Phil Goff

UK Labour seems to be channeling Phil Goff‘s failed campaign and reign and Labour leader. While there is the constant speculation over the leadership of Ed Miliband there is also the inept leadership considering following in Phil Goff’s campaign footsteps:

A new ritual has been initiated in the bars of Westminster. Whenever a Tory and a Liberal Democrat meet for a drink, they start by saying what is now called “the Coalition prayer”. Closing their eyes and clutching their glasses, they say in unison: “Lord, protect and keep Ed Miliband – as leader of the Labour Party.” It is uttered in all seriousness, even by atheists. The Opposition ought to be miles ahead in the opinion polls, punishing the Government for its failure to grow the economy; instead, it is divided and disorientated, its residual strengths eclipsed by the near-comic shortcomings of a wonkish leader. His enemies just can’t believe their luck.

Even if they do change the leader it appears that they will channel our Labour party:

At the next election, Labour will be able to ask the Ronald Reagan question: are you better off than you were five years ago? The answer for most Brits may well be “no”, and this ought to be devastating for the Government. It would take a monumentally inept Labour leader not to capitalise on this. And this is why the “Coalition prayer” is being offered in Westminster bars: because Labour has found just the chap. Without him, the party would have all to play for.

Chris Trotter in a DomPost opinion piece has called out David Shearer and Labour for their hypocrisy and racism over the Crafar Farms deals:

It was all the more perplexing, then, to hear Opposition leader David Shearer declaring his and the Labour Party’s opposition to the sale. It’s simply inconceivable that Mr Shearer is unaware of the MFN prohibition against denying China the same right to buy land as the nations that bought upwards of 650,000 hectares of our national patrimony exercised when Helen Clark was Prime Minister, and Mr Shearer’s friend (and former boss) Phil Goff was the Minister of Trade.

To avoid the inevitable charges of rank hypocrisy and populist opportunism, Mr Shearer needed to accompany his statement opposing the sale with an announcement that Labour was committed, immediately on regaining office, to repudiating the New Zealand-China FTA and tightening up the legislation regulating overseas investment.

I’m still waiting for those other shoes to drop. And, frankly, I think I’ll go on waiting. Why? Because I simply don’t believe Labour is about to abandon its long-standing commitment to free trade. Nor am I confident Mr Shearer is any more willing to court the fury and retaliatory trade restrictions of the Chinese government than Mr Key. Both are well aware that this country’s future prosperity is inextricably bound up with China’s.

If foreign ownership of our land was something successive governments wished to restrict, they should have legislated against it before they embraced the doctrine of free trade.

 

The Crafar Farms sale decision has thrown up some very strange politics.

There was Winston Peters supporting Michael Fay, which is utterly strange in itself. But nothing could be stranger than seeing Labour pursuing the prospect of being sued by China - over an FTA signed by Phil Goff…

Labour says its opposition to the sale of the Crafar farms to a Chinese company is not racist.

Labour leader David Shearer claimed yesterday that Prime Minister John Key and Land Information Maurice Williamson have accused the party of being racist.

“I have been called much worse,” Mr Shearer said.

What concerned him was that by implication, National was labelling every New Zealand opposed to the sale as anti-Chinese and possibly racist when what they opposed was “the sale of profitable New Zealand-owned assets to foreign interests.”

Predictably assorted crazies, including Jane Kelsey have waded into the dispute. Despite being a raving lefty who opposes all FTAs and the fact that she tries very hard to stick it to the Government the bottom line is that Phil Goff’s FTA with China pretty much guaranteed that Maurice Williamson and Jonathan Coleman were always going to approve a bid that fully complied with the law, rather than react to knee-jerk xenophobia from politicians desperate for traction.

Ed Miliband really should give Phil Goff a call to ask how his latest plan for opposing welfare cuts is going to pan out:

Labour’s policy is to back the cuts. But its story is the cuts are “too far and too far fast”. Labour’s policy is to cut the deficit. But its story is deficit reduction is creating a “jilted generation”. Labour’s policy is to cap benefits. But its story is that a cap on benefits is “indecent”.

Ed Miliband is facing some tough questions on how his party has got itself into such a mess on welfare. If he wants to answer them he’s going to need to get his story straight.

One of the legacies of Phil Goff is that some of his staff in what was formerly known as the Goffice are being axed. I blogged that this would be one of the consequences and now it is starting to bite. Labour only have Phil Goff to thanks for their suffering. I hope he gives each staff member who got given the cardboard box a nice hug for solidarity…except Clinton Smith.

As they file out they can say “Thanks Phil”:

Labour is slashing its parliamentary staff numbers, after its poor election result sliced an estimated $700,000 off its funding.

As part of the cost-cutting the number of press secretaries working for the 34 MPs has been cut from five to three; one fewer than the press team that works exclusively for Prime Minister John Key.

There will also be likely job losses in other areas, but these are yet to be finalised, as Labour looks for savings to cover what is understood to be a 20 per cent fall in funding from $3.5m before the election to about $2.8m now.

Chief press secretary Fran Mold will take on a broader role as head of media and communications, including correspondence.

She said leader David Shearer, who is well-known for hating long meetings, would instigate other changes too, including limiting caucus meetings to 90 minutes.

MPs would also be seated differently changing from the current rows of seats to a roundtable format and cellphones and laptops would be left outside in an effort to keep the meetings shorter and more businesslike.

Trevor Mallard is going to choke at not being able to tweet up a storm instead of listening to boring old caucus meetings.

David Shearer has graced us with his presence after a holiday surfing and staying off line and out of touch. Nothing shows just how out of touch he is than the first news article showing him racing to Christchurch to cover a story that is weeks old. Like Phil Goff he is more interested in disaster porn than saving his ailing party.

Or is he just out of touch in his quaint way of appearing out of touch.

It also shows the folly of keeping new Chief of Staff, Stuart Nash, on gardening leave till February while Trevor Mallard sits in the office pulling the strings. While Stuart Nash has been busy with his newborn, Trevor Mallard, the old soldier is giving birth of his own to new plans…..he wouldn’t go on holiday, so fearful he is of losing the mechanisms of control within the party. Word has it that his lights have been burning bright in the parliamentary precinct during the break.

One thing for sure though is that the party is getting antsy. We have seen the hard left Labour local board members come out in support of the wharfies. Chris Trotter, ever the loyal servant of the party has expressed his disappointment through an open letter to Shearer and Denis Welch is openly disdainful of the “New ” Labour party lead by David Shearer.

Wise head John Pagani thinks, like David Farrar, that Labour should stay silent, but in doing so they are ceding the moral high ground on the issue to the Greens. They aren’t afraid to comment and are increasingly being seen as the go to guys for comment in the media. They are big fans of coastal shipping. Their credentials are much stronger than Labour’s which right now doesn’t even include platitudes for their long suffering funders.

Enter Helen Kelly, long time friend of hard core unionists like Trevor Mallard and Darien Fenton. Mallard has been furiously re-tweeting her assistance for MUNZ.

If the CTU can change Shearer’s mind it will prove once and for all that Labour is STILL in the pockets of their funders – the Unions…and Labour is no different than the one that polled its lowest in 80 years in November. Labour would have learned nothing from its electoral defeat.

David Shearer has to do something. It is clear that Labour hasn’t focus grouped this, otherwise we would have had some sort of pronouncement from the spokespeople concerned. So the old warhorses like Mallard have been quietly txting Shearer to stay tight and at the same time keeping a muzzle on Fenton because she is feral and can’t help herself saying something nasty.

Is it a slight on the confidence in Darien Fenton that she has been muzzled by the men from becoming the fourth woman on the wharf?

However in doing so Shearer now stands charged with becoming the puppet, albeit a silent puppet of Trevor Mallard. You have to wonder why he didn’t put his name forward for the leadership.

It might be his first week back but David Shearer can’t sit tight any longer. The test of his leadership will be the day of the strike. If Fenton shows up and says or does anything to show support for the striking unionists then it shows his control over the party caucus is tenuous. Shearer will have to act to exert caucus discipline otherwise he will be a lame duck leader, the puppet of Mallard.

Time and pressure will tell…sometimes it makes diamonds but most times dirty coal.

Ed Miliband continues to channel failed Labour leader Phil Goff:

Ed Miliband insisted last night that he had “the stomach for the fight” and would lead Labour into the next election.

But he warned that unaffordable policies would have to be dropped, after he and shadow Chancellor Ed Balls abandoned their opposition to the public-sector pay freeze and refused to reverse cuts being pushed through by the Coalition

A poll published at the weekend found that just one in five Labour voters thought he would think he would make a good prime minister. However the Labour leader pledged to lead the party into the next general election, which is expected to be held in 2015.

He told over 150 Labour MPs and peers at a meeting in the Commons: “These are the hard yards of opposition. We are in a war of attrition, someone was saying to me the other day. Keep plugging away. We are winning the battle of ideas.

“Opposition don’t just win because they have the right values. They win because they have the stomach for the fight. I know I have the stomach for the right, and I know have stomach for the fight. I have confidence that we will win the next general election.”

Wonder how that’s going to work out for pommy Labour…that plan didn’t work so well for Phil Goff.

Behold – 28 loons challenge MUNZ for King Idiot status.

Well well well, three holes in the ground, what do we have here by a press release co-signed by 28 left wing local board loons of Auckland.

Just when we thought that MUNZ had a monopoly on self-immolating stupidity, the Auckland political left rises up to challenge for King Idiot status.

“In an unprecedented move, 28 Auckland Local Board members from 10 different Boards are uniting to call for Ports of Auckland to return to good faith bargaining and drop plans to outsource jobs at the port.”

The idiots are:

Shale Chambers (Goff mate)
Michael Woods (Goff mate and penis lolly defeatist)
Denise Roche (now a Green MP, hopelessly conflicted in her political hat wearing, shouldn’t she have resigned – November 27 was 7 weeks ago?)
Pippa Cooms (Greenie cyclist action fruit)
Leila Boyle (ex Labour candidate)
Greg Presland (taking the Mickey out of politics as per usual)
Josephine Bartley (ex Labour candidate)
Grant Gillon (ex Alliance MP)
Grame Easte (the left wing Gnome of Mt Albert)

So then, a number of questions for the media to consider:

1. Have the 28 local board loons run out of local issues to consider, and must know apply their considerable business skills to solving the Ports crisis?
2. Did Len Brown know about his army of 28 loons launching into the Ports of Auckland in advance? if yes, did he try and counsel them against stickybeaking? If no, does that mean that Len has been marginalised by his comrades?
3. Does Len Brown approve of the stance of the 28, or does he continue to “back both sides”?
4. If Len disagrees with the 28, will he tell them to shut up and get back to local issues instead of stickybeaking into a council CCO that is tasked by the Mayor and Council to get on with their work?
5. If he won’t condemn them for stickybeaking, does that then mean this is now an official matter to discuss at future council meetings?
6. Is that presser a sign that Labour and the Greens are testing the waters for a plunge into the Ports crisis?
7. Is this just Michael Wood jockeying for position to take over from Phil Goff in Mt Roskill

I wonder what answers might come back after a bit of digging?

Gosh, aren’t we lucky that the Maritime Union didn’t strike during the Rugby World Cup. They could have also easily started striking before the November 27 election, and got a lot of publicity. Either of these two timeframes could have caused significant strife.

MUNZ and POAL started negotiating in early September.

Yet, MUNZ could have easily have had strikes during October and November, indeed even late September, when they realised that POAL wanted casualisation.

Yet they didn’t start striking until December 1. (They announced their first strike on November 18)

So, random impertinent time:

Who asked the Maritime Union to hold off striking until December 1?

Why was this date chosen when RWC and the election would have been perfect moments to apply pressure?

Was it Len Brown who told them to back off, who didn’t need another crisis during the Rugby World Cup after his rail failures?

Was it Phil Goff and the Labour Party, who didn’t want bully boy antics from a union costing them votes?

I think we should be told, do you?

At first it was Phil Goff that was following the lead of Ed Miliband, but now it is Ed who is following Phil, using the same lines and excuses:

Ed Miliband, the Labour leader, has rejected claims that he might be “handicapped” by his appearance, insisting he is the right man to lead Labour to success at the next general election.

Mr Miliband has faced growing criticism over his leadership in recent weeks, with a series of senior party figures expressing concern that he is failing to connect with voters.

But the Labour leader dismissed the attacks as “noises off” and declared that he had a “very strong inner belief” that he would steer the party back to power.

His comments came as recent poll results put his personal ratings below those of both David Cameron and Nick Clegg.

Even his brother, David Miliband, whom he defeated in the 2010 Labour leadership contest, has complained that “everyone” in the party feels “very frustrated” at the moment.

Labour MPs are growing increasingly anxious about Mr Miliband’s poor performances in the House of Commons.

I wonder if Ed has thought about dying his hair?