Hard News: Metiria's Problem
333 Responses
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izogi, in reply to
Is there evidence that she has/had an underlying allegiance to NZ First whilst working for the Greens? That was 15+ years ago, after all. The political landscape was very different in the 90s, including for the Greens and NZ First. Sometimes people just change their minds about things, and sometimes parties and the people in them change, too.
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I wouldn’t have believed it possible, but Jane Bowron has lost even more credibility with today’s hatchet job on the Greens ( Dominion Post 28/8/2017, p7, “All bets are off as agreement tossed aside” — online title “Greens agreement turns out to be worthless”). This time out her groundless flights of fancy are:
(i) Greens fielding a candidate in Ohariu to chase the party vote represents an end to the memorandum of understanding between Greens and Labour. Actually, it does nothing of the sort: the Greens are explicitly not chasing the electorate vote, and Ohariu voters have had more practice than most in tactical splitting of party and electorate votes, and are unlikely to be confused.
(ii) Greens could instead form a coalition with National.
Yeah, right. Where does Bowron get off peddling this nonsense? -
Joe Wylie, in reply to
I wouldn’t have believed it possible, but Jane Bowron has lost even more credibility...
Bowron had pretty much left the room by the end of her Christchurch sojourn. After a promising start as a fresh voice in the fraught world of post-quake recovery she sadly deteriorated into a vapid middle-class-busybody-on-a-bike persona, tut-tutting over the "untidiness" of the poor old book fridge, of all bloody things.
Despite being an apparent generation or so younger than the bizarrely fossilised Rosemary McLeod, these days Bowron appears hell bent on slipping into a similar curmudgeonly irrelevance.
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Updating the earlier discussion on the party lists, according to RNZ Checkpoint, Shane Jones is ranked no. 9 for NZ First. He'll miss out if they only get around 7%.
So now we have every incentive to vote for the Lab-Nat-Green-Maori Popular Front.
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linger, in reply to
More seriously, we really are voting for possible coalitions rather than for single parties this time. Contra MSM messaging that a Green vote could be "wasted", I would argue that if you want to have a Labour-Green coalition government, then that is more likely to happen if you vote Green than if you vote Labour. Similarly, if you want to have a Labour-Green-Maori coalition, then that is more likely if you vote Maori (since that partnership would work better if Marama Fox is brought in from the list).
Meanwhile, Winston's refusal to commit leaves voters unable to vote directly for a National-NZF or Labour-NZF coalition should they want either of those options. To the extent that Winston has a track record, it's supporting the single largest party, so those who do want such an outcome are safer voting for National or for Labour, respectively. -
Carol Stewart, in reply to
I agree. I'm not quite sure why Labour don't consider doing an Epsom type deal with the Greens in one of their electorate seats. It would benefit the Greens, and Labour, much more than the Epsom deal benefits the National Party.
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izogi, in reply to
It must be a significant risk that voters won't like that, though.
All those likely Labour voters could elect a Green candidate if they chose to do so anyway, so they'll not necessarily be happy if Labour forced them to do that when they'd already decided they didn't want to.
Probably a few people in Labour would be happy to see the back of the Greens, even if it meant losing this election. Their presence has really complicated Labour's identity and campaigning for a long time, even if it's arguably been Labour's fault.
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Moz, in reply to
people in Labour would be happy to see the back of the Greens, even if it meant losing this election
I thought that's what Labour had been doing for the last few elections? Deciding that their internal politics are more important than anything else pretty much sums them up.
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