Posts by John Palethorpe
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Speaker: The Future, in reply to Graeme Edgeler,
I think that's the idea, that the Māori Party would partner with whoever is the majority party in a Government - beyond left and right, representing Māori. Uncertain if they can actually pull that off as a tactic though.
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Speaker: Data Love or: How I learnt to…, in reply to David Hood,
There's been some absolute shockers from the pollsters in the last 12 months. They completely failed to see the Conservative majority in the UK coming and they'd marked Hillary so far up it seemed like victory was inevitable.
There's not enough data to draw a grand conclusion, but there's some interesting hiccups in politics at the minute.
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Polity: Key Derangement Syndrome…, in reply to Matthew Hooton,
A sequence of unalloyed delight then.
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Polity: Key Derangement Syndrome…, in reply to Matthew Hooton,
That's Jo de Joux, partner of Phil de Joux - former Deputy Chief of Staff to the PM, isn't it?
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Polity: Key Derangement Syndrome…, in reply to Rich of Observationz,
I may add Tory troll to my CV. I've never been called one of those before.
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Polity: Key Derangement Syndrome…, in reply to Matthew Hooton,
Matthew, I'd agree with that to a certain extent. Key is a phenomenon and the National party certainly have the air of a group of people who only occasionally realise how lucky they are to have him up front for them.
On the communications and management side, it's true they foul up (more often as they get later into this term it seems) but they're also adept at moving the issue on when they need to, rather than getting mired in failures and defeats. That's not just a Key trait - watching a lot of their Ministers, even when on the back foot, retain a certain confidence and surety of footing - they're relatively disciplined when it comes to sticking to the bloody line when the bloody line is given to them.
There's no 'genius' comms department at work here, but my remark about being out thought, out manouevered and out messaged isn't to confer genius upon National's setup (they're relatively ordinary if well disciplined when it comes to presentation) but to highlight how absolutely sodding awful the Opposition's approach tends to be at times.
It's not hard to look good when your opponents are that bad.
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Polity: Key Derangement Syndrome…, in reply to Russell Brown,
I've needed to get that off my chest.
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So, reading the comments, it's people explaining how they're not obsessed with Key by detailing his past.
Sometimes I sigh at how much focus there is on his past, like those depressingly repetetive folk banging on about a statement to the SFO over twenty years ago as if they're Woodward and Bernstein - or how he was a banker and isn't to be trusted. Labour ran that one in 2008 and look how it turned out? Grant Robertson admitted that in an interview recently, they underestimated how good Key would be and how bad their attacks were. It's EIGHT YEARS LATER and that is still happening.
At times it seems like the post-Clark social democratic left has been so thoroughly out manouevered, out messaged and out thought by the National comms department that they cling to tiny fragments of meaningless information as though it reveals the true nature of Key, National etc, when the reality is very few people outside of these groups know or care.
And that's not a mainstream media conspiracy, it's just that there's nothing new there. And refighting the same old battles again and again without an actual enemy, because lord knows National and Key have moved on, means they end up another step ahead on whatever comes next. Instead of barracking Key with insults or committing all their energies to shouting at the public (like certain bloggers of note), who aren't listening anyway, thinking outside of the Key situation would benefit.
He's not going to last forever and National won't have another one like him ready. Eight years in no politician, no matter how good they are, can last too much longer in power. So, a few questions...
What does the political landscape look like with Judith, Simon or Paula at the helm of the National party, heading into the 2020 election?
Who'll be leading NZ First post-Winston (it's actually going to happen one day), and what happens if the soft National vote peels to NZF in 2017?
Will Labour manage to establish a clear, confident 'Government in waiting' platform by next year? If not, is it Jacinda time?
With the increasing prevalence of Green ideas in the mainstream, how do the Greens break the 11% boundary and where do those votes come from?
If 2017 sees the end of UF in Ohariu, how does that change the electoral maths?
What happens to the Maori party as a result of its impartial coalition presence?
What will David Seymour's role as Parliamentary clown do for the ACT vote if National's vote shifts?
All of these questions are key to the future of NZ politics and none of them involve Key, except in absentia. It's time to start thinking about the future, because it's where we're headed.
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Repeating someone's negative comment about you in full and then saying something negative about them seems like a bright, adventurous tactic for a better future.
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The curious hypocrisy of Key claiming, in the same sentence, that Labour voters were voting for political reasons which disappointed him because he knows lots of National voters would vote against a new flag.
So Labour voters who are against it are against it because of John Key, but National voters who are against it are against it for personal reasons, including liking the old flag and not liking the new flag.
Um. Yeah, nah.