Bruce Cotterill: When ideas are lacking and credibility goes - Labour Party problems

In business, it’s the equivalent of being shifted sideways. It’s always a difficult thing to have happen to you.

But political life is cruel. Very cruel. When you lose, you don’t go sideways, you go downways.

Graham Adams: Labour’s disarray is music to National’s ears

Political punditry is always fraught with the risk of being quickly undone by events. You have to feel for NZ Herald senior writer Simon Wilson who, in the first of the newspaper’s election year debates on May 1, emphatically asserted — twice — that Labour was “united”. He scoffed at Barry Soper’s comment that there were similarities between Hipkins’ government and the last year of the Lange-Douglas government when it was “falling apart”. “That’s just nonsense!” Wilson said.

When Soper pointed out that Labour had “just lost a Prime Minister”, Wilson replied: “They’re stronger than ever before!”