Elections 2017: The temptation of James Shaw

When the Devil had finished all his tempting, he left him until an opportune time – Luke 4:13

It’s been interesting over the last week to watch the mainstream political media in NZ twist desperately as they try and fill their daily news quota because Winston is simply stalling for time and there is almost nothing else to discuss in politics until parliament starts up.

Thus it’s been right royally entertaining and somewhat depressing to see the slew of articles coming out discussing James Shaw taking the Greens over to National.

Now to be fair it’s a prospect I have also raised in the past but the difference is my portrayal of the situation (which I shall elaborate on a bit below) was always based on the impulse of Shaw himself and not via any conscious decision by the party, its vote base or some sort of policy pragmatism.

No, what’s being hailed here is something very very different. What is being set up here is the pre-greasing of the public to accept a Green/National government, via a strangely compliant media, based on the rational (and dare I say public choice) idea that who cares about principles or where you are on the political spectrum just think about the what you will get if you do!

Normally dependable reporters like Stacey Kirk and Tracy Watkins on Stuff have been busy shoveling the kind of half-baked analysis that is more at the level of my standard stream of consciousness rot than their usual astute analysis and reportage.

Elsewhere Isaac Davidson over at the NZ Herald has not been immune to “going with the flow” and turning out something that is similar to his counterparts over at Stuff.

Meanwhile leave it to Martyn Bradbury over at the DailyBlog to get to the point (also here) and explain why a Green/National coalition would be a toxic result for Greens.

Because what would happen if James Shaw, and I mean James Shaw, not the party, took the Greens over to the other side would be for all intents and purposes and the end of the Greens.

It would be the birth of the very short lived James Shaw party which would live and die in exactly the same fashion as the Maori Party did when it cozied up to National and then got obliterated at the polls for essentially betraying its core vote base.

Because what Shaw would be attempting to do is pole vault the Greens over two other parties on the political spectrum (Labour and NZ First) to place it next to National, as long term coalition partner or just for some casual confidence and supply (the political equivalent of friends with benefits (or should that be benefits?), at the expense of any solid understanding of how democracy works.

Shaw, like Winston in my last post, is not free to buy and sell, horse trade or even prostitute his vote share to any and all parties that come a courting, despite what the media is trying to say. It not only betrays the democratic mechanic and spirit, its also just plain stupid.

And the alarm bells that should be ringing in Shaws brain right now do not stop there as the only actor in recent NZ political history I can think off of that managed to pull off that trick is Richard Prebble when he went from Labour to ACT, and we all know how that turned out.

Prebble, the golem of the Treasury Trokia from the mid-1980s, who, along with Roger Douglas and David Caygill* had their names etched forever in infamy as men who poisoned the well in NZ left-wing politics and set NZ on the unwholesome path it is treading today is not a good example of how to manage your party, its brand or its future.

What Prebble is a good example of, is one individual selling out his constituents and party (Labour Leaning Auckland Central in the 70s and 80s) for his own personal gain and in doing so being remembered only as scumbag political hack who once lead ACT.

And Shaw could have all of that if he takes the bait and goes to National.

Sure it makes all the policy sense in the world, when Stacey Kirk phrases it along pure policy lines, but it would be a very personal and very short term gain for James Shaw; and those lucky few high enough on the party list to get into parliament, who get a few years to play in politics while the Green brand goes from skating just above the 5% threshold to the same level as the Maori Party today (essentially 0%).

But given how bastardized the Green party is at this time, with its skew towards social justice more than the environment and their feet suddenly feeling the chill after having come down from the lofty heights of Mt Morality it is a possibility that could happen but what the media is not making clear is what happens to little green fish that swim with the big Blue Shark.

Sure the Greens were kept in a rather limited bowl by Labour but they were never threatened with annihilation (just subservience), as they would be for sucking on the teats of National.

So while we can blame the dictates of Winston Peters (and his refusal to ever work with the Greens) for being the primer for nudging Shaw along this path, that is the only rationality which would justify such a move and, as noted above, it would be purely short term and purely personal gain.

If Shaw needs any evidence of what decrepit fate awaits him its right there in the now vacant offices and work spaces of the Maori Party in Bowen House and Parliament.

Of course if Shaw is a corporate Trojan horse or Security Service mole, like has been speculated for some time in Wellington, then his going with National would lock those theories into pole position on the grid as Shaw is not stupid enough to think he could salvage the party from such a fate that has befallen so many in NZ politics and around the world but he might be willing (and stupid) enough to sell the party down the river for his own gain (or that of his masters).

The track record for voter betraying minor political parties is not good and if Shaw was a deep cover operative then this would be the perfect time to follow his MK Ultra programming and take the party over to the dark side.

However what sits in my mind now is not some political parable but the story of St Paul who started out his career as hunter of Christians but was struck down and blinded, on the road to Damascus, by the glory of Christ, and spent three days blind and suffering before a Christian healer made the scales fall from his eyes (hence where the saying comes from), he “saw the light” and converted to Christianity.

If the story stopped there is would be warm fuzzies all around but it doesn’t, what happened after is that St Paul went on to become one of the most prominent of the Apostles and his works and thought dominates early Christianity and the New Testament as one of the most rabid evangelists for Jesus Christ.

In short Saul became a “prisoner of Christ”, suffered Stockholm syndrome, changed his name to Paul and then became a Jihadi proselytizer for the JC Franchise.

And if that is not making it clear enough then I will spell it out. If Shaw goes to National then he will spend the rest of his days as a raving believer for the rightness (pun intended) of his dark deed, religiously defending his actions because his total reversal for all that the Greens stand for will require a stupendous level of missionary zeal to convince, even himself, that his deal with the devil was worth it.

This is the temptation that James Shaw is facing because just as the Maori Party constantly kept referring to how they were doing it "for Maori" the end result was they really were doing it for themselves only and Maori in general got little to nothing from the bargain that Maori struck with National; and Shaw & Co will have to utter the exact same lines and platitudes as the Maori Party did while National gets a free pass for another three years***.

For the Aro Valley** champagne environmentalists, which now make up the limited core of the party, they might feel good for the initial moment when the Greens get to lick the lever of power in ritual subservience the the Great Wyrm but as they say, revenge is sweet but not fattening, and election 2020 will probably be time enough for Shaw to become as toxic as dairy stream in voters minds and as popular as Clitter.

So if Shaw wants to kiss the devils buttocks so be it but the media should not be trying to fool people to which way he is really going.

*-(Douglas as Hitler, Caygill as Gobbles and Prebble as Himmler)

**-And I should know because I lived just up the hill from Shaw for five years
***-To be fair a NZ First/Labour/Greens govt has all sorts of potential issues lurking just below the surface but its still better than another three years of National at this point