Cam Slater: All At Sea For Labour

Peter Dunne writes at Newsroom about the problems facing Labour. They are plentiful but can be summed up into two main categories: nastiness and incompetence. Dunne starts with Chris Hipkins; after all, the buck is supposed to stop at the top.

Chris Trotter: The Hollow Party

Over the last year, the Labour Party has been shown to be intellectually and morally hollow.

Labour's great good fortune, as New Zealand emerged from the worst of the neoliberal revolution, was to possess Helen Clark. It was Clark who engineered the installation of Mike Moore to “save the furniture” as Labour’s popularity plummeted in 1990. And, it was Clark who made sure that, when Moore failed (albeit narrowly) to win the 1993 general election, she would be the one to replace him. Labour thus acquired a highly intelligent, politically savvy leader, steeped in the Labour tradition, but also fully acclimatised to the new ideological climate. She would remain Labour’s leader for the next 15 years – beating Harry Holland’s daunting tenure by one year!