Posts by Keir Leslie
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I guess the thing is that part of the democratisation of the party is democratisation of the strategic functions. So no, there's not one person you can point at and say: they are responsible for strategy. The parliamentary leadership are responsible for a certain amount of it. NZ Council for a certain amount of it. Policy Council for a certain amount of it. No one actor is in charge.
(My comment about gossip relates more to day-to-day tactics.)
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Strategy and policy are closely related here --- one reason hard to talk about who's responsible for the strategy. For instance I assume King worked with Shearer closely on the housing policy announced at the weekend, as housing spokesperson. To what extent does that conversation become strategic?
No worries about the edit, just didn't know if my post made sense as a reply to the edited version!
[Edit: what do you mean by strategy?]
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I think that’s a kinda unanswerable question. In terms of short-run political tactics, there’s a bunch of gossip about who’s behind what initiative and who wrote what and all that, but really it’s a bit meaningless.
(By the way, the other reason I think attacking PPP and standards and all that is kinda dumb is that in the long run, I want a party that articulates a positive vision for NZ, not just `the opposite of whatever Key said!’ The thing that pissed me off the most about conference, more than anything else, was the amount of time we wasted talking about the National Party.)
[post above changed as I was replying]
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Why are Labour not arguing over arcane financial instruments, instead preferring to pick a fight on the topic of housing affordability? Buggered if I know.
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There are Young Labour members coming through, but they mostly have very little understanding of issues outside of minority rights, the environment and whatever the MPs are saying in Parliament.
This is not really true, and quite patronising.
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Rugby is way more niche than cricket.
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Hard News: The Watching World, in reply to Graeme Edgeler,
You are right! I just had it filed as an equal protection clause case, but I didn't remember the weird Florida stuff that went on over the top of that.
(But for people purely interested in who gets to make decisions about how us elections work, Bush v Gore does illustrate there's a play between Federal and State level actors.)
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US elections (federal and state) are governed partly by federal law ( Bush v Gore , obviously), and partly by state law. Where it's a federal issue, states often have choices about how they implement the federal law.
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Cf Italy obvs. Also, for reals, how is that different from the Act Party at the moment?
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Dunne, of course, didn't defect under MMP.
ACT is parasitic on National at this point; it wasn't always, but the debilitating effect of reliance on the one seat threshold, and National's largesse in handing it a seat did it in.