Posts by Russell Brown
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Hard News: To be expected, in reply to bmk,
My first thoughts on hearing about it this morning. Is Labour are clearly thinking they can redo 2005; go into coalition with NZF and negotiate abstention from the Greens for a few tokens.
What their mistake is is that the Greens will make up a much bigger portion of the parliament than they did in 2005.
I do honestly think they know that. And that their hope is to be negotiating a coalition with the Greens after the election.
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Hard News: To be expected, in reply to Sofie Bribiesca,
Sounds like they already did say that.
Also:
"I'm the leader of the Labour Party and my job is to maximize the Labour Party vote," he said ...
But Labour would quite possibly be working with other parties as well "and whatever the coalition arrangements are, they need to be able to spread across more than two parties."
This seems clear and reasonable to me.
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Hard News: To be expected, in reply to Moz,
From which I gather you’re counting any criticism of Labour as an attack, or you’re reading with a bias where attacks shine through in a way that other comments don’t.
Nah, I'm not, but "corrupt", "spineless", "lost at sea", "flailing", "owned by the unions" et al did seem unhelpful to me.
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Hard News: The perilous birth of the…, in reply to debunk,
Just do some reading – and not just the bits of articles that reinforce your existing prejudices.
That's a bit rich.
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Meanwhile, one-man clusterfuck by David Parker on exactly who made the decision. Jesus. Just say it.
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Hard News: To be expected, in reply to Moz,
Russel, it seems you have picked the worst of the few comments that attack Labour and highlighted it. Which is interesting given your normal position on media angles. Especially since we’re talking about Facebook here, where the standard of comment is often dismal.
Oh, come on. There are about a dozen attacks on Labour in a not-very-long thread, and a couple talking about strategic voting. It's not really a big deal -- it's just Facebook, as you say, and not necessarily party members as George notes. But I'm not exactly cherry-picking.
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Hard News: To be expected, in reply to Danyl Mclauchlan,
That falls apart when Shane Jones starts attacking the Greens on such a routine basis that it becomes obvious that its a strategy, with the Greens constrained from critiquing Labour back because that would trigger ‘bitterly divided’ stories.
Good conspiracy theory, but isn’t it vastly more likely that Jones is simply pleasing himself in the knowledge that any public censure would be politically out of bounds for Cunliffe?
Do Jones' florid outbursts usually seem the result of a considered strategy to you?
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Hard News: To be expected, in reply to Stephen R,
And listening to Russel Norman this morning on National Radio, he didn’t appear to me to be being precious. I thought that Guyon was trying to get him to play that card, but it just didn’t happen (which seemed to throw Guyon off, perhaps because he didn’t have any cue cards for what to do when Russel didn’t bite.).
I think he's handled it quite well.
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Hard News: To be expected, in reply to Keir Leslie,
I just don’t think this deal would have helped Labour. I think the notion that Labour needs to desperately ensure every poll is reported as close, and to do must be willing to throw away independence of action post election, and political distinctiveness, is very questionable, especially given most polls are reported as “left bloc/right bloc” already.
Basically, this deal is being sold as a way to get a better narrative. But there’s a bunch of really negative narratives I can come up with, right now, that would hurt Labour in the centre, where it does need to be picking up voters.
I can see the arguments both ways, but as I said in the OP, I'm not remotely surprised that Labour didn't go for the pitch.
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Russel Norman’s summing-up on Facebook:
Green Party political positioning is set by the branch delegates at the AGM in June. But it’s highly likely that we will do something similar to last election with a strong preference to work towards a Green Labour government. So we thought it would be useful to have discussions with Labour about how we could present what a new government would look like and we presented a proposal to them about how we might do that. Unfortunately they disagreed with that proposal, as is their right as a separate party. But I think it’s the wrong decision. I think the electorate want to see what a new government would look like and, in any case, Key will lump Green and Labour together anyway so we might as well frame it in the way we want it framed rather than just let Key do all the framing. Anyhow, we can get a new government on Sept 20, but it will depend on the strength of the Green vote. The Greens are united, we have a great team, we have a clear plan and we have a positive vision of a smarter greener economy, a more compassionate society, and loving and protecting our natural environment. I was asked today on Morning Report if Labour is simply preparing to do a 2005 all over again (where they went with NZ First and United Future and cut the Greens out) and my answer is that in 2005 we got 5.3% of the vote, this time we are aiming for 15% and at 15% of the vote they won’t be able to cut us out.
Link here. Trigger warning for massive fits of pique from Russel’s Facebook followers (Labour is “corrupt and self-serving” etc). The volume of bile being spat at Labour for differing on the issue seems unhelpful.