Posts by Keir Leslie
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Speaker: An Open Letter To David Cunliffe, in reply to Craig Ranapia,
He's also one of Cunliffe's key lieutenants. There's no way he'd be saying that if DC wasn't giving him at least tacit approval, especially given the "community leader" story that appeared that morning. I don't think that's good enough for the Labour Party.
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If you’re angry that Labour is doing this process in a rushed way without time for a proper review and good data, get angry at David Cunliffe. This is what he wanted, from election night onward.
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Two things: one, no one's claiming Phil Goff was the greatest leader of all time. He wasn't actively despised though: everyone knew he was taking one for the team.
Two, Cunliffe campaigned on getting the "missing million" out to vote. The ENV strategy, all that stuff. They conspicuously failed to show up. It's pretty important to bring that out.
As far as Grant's sexuality goes, he doesn't want to make an issue of it, but there seem to be a lot of pretty gross insinuations coming from Cunliffe's camp. Su'a William Sio's line about personal lives was particularly horrible, I thought.
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The thing is, we did pretty well. We did all the right things we were meant to do: got out in the community, talked to Labour voters who maybe hadn't heard from the party in a long time, all that good stuff.
But as you point out, we still went backwards on the party vote in Ilam. We did well, but we didn't do that well: because no matter how great a campaign you run, no matter how hard you try, when you're on 24% nationwide, it's always going to be an uphill struggle.
Similarly in Christchurch Central, where Tony Milne ran an amazing campaign. Fundamentally, when only one in four voters will back you, no matter how well you do comparatively, you'll still be looking at a pretty depressing result.
PS. there were no boundary changes for Ilam.
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Speaker: An Open Letter To David Cunliffe, in reply to Jenny Kirk,
"traitorous leakers"
No offence, but that's absolutely outrageous and inflammatory.
Also: James Dann worked his arse off on this campaign: no hope of winning Ilam, no cushy list spot. I'm biased, because I was out there in Bishopdale on midwinter Saturdays knocking on doors with him. It wasn't arrogant, it was the kind of MMP campaigning that Labour needs. And it worked: Ilam did pretty well in what was a tough year for us. And this isn't arrogant either, it's the kind of honesty and directness that Labour needs.
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followed by various ABC MPs campaigning solely for the Candidate Vote.
This is complete nonsense. Which MPs didn’t campaign for the party vote*? I know Ruth Dyson did. I know that Megan Woods did. I know that James Dann did (because I helped with the messaging and targets). I know Grant Robertson did, and if you’re saying Paul Eagle threw a game as Annette King’s campaign manager I doubt you’ve met the guy. Phil Goff was apparently hiding Party Vote hoardings, but given that Michael Wood was running the Mt Albert hoarding operation, I don’t really see that as a particularly plausible story.
This line, when coming from Cunliffe, is just a very unpleasant attempt to throw blame onto a group of volunteers and MPs who worked hard for a Labour win in 2014, and it’s really annoying.
* apart from Clayton, who I see Stephen Judd has already pointed out above.
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Speaker: An Open Letter To David Cunliffe, in reply to Andrew Jones,
I don't think that was an option here, which does annoy me - I would have preferred more time to think and reflect.
Cunliffe made it very clear he wanted to do this as quickly as possible. He sent out an email on election night announcing his re-election bid, and saying he wanted it done by the new year. Many other MPs and members said they'd prefer more time, but DC has always been trying to move this as quickly as possible, before the review was done.
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I wish we had more time. But it was David Cunliffe who didn't want to wait, who wanted to rush through this process as quickly as possible.
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This is really blunt and honest, and it's brave. I think it is a valuable contribution to the discussion, and I hope people consider it carefully.
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Toby is a New Zealander, but he spent some time working in the UK --- I remember him talking about his experiences at the Guardian for a Great Blend event, I think.