to which I subscribe more accurately than the Labour Party whose philosophical and moral values are now so ill-defined as to be beyond definition.

I’m a socialist at heart and, whatever it is, New Zealand Labour is not a socialist party. It wasn’t just Rogernomics that scotched that idea; Tony Blair’s ‘third way’, a significant influence on the Fifth Labour Government, was really just a watered down version of Douglas’s ‘trickle-down’ economics. The ‘third way’ was, by definition, a ‘middle-way’, neither one thing nor the other and ill-suited to political idealism of any stripe – a Clayton’s political philosophy.

Oh dear it appears that Brian has had a crisis of confidence:

I’ve done reasonably well in life. I’m not rich but, at 74, I’m what you might call ‘reasonably comfortably off’. In the process, I’ve paid a hell of a lot of tax. And I don’t mind. I’m a firm believer in progressive taxation – ‘From each according to his ability, to each according to his needs,’ as Marx  so neatly put it. You can call that Communism or Socialism or pure Christianity.  It doesn’t really matter. What matters is the core principle that the strong should support the weak. So it’s good that Labour’s new leader is at least intent on keeping a Capital Gains Tax as Labour policy. The earnings of the rich should be taxed to support the poor.

But I’m not comfortable with Mr Shearer’s reported intention to move the party ‘to the centre’. It’s a misnomer for one thing. Labour is already in the centre. It has already lost its working-class constituency. Any move ‘to the centre’ will merely be, as the share-brokers say, ‘a technical correction’, not as extreme as in ‘84 but a move to the right nonetheless.

What Labour politics now seem to be about is finding ‘sellable’ policies and a ‘sellable’ leader in order to regain power. (For National read ‘retain power’.) What Green politics seem to be about is persuading people to come across to policies not obviously or immediately founded in self-interest, but in the long-term interests of all of us and (there’s no avoiding it) of the planet. No doubt they’d like to be in government too. But it doesn’t seem to be their primary motivation.

So I find myself wondering…

Oh I am sure Russel Norman is ecstatic with glee at the prospect of Brian’s pearls of socialist wisdom.

Brian Edwards has written about his thoughts on the “smart looking rapist” from Turangi:

I rarely find myself in agreement with Garth McVicar or his ‘Sensible Sentencing’ Trust. I’m a liberal in the area of law and order and not a great believer in the value of lengthy prison sentences. But on the issue of Judge Jocelyn Munro’s remark to the 16-year-old who attacked and raped a 5-year-old girl, that he ‘looked smart’ when he appeared before her in the Youth Court, I find myself in near-agreement with Mr McVicar. I wasn’t, as he declared himself, ‘disgusted’ by the judge’s remark, but I thought it displayed extraordinary lack of understanding or empathy towards the feelings of the little girl’s parents.

I hadn’t intended to deal with the issue on this site. The nation’s ‘outrage’ about the crime and the judge’s remark have been well canvassed in other forums. But the defences of the judge’s remarks by her colleagues in the law, published in the press this morning, struck me as so inadequate that I need to respond.

Manukau barrister Kate Leys informed us that, ‘There’s a statutory requirement upon the court to make sure the young person understands and participates in the proceedings’. I really can’t see the relevance of that to complimenting the rapist of a five-year-old girl on being neatly dressed.

Auckland barrister Maria Pecotic agreed with her Manukau colleague: ‘It is to encourage the young person to continue to take that care.’ That argument seems to me to suggest, ‘Well, he may have raped a 5-year-old girl, but at least he takes pride in his appearance.’ I come close to being ‘disgusted’ by that suggestion.

Youth advocate Megan Jenkins told us that a judge ‘might have seen the person three weeks earlier, and if there’s a difference, the judges will make comments on that.’  If I were the parent of a five-year-old girl, brutally assaulted and raped, would I find it appropriate for a judge to compliment the defendant on looking smarter at his second appearance than at his first? The question is rhetorical.

If Brian Edwards and Garth McVicar agree on something then it is something that should be noted with a bit more attention than a simple nod or a wink.

Criminal defence lawyer, the late Mike Bungay QC, with whom I co-authored a book on murder in New Zealand, not only instructed his clients (primarily murderers and rapists) on the importance of dressing well in court, but often drew a chalk mark on the dock for his clients to look down at while listening to the evidence against them. Their bowed heads were intended to convey shame and remorse.

I very much doubt that ‘looking smart’ was this defendant’s own idea. It will have been on his lawyer’s and his parents’ advice and they were right to give it. But it is a strategy to suggest that something has changed. It was intended, as the prayer was, to say, ‘I am not the same young man who raped a five-year-old girl a matter of weeks ago. Just look at me. You can see that I am someone else.’ No doubt without intending to, Judge Munro validated that impression by complimenting the 16-year-old defiler on his appearance.

Brian says it all so eloquently.

Judy Callingham is having a new year’s whinge. Yesterday she took an article about liberal elite foodstuffs (organic, free range, fairtrade, yadayadayada) and conflated that to a problem of the poor not bothering to feed their kids. Finishing off the entire post with another whinge demanding that someone do “something”.

Whenever Judy Callingham or Brian Edwards whinge about something it is usually because they think that someone else should pay or fix the problem. In this case she presents no solutions only demands for action….again which in their world of the Ponsonby liberal Elite usually means taxing someone.

However complaining about the price of organic, free-range, fair-trade, ethically grown food and the fact poor people can’t afford it  is that it is like complaining about housing affordability based on a survey of property prices in Paritai Drive. Next thing he will write a blog post about the horrific costs of transport for the poor based on the average price of cars on Coutts or Continental Cars lots. Worse, an epistle to the NZ Herald about the outrageous costs of public transport based on the fare for the Orient Express.

Judy Callingham is simply taking her Ponsonby liberal elite tainted world view and using it to tut-tutt the rest of us into a guilt trip. Well I’ll be having none of that.

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David Shearer has had a week to prepare for this big outing, announcing his new line up…. quick someone get Brian and Judy on the phone pronto, all is forgiven.

I mean, he bombs his new tag line for Labour inside 30 seconds. He was a shocker with notes and appalling without. No wonder Grant Robertson was smiling so much. I’ll give him 18 months then the knives will be out.

So David Shearer has supposedly won a mandate for big change with a few more than 18 votes.

What changes are planned?

Asked to name only two achievements during his time in Parliament – he could only name one – and it never happened.

And of course, this was rhetoric promoted by the same tired old guard that helped get him elected.

Sadly he couldn’t name the new guard and this is not a good start. The person he forgot is now out of parliament altogether.

Hopefully he’ll remember who is in his Caucus the next time he’s asked.

This will be the first of many jobs for John Pagani.. who’ll be taking over the media contract from Brian Edwards in quick time.