Vernon Small

From Vernon Small:

Best thing about early shift is you go home, put your feet up and mull over what to do with that lazy $50K in your foreign bank a/c.

— Vernon Small (@VernonSmall) March 18, 2013

Cactus Kate joins in:   Read more »

via allthingslearning.files.wordpress.com

I’m not sure what Vernon Small was on when he started on this opinion piece, but it had to be pretty good.

Labour leader David Shearer could not have given a clearer signal that the party needs to lift its game in its traditional happy hunting grounds – jobs, health and education.

While health spokeswoman Maryan Street and education spokeswoman Nanaia Mahuta have not been booted out of the top 20, they have been shifted sideways into less critical areas in his long-awaited reshuffle.

In comes Chris Hipkins, who has been acting education spokesman for some time, and feisty veteran Annette King in health.

Feisty veteran Annette King?

But wait, he’s got more lipstick to go around.   Read more »

Vernon Small, who is not known for his right wing views calls the opening salvos of parliament for National:

Chalk up the first round of the political year to National.

Not just because John Key’s “state of the nation” speech delivered some actual news, in the shape of a revamped apprenticeship scheme (albeit using recycled money), against a rhetoric-heavy but news-lite offering from David Shearer.

More to the point National has grasped the early initiative by revamping the warrant of fitness regime and signalling an end to daily postal deliveries, two decisions that take another step into the 21st century.

The WOF decision will be popular, despite the self-interested protestations of the motor trade lobby.

Associate Transport Minister Simon Bridges was on the right side of the voters, and Labour risked getting on the wrong side by not giving its unequivocal backing.  Read more »

Eddie’s kite flying at The Standard appears to have failed. Eddie wrote that the whispers were that David Shearer was going to put his leadership to the membership regardless of caucus.

Vernon Small however has scotched that pipe dream with his tweet this morning:

Stand easy Labour. Shearer says he will put leadership to caucus vote not straight to full electoral college.

— Vernon Small (@VernonSmall) January 22, 2013

Shearer was never going to fall for the kite flying of the disaffected, and his advisors…to a man are all Robertson loyalists and that certainly wouldn’t have helped their cause.  Read more »

So according to Shearer – those asking questions about his leadership like Duncan Garner, John Armstrong, Andrea Vance, Vernon Small, Tapu Misa are “basically people who are sitting in front of their computers giving their opinions“.

Good luck with the head in the sand approach Dave. It is bad enough that Bryce Edwards managed to scratch up 33 links to blogs and media talking about Shearer’s doomed leadership but now with comments like that he has ensured another day or two of bad headlines in the lead up to the conference.

We must be just days away from a 10 minute video from TV3 of all the umms and ahhs and re-cuts of questions from Shearer.

You don’t slag off media like that and get away with it.

National supporters will be heaving a huge sigh of relief:

Leadership pressure obviously focuses the mind. Shearer nails it at caucus run for first time in months.

November 13, 2012 9:37 am via Twitter for iPhoneReplyRetweetFavorite

@VernonSmall

Vernon Small

David Shearer’s days are numbered. Two Fairfax journalists have started sounding the death knell.

Vernon Small considers that the coup attempt is imminent:

Just short of his first anniversary as leader, David Shearer delivers his first speech to a Labour Party conference next week.

But as storm clouds gather over his leadership, it is shaping as possibly his last.

Members, activists and unionists contacted for this article said over and over that the speech at the Ellerslie racecourse conference centre next Sunday was crucial to Shearer’s grip on the leadership.

His first priority is to convince the party rank and file that “he has what it takes” – and those grassroots members will be looking for a hard-hitting address taking the fight to the Government while outlining a clear and personal view of where he intends to take Labour

Unless he can carry that off, the groundswell in the party is set to break into the open with a push for a leadership challenge, most likely when the caucus meets in February – or even sooner, according to one business lobbyist in close contact with the party.

While no heir apparent has emerged – the same issue that kept his predecessor Phil Goff safe through Labour’s dark days from 2008 to 2011 – the party would look again at David Cunliffe, deputy Grant Robertson and potentially others if Shearer continued to disappoint.

There is a problem in Labour. The member activists want David Cunliffe as leader…while caucus hates David Cunliffe.

Andrea Vance contends time is running out too;

Here’s not what’s going to happen at Labour’s annual conference later this week. David Cunliffe is not going to rugby tackle David Shearer to the ground while Grant Robertson sits on his head, with Andrew Little shouting “bags be leader”.

Irritatingly, leadership spills don’t happen that way. If only.

Labour is especially good at the nasty, tortured coups – so if the party is going to roll Shearer, expect it to be beastly. But don’t anticipate blood on the floor of the Ellerslie Racecourse come next Sunday night.

It might not be Sunday night but it can’t be far off. My Labour sources tell me that a delegation visited Shearer last week…while Grant Robertson was conveniently offshore.

Unless Shearer can miraculously cure his stuttering then he is dog meat, stutters and repetition are deadly on the campaign trail where there are more impromptu standups than set pieces. Media tire very quickly of being asked to constantly retake interviews. It can’t be long before Duncan Garner puts together a little farewell present of Shearer at stand ups requesting retakes after he screwed up his statements…5 minutes of stuttering and flummoxed looks would fell him faster than Mallard’s knife.

ᔥ Stuff.co.nz

Vernon Small points out the obvious.

Perhaps the oddest element of the Budget is the first round allocation of over $500m from the proceeds of the planned asset sales through the so called Future Investment Fund.

Almost half – $250m – goes to KiwiRail. Not so much an investment in the future, as a way to pay for an underfunded loss-making liability from the past … paid for by the sale of a profitable stake in an energy company.

Please make Michael Cullen chair of Kiwirail. He was the dopey bastard who bought it, so he should have to run it.

ᔥ Stuff.co.nz

On the left of politics you know you are rooted when Vernon Small calls time on you. He doesn’t actually use the words but what he does is simply repeat all the comments on the slow and careful death of David Shearer’s leadership. Normally he would write about something else.

Labour leader David Shearer is under mounting pressure as some prominent Left-wing commentators say his leadership is doomed.

Party sources yesterday rubbished any talk of a leadership coup.

Deputy leader Grant Robertson has said there is not even a grain of truth in suggestions, run on political blogs, that he is positioning himself for a tilt at the top job.

That speculation was fuelled by the appointment of Wellington-based lawyer Alastair Cameron as chief of staff in Mr Shearer’s office.

But speculation is widespread in the party that a change of approach is needed if Mr Shearer is to lift his profile and cash in on the Government’s problems as Finance Minister Bill English struggles to get the books back into the black.

Left-leaning commentator Chris Trotter wrote in yesterday’s Dominion Post that he had been wrong to back Mr Shearer. “Let’s face it, he ain’t anybody’s kind of leader.”

Unlike former prime minister David Lange, Mr Shearer could “barely string 10 words together”.

“It’s time for the Labour caucus to put an end to `the unfortunate experiment’ and begin a new one,” he said,

Labour and the leftwing lap-bloggers thought there was a civil war on inside National. There wasn’t because if there was I’d have been right in the middle of it spilling blood and guts all over the place.

However it is becoming clearer and clearer that there is a factional war going on inside Labour.

They are leaking like a sieve with reports of arguments, dummy spitting, and factional number counting.

Grant Robertson has been in charge of the hiring for the Leader’s Office and has largely finished his job in filling the office with loyal adherents to himself. He was even heard to boast to staffers the day after he was made Deputy Leader that everything was brilliant…”Shearer is going to stuff it up…and I will be the next leader and Prime Minister”.

The last piece of the puzzle appears to be falling into place with Stuart Nash’s expected replacement to be Alistair Cameron, a Robertson loyalist.

That has got open discussion happening now on Labour supporting blogs that Shearer’s time is up. The word from various Labour spies is they have taken to calling the Shearer leadership “The Unfortunate Experiment“. This is a particularly nasty epitet to give David Shearer but sadly that is modern Labour…nasty to the core. David Shearer unfortunately didn’t fit that mold.

Veteran Labour party watcher and somewhat of a fan-boi, Vernon Small has noticed:

Consensus, he said, was his first instinct.

It is a style Mr Shearer is making his brand; a reasonable man talking in a measured tone that rejects the politics of charisma.

To the political media present – and in a warning to Labour, only three reporters made the short hop from Wellington – it was about as dull as a leader’s speech can get.

With the Government on the ropes over issues from the pokies deal with SkyCity to Crafar farm sales and asset sales, the soft-shoe approach is not without its critics.

There is no crisis yet, but there has been some internal arm-wrestling.

Small repeats the gossip fo the nasties suggesting that Nash and Fran Mold clashed over strategy…this adds to the leaking of his leaving suggesting that all is not well as the factions start eyeing each other up across the political corpse of David Shearer.

It is notable too that the lap-bloggers at The Standard are now openly talking of the ending of “The Unfortunate Experiment“:

My suspicion is that within the very near future, maybe after another flat poll, someone close to Shearer, perhaps Trevor, will have a hard conversation with him that goes something like “you’ve done your best mate but it’s just not worked” and I think that Shearer will step down because he’s the kind of guy that would step down if he believed it was the best thing to do.

This is insider code for if you don;t go soon Shearer, Trev will be sent to plunge the knife in.

It is clear that the strategy from Mallard and others was to push Shearer forward on silly issues so that he was able to be easily blamed when the polls failed to turn.Meanwhile to hide the internal ructions in labour Trevor Mallard manufactured an alleged crisis within national that simply didn’t exist which a compliant media dutifully ran with. It is telling that the ones pushing the story the hardest are also the one seen int he company of Trevor Mallard more often than not.

Unfortunately the end of Shearer’s time as leader is no longer an ‘if’ question, rather it has become a ‘when’ question. I’d suggest it will be fore Labour Weekend now.