D is for Democracy, Disfunction and Disorder

This post is being written as sort of a preface before I spend most of the coming year pointing out what I see is wrong with politics in New Zealand because it seems only fair that as bad as I may paint things to be here, they are far far worse elsewhere.

Currently two of the oldest and most established democracies in the world, the US and the UK (known from here on in as USUK) are in a bit of a state at the moment, and by “state” I mean the dumpster fire to end all dumpster fires.

In green and fragrant Aotearoa the biggest political bump on the horizon (at least for the chattering classes because child poverty, homelessness, the housing hernia, immigration issues, education and health and labor abuses don’t matter to them) is making sure that our cabinet has the right gender balance because god forbid we don’t have the right ratio of women and men.

In fact, I wouldn’t care if they were all women, if they were all competent, but when perennial incompetents like Clare Curran, and self-justifying bullies like Meka Whaitiri get in some how its clear that Labour is going to let the illusion take precedent over any particular reality.

So yes, they are gone but we still have Kelvin Davis, Phil Twyford and Ian Lees-Galloway despite their “problems” so the issue is that Labour (including Ardern herself) has a shortage of competent MPs/Ministers and is getting by on a combination of luck and half baked, piss poor, policy ideas which have deviated so much from their original intent (that being a re-set to NZs perilous state) to voter appeasing fiascos (like Kiwibuild) which are doing a lot to had an electoral cudgel to National.

But we are not here to take issue with these clowns, and the circus they now run, that will come later.

Right now, it’s time to point out that no matter how bad could be here, they are mucho worse over there. However, what we are seeing over there could very well happen here if we keep on the way we are going because the situation in USUK is just a more advanced symptom of the same disease we have here so its prudent to sound the warning, so to speak, lest we allow ourselves to succumb to the comfortable illusion that everything is alright here while we laugh at what’s happening over there.

And that’s just in whats left of the worlds functioning democracies, let alone what its like in corrupt and totalitarian s**tholes like Zimbabwe and China.

Currently Zimbabwe is experiencing killings in the street by security forces, a social media blackout an already fragile state teetering on the brink (again) of chaos as the new dictatorial government (lead by mass murdering monster “president” Emmerson Managawa* who was responsible for the murder of thousands as the head of Zimbabwe’s secret police) fails to bring the economy into any form of order after decades of mismanagement and corruption.

Meanwhile fun-loving China has decided to behave like the communist police state it really is by condemning a Canadian citizen to death for drug smuggling, after he was previously sentenced to 15 years jail, by re-trying him as a blatant means to bring pressure on Canada for arresting a top Huawei executive for extradition to the US which just shows what China will do if it does not get its way**.

But back to USUK, those at least are still democratic in form but not quite in function as both now have succumbed to infighting among political parties and the issues they face have no clear exit strategy and as such one may either say that this is simply the veneer of representative democracy fading away to expose the controlling elites bickering among themselves as their house of cards falls apart or (slightly less depressingly) our states shifting from true representative democracies to ones which are run by, and for, competing elites with elections as the legitimating mechanism and nothing else.

Either way its depressing but it seems that when faced by a crisis beyond their means to control (that crisis being that once you deal with the devil and start down the path to corruption and total power) you start to veer closer and closer to being a corrupt and failed state like Zimbabwe or a totalitarian nightmare like China and all the talk in the world can’t save you.

US: Go away, baiting!

Currently the US is now nearly a month into its government shutdown and I think Cracked.com has summed it up best with one of its many lists of things which show that people might grumble about “the government” but holly hell the alternative is a lot worse.

You know those far right, ACT party style, “minimal government” wet dreams that tools like David Seymour keeps on getting “excited” about? Well the US is now, in effect, in that state of affairs and it’s not pretty.

Seems all those government services that people take for granted, don’t know about or simply think are “not essential” are in fact very essential for a complex technological society like ours.

So, Seymour's ideological masturbation aside, the US is now locked into a paralytic state of stasis, in effect seeing how long it can hold its breath under water while Republicans and Democrats play chicken with each other over funding for Donald Trump’s wall.

Idiots or the naive might say its all Trumps fault but it takes two to tango and this is not the first-time politicians have played the brinkmanship game with government shutdowns. Yes, Trump has dialed it up to 11 but given that this was the core of his election policy (as limited as that was) he can’t be blamed for wanting to enact that for his voter base.

What he can be blamed for is the fact that building a wall around the US might make good sense ideologically and appeal to his supporters but it’s not going to actually solve any problems unless the problems are how to keep employed an army of wall builders and border guards.

And with the debate now down to the level of a high school feud as Nancy Pelosi and Trump are sniping at and c**k-blocking each other (as Pelosi blocks Trumps state ofthe Union speech so Trump cuts of Pelosi's travel to Afghanistan*3) you’re not looking at anything which we could call “representative” or even a functional democracy this is two spoilt rich kids fighting over a toy at day-care.

Its assumed that eventually a compromise will be reached but the damage will have been done and given that congress polls lower than the President its difficult to see the US going on for much longer because as the song says “somethings got to give”*4 and going without pay (or public services) for a month plus is going to do a  lot for arguments of political populists like Bernie Sanders and Alexandria Ocasio Cortez who will happily take over if given a chance.

Could they do better? Probably not but at this point I don’t think the public is interested in that and is more interested in the cathartic effect of watching the rich elites having the heads lopped off via the guillotine ala the French Revolution, which interestingly enough was brought about by circumstances similar to those we face today (political deadlock and the parasitic rich sponging off everyone else) than getting their government back up and running.

So, on a democratic scale of one to ten, one being all’s good functioning democracy and 10 being holly s**t-balls democratic failure, the US is now about a 7 or 8 with a nine not far off the longer the shutdown goes on. And even when its ends, because it will eventually, or if Trump gets impeached or removed (because that’s also a possibility) it’s hard to imagine the US going back to normal because what’s happening now is the new normal.

The US is not going to suddenly discover good behavior and responsible politics just because the shutdown ends or Trump is no longer President but instead this is it for them and living with it is the only option. Suddenly films like Idiocracy no longer seem like satirical comedy but rather as a documentary warning from the future.

UK: No democracy please, we're British*5

Meanwhile, if you have not been reading the news (and possibly living in a hole), you would, only marginally, be forgiven for thinking in jolly old England all was sunshine, lollipops and rainbows compared to its transatlantic cousin the US.

But nope, if you thought the UK was doing better then guess again sucker because if the state of the US could be described as a dumpster fire then the Brexit crisis is Dumpster Fire Deluxe.

Consider this, article 50, the clause that triggers the UK from the EU, has already been invoked and is now in progress. All that the UK can do now is negotiate the terms of the exit and its clear that the EU does not want the UK to leave because if they do it not only makes the EU weaker but could give other members ideas as well and no supranational state wants parts of its empire falling off as it weakens the whole enterprise, let alone major members of it (as the UK is).

Sure, the UK could go back to the drawing board but as CNN points out none of the four options that could develop under article 50 are really going to solve things so in the end the choices are: Brexit, crashing out of the EU (also known a s hard Brexit), having a second referendum or changing the government. Choose wisely young Padawan.

If the UK takes the Brexit path, it’s out of the EU come mind 2019, what happens after is anyone’s guess but there are disaster stories both ways if the UK does or it does not and having a second referendum may reverse the vote but that sets an incredibly dangerous precedent because if you can reverse one vote you can reverse any vote and what’s to say that it could go around again and again once that Pandora's box is opened.

But if there is a second vote and the Britain decide to stay in the EU then those who voted leave are unlikely to go quietly and this sets up something close to a civil war scenario with an intractable position and no clear middle ground.

What is clear is that the UK can’t be both in and out and like the US, political revolutionaries are getting ready to pounce, as Jeremy Corbyn has already forced the issue by calling for a general election to break the deadlock.

Of course Corbyn, once PM, may also want to bring other parts of his manifesto to the table which is fine by me but with an emphasis on massive wealth redistribution from the richest to the poorest I cant see many of London’s wealthy bankers being down with that but Brexit, like the government shutdown in the US, is just a symptom  and not the real cause of the disease that’s eating the UK from the inside out and so reversing the vote will be nothing but a cosmetic fix and simply split things even further.

And Theresa May is damned if she does and damned if she does not, she has survived a no confidence vote but that matters little in the grander scheme when her plan for an exit is not palatable to anyone. All Brexit has really done is expose the divide in the UK, just like Trump has in the US, and in doing so presented having a hand cut off or an eye poked out as the only choice to voters.

So, at this point, the UK reminds me of England on the eve of the 1640s civil war which split the nation between Royalists and Parliamentarians, Catholics and Protestants and Cavaliers

 and Round-heads in which the decent, unlike the American Civil war in the 1860s, was not a supremely violent struggle to the death between two economic and political systems set inside a supposedly democratic state but rather a political schism between sides over a range of issues, magnified by religious difference and where the sides were emergent democracy vrs the older monarchical order.

Thus, at some point, something has to happen and when it does one side or another will not be happy and so another phase of the disease will kick in and further unrest ensues, making the situation in essence loose/loose.

Meanwhile in Godzone: Don’t say it can’t happen here!

If the political antics and chaos of USUK is not enough to make you wonder the we have our cousins across the ditch and their own political turmoil to consider.

Still NZ compared to USUK is a lot more viable at this time and if a cabinet reshuffle is all that gets into the media then we may be just a bit better off, for now that is as we shall soon see that being slightly further up the democratic anthill may protect us from the rising floodwaters of crappy politics and politician’s for a while but we also have to deal with the survivors from lower down scrabbling their way up trying to take over what’s left (I’m looking at you Peter Theil and China).

Democracy has its moments to be sure and it is having a bad day worldwide at this time but if USUK is anything to go by the alternatives to good government and real representative democracy (or even direct democracy) are rule by corrupt elites, genocidal maniacs and places that we don’t even want to visit let alone live in.

So consider this post a means of making sure that what’s follows on this blog is always with the perspective of what’s going on elsewhere lest I be accused of complaining about nothing because its not the state of NZ per se that’s the issue with me but the direction our own democracy is going in that has me blogging and it’s a lot better to sound the alarm before the whole mess goes off the cliff than pick up the pieces and rebuild (if such a thing is even possible) at the bottom or like USUK try and do so while free falling downwards.

Vootie!

*-Who has family happily living in NZ because reasons.

**-And people wonder why the National Party acting as a quisling for China is such a threat to democracy here.

*3-Why she needs to go to Afghanistan anyway is anyone’s business but I suppose she needs a holiday

*4- Yes Fitzgerald’s sentiment is upbeat and positive but the sentiment remains the same but if you need something more suitably dark then the Beastie Boys have you covered.

*5-with apologies to Messrs Foot and Marriot

Can Andrew Little and Labour NZ make hay out of Corbyn and Labours win in the UK?

Short answer to this question is no. 

Different countries, different political systems (FPP vs MMP) and different political cultures and histories all add up to no direct correlation between there and here.

The mid to long term answer is “yes, but…” as the global mood across much of the democratic west has been one of angry populism and punishment for establishment politicians for a while now.

So the question needs to focus less on the yes and more on the “but” to find an answer.

The Numbers

And it would help if we look at how things actually turned out in the UK to see if we can translate what was in effect a “shock outcome”*.

Labour                     Seats      262                 Increase/Decrease       +32     

Conservatives          Seats      318                 Increase/Decrease      -13

Scot Nat Party         Seats      35                    Increase/Decrease      -19

Lib Dems                 Seats      12                   Increase/Decrease      +3

Others                      Seats      23                   Increase/Decrease       -3

And under a FPP system it’s the seats that count so alone the Conservatives are well ahead of Labour but when you add in all the other parties, especially the SNP which is not fond of the Conservatives in the wake of the previous failed Scottish Secession vote, it’s a lot closer and the margin shrinks to less 25 seats. Add in the Lib Dems and its even less.

This gives us, under the mechanics of FPP in the UK, a hung parliament but more on that later.

What’s even more revealing is the vote share and change from the previous election which is as follows:

CON     42.4%                Change +5.5%

LAB     40.0%                 Change + 9.5%

LD        7.4%                  Change -0.5%

SNP      3.0%                  Change -1.7%

UKIP     1.8%                 Change -10.8%

GRN     1.6%                  Change – 2.1%

Also interesting are the turnout figures which 68.7% which was a 2% increase on 2015 and the fact that vote share for the two main parties was the highest since 1970s.

Finally the geographic vote spread which saw three very clear areas for voters in the UK, with London being firmly Labour, the South of England being firmly Tory and the North being for the Scottish National Party and Labour.

All the data used for these numbers can be found here on the BBC website.

The Analysis

So what do these numbers show if we step back a bit from the raw metrics?

The first and most obvious is the large swing towards the left with Labour getting an extra 9.5% of the vote and 32 extra seats. It also shows that while the Conservatives increased vote share (at +5.5%) they lost seats which indicates more people leaving them than coming in seats which they lost.

And that swing happened due to the fact that parties like UKIP lost 10.8% of the vote (and its one seat) so while many of those voters would have gone back to vote Tory the Tories were losing even more voters to Labour as many punters were simply “passing through” on the way to vote for Corbyn and Labour.

Thus for every extra voter that Theresa May and the Conservatives got Labour got almost double and the biggest shift was from the far Right towards the Left.

Also as many minor parties were either wiped out or severely reduced we can see that it was not a case of votes bleeding out to minor parties but instead voters coalescing around the two main parties.

then with the increased turnout and the consolidation of votes into the big two we see a polarization of opinions into two binary choices and the erosion of certain “middle ground” or fringe opinions and the related destruction or reduction of various small parties which were born out of those opinions.

In short the death of small parties, goodbye middle ground and the return to the two party politics of the past**.

But as the UK has a FPP system these results are skewed somewhat by the mechanics particular to FPP rather than how things would be under MMP which would see the Conservatives beaten by a Labour/Lib Dem/SNP coalition.

Therefore who (or what) gets to decide who is the next government? Under FPP the crown of being kingmaker has fallen on the Democratic Unionist Party (DUP) which has the 10 seats to push May and the Conservatives over the line into a majority of seats in the house and thus secure power.

And the DUP being more conservative than the Conservatives means that those 10 seats are locked in and Labour and Corbyn are piped at the post.

What a difference an electoral system makes.

The Bigger Picture

But lets take a further step back and ask why was there such a major and unexpected shift to the Left.

On the negative side Theresa May and the Conservatives judged badly, that, in the wake of Brexit, the mood of the electorate would be calm enough to stand another critical vote of confidence. Seems it was not but given that Brexit went against expectations I am not sure what the logic (if any) was.

Also with the recent terror attacks where it was revealed that most of the suspects were already on watch lists, had been repeatedly reported by members of their own communities to the authorities as being concerns and that May herself was responsible for major cutbacks in Police numbers (as head of the Home Office) under the ever popular "austerity" measures and things did not look good when it became clear that the police were simply too stretched to do anything about it.

Then there was May’s decreasing popularity and the fact that she avoided public speaking and even one debate against Corbyn.

In short the Conservatives stumbled badly, read the mood incorrectly and did the classic tortoise and the hare scenario for the expected results. May won’t make alive it to the next election.

On the flip-side Corbyn and Labour made major capital of this election even if they did not win because despite his naysayers (which are now reduced even further and probably are a distinct minority now) he has solidified his leadership even further, battle tested it and the party, on the hustings and shown that a positive message of change for a better future can resonate with voters.

And it was as simple as that.

If conservatives (in all countries) get to corner the market on things like pragmatism and being “realistic” then liberals get exclusive rights talk about dreams and hopes all by themselves and if Labour had lost its way during the Blairite years it was because those ideas and concepts were given up in favor of a "middle ground" approach which was little more than the same message of realism/pragmatism that the Tories were shilling but with less credibility.

But Jeremy Corbyn killed that idea stone cold dead when he took over and started saying things about dreams, hopes and a better future once again.

Of course it would be unfair to say it’s all due to Corbyn but a lot of this outcome is. He held on in the face of multiple attempts to remove him and took his position to the public in the truest test there is and all the sour grapes in the UK (and there seem to be quite a lot of them) can’t change that. The results speak for themselves.

But what about NZ?

So finally we can ask ourselves about that “yes, but…” answer to our question we were discussing earlier.

Can Andrew Little and Labour do the same here?

To start they don’t have to worry about the FPP hurdle and that means that if they make up the kind of ground that Labour and Corbyn did in the last month of polling then they are home and hosed as UK polls had Labour 20 points behind and that is roughly the numbers that Labour NZ need to beat any combination of National and another party come September.

But because this is MMP there is unlikely to be such titanic shifts in vote share as the UK had simply because parties like the Lib Dems and UKIP picked up votes due to voter frustration with FPP mechanics and then angrily switched when their chosen party couldn't translate that vote share into power or do what the Lib Dems did and go into coalition with the one party they should not have (the Conservatives) when being handed the kingmaker crown on a silver platter***.

Therefore in NZ it’s unlikely that there will be any sudden shift of up to 20% in voters from one party to another as both the smaller parties like The Greens and NZF are locked in and able to translate those votes into some form of result (although that may be less the case for the Greens now as they wrestle with the tar-baby that is translating their 12-15% into genuine political power) and the stability of MMP offsets such FPP related outcomes.

Then there is the leadership question.

Andrew Little is no Jeremy Corbyn (see the links in my previous post) and as Labour NZ is still playing the middle ground/pragmatism card like it’s the 1990s or early 2000s and as such no message that Andrew or the party puts out will resonate like Corbyn and UK Labours did if they keep on that way.

And because I have bashed Andrew Little so much for his terrible leadership skills in the past I will say no more here and just encourage you to read any previous posts I have written about him.

Labour NZ has yet to deal with the horrid stain that is 1984, and as I have argued many times before, until they do, they remain stuck waiting for a big draw leader like Helen Clark (perhaps someone with the initials of J.A.) to enthuse voters over to their side because no message they send says “bright new future for all” when they are couching everything in the realpolitik market-speak which was outdated when it was coming out of Michael Cullen’s mouth.

So in the end the “yes” gets trumped by the “but” and we remain in thrall to whatever Winston Peters has planned for us****.

Which is a shame because if Labour was to make a genuine Mea Culpa for 84 we could see the “yes” trump the “but...”*5.

All it needs is a genuine leader willing to dream big and steer the party out of the doldrums it has been in for the last decade.

I wonder if Jeremy Corbyn has any relatives living in New Zealand?

*-Although when you consider the potential pitfalls of putting a vote to the public in the wake of the last “vote to the public” that lead to BREXIT you might want to consider the “wisdom” of such a view that such an outcome was a “shock”.

**-At least for now.

***-This is the dilemma that Winston and NZF face this election.

****-No matter how many times I twist my analysis on NZ politics it always keeps coming back to Winston, it’s frustrating as hell.

*5-No pun intended but now that I think about it…

I'm going to bed excited tonight because of Jeremy Corbyn!*

Don't get me wrong readers but as my two previous posts on the man show (Viva Corbyn! and Viva Corbyn Pt II; both from last year) show I like what he is doing and most (but not all) of his views and policies.

Which means that by the time I wake up tomorrow we will know if he, and UK Labour, will have won the general election there.

Current vote counts are still early days but they show Labour ahead of the Tories and that in itself is an amazing change from a few months ago when the polls showed Theresa May ahead by up to 20 points in the polls.

I wont write much more but I can probably guess what Andrew Little will be doing tonight and sleeping wont be it because if Corbyn wins it will have an effect on things here come September and more directly Labour NZs fortunes.

But as I note in my Pt II post not everything between NZ Labour and UK Labour are the same (specially when it comes to their leaders) but there is enough of a whiff of FukYoo Politix to put steam in Andrew Little's stride if Corbyn wins and induce a few brown moments in Bill English.

Of course this might not happen but I will be saying my prayers extra hard tonight, just in case.


*-Any perceived sexual innuendo in this post is entirely due to your own dirty minds, not mine. You should be ashamed!

Viva Corbyn Pt II: One step back to take two steps forward.

This is a quick follow up to my previous post about Jeremy Corbyn because after watching his speech I was pretty darn psyched and its clear that  we are seeing something special going on in UK Labour.

Andrew Little, if you still have plans about winning next years election, watch this video now! or if you want the highlights then watch here or if you want the Cliffs notes there read this.

Because if you cannot watch that and figure out what you and your party are doing wrong or what you need to do then leave your badge behind on the way out as you are clearly not the person for the job!

Also if you cant watch that and feel a even a twinge of political excitement then check your pulse because you are probably dead (politically at least).

Corbyn is not an eloquent speaker, the speech is not a lot of fire and brimstone, but he speaks calmly and with conviction and that's what matters and the crowd clearly digs what he is saying.

After a year of being hammered by those inside his party and out he now has a party with half a million members and made it very clear in his that there are other ways to do things than the tired old rhetoric that the Blairites were spouting, those days are over.

In many ways it was a narrative breaking speech as he simply and calmly set out goals for the future of the the UK, and just as importantly, his party and in doing so ripped the guts out of the last 20 years of Labour UK under Blair, Brown and Milliband. And lets not be coy, it is his party now. They don't call you the "leader" just because its sounds nice.

No, this is a man who has suffered the slings and arrows of his enemies and been vindicated by a pumped up crowd who clapped in genuine enthusiasm for the proposals he was making. This was a crowd that, apart from packing out the place, and apparently spilling out on to the street, was in this as much as him, foot soldiers who had followed their leader into the breach and who would willingly do so again.

And that must be a scary thing for the remaining Balirites or even the Tories because nothing is so unstoppable as a group of people who are genuinely motivated and genuinely believe and who have a leader who believes in what they are doing and with the conviction to do it. Come the next election expect these half million souls to willingly go out and campaign for the party and fight any battle that needs to be fought.

And that kind of spirit was lacking in the Blair faction for any of their messages as well as the Torries for theirs. Yet here is a man who they actively sought to depose, even against the wishes of the rank and file and his victory is theirs as well and again that's a contagious thing, that's the kind of spirit that makes people believe and genuinely get out and get things done (small committed groups of people changing history and all that).

Contrast that to the cess pool that US politics has sunk even further deeper into or the state in NZ politics with its limpid cast of characters and tired worn out story lines. To be sure, Corbyn is riding the same wave of citizen anger at being screwed over by the globalized elites that Trump and Sanders tapped into but instead of simply being the avatar of the rage or selling out at the last minute Corbyn has stuck to his guns and turned it into something genuinely positive and successful rather than negative or compromised.

So what is Corbyn's secret?

His personality aside it was simply a case of being able to have the strength to reject the message that has been the dominant theme of the last 40 years, that of Neo-Liberalism and Globalisim for the elites. He is not saying he wants to go back, he wants to go forward but not the way the so called global elites want, this is for the people, all of them, not a select few.

So all it took was a complete and utter rejection of the failed path the party had tread since poodle Blair got his hands on the levers and suddenly Labour looks and sounds like a general party of the people again.

And that is what Andrew Little and Labour have to do if they ever want to get back in the game.

I know its been debated before; the stain of 84 and all that followed and how we all should just get over it but Corbyn's speech has shown that there is only one way forward for Little and Labour and its one step back to take two steps forward. No more middle ground, no more Michael Cullen style trying to talk their language and treat everyone as a concerned stakeholder.

Nope, what Corbyn did in his speech was send out a message which harked back to something past yet so very relevant to today and in doing so provided the most riveting political speech I have seen in a long time. You want to cheer, you want to clap, you want to believe what he is saying and by golly that's strong stuff when you are constantly fed a diet of vapid soundbite politics and bland political rhetoric.

If Labour NZ was to admit its dark past and make a genuine plea for the people rather than the desperate ploys it has previously employed wild horses could not keep me out of the vote booth on polling day 2017 to tick the box for Labour. And now we know it can be done because Corbyn just did it.

No more "theoretical" musing about maybe or maybe not; no more wondering if the public would respond. Just a simple stepping up and saying what needs to be said and doing what needs to be done.

So for Labour NZ there are just two questions on my mind.

The first is: Is Andre Little the Man for the job? Somehow I am not so sure that Little could do what Corbyn has done, it took cojones, real big ones to see off the rebel MPs and keep the message on track but he did it. Little has shown no real gumption or ability to face down a mob of rebellious MPs let alone turn to the cameras and clearly say what needs to be said and the clock is now ticking as we speed towards 2017.

The second is: Can Labour NZ itself reject its dark past and make the jump to the future? Again I have my doubts. Without the strong leader there will be no purge of the bad ol MPs with nothing more on their mind than continuing the champagne socialist business as usual agenda and that means no revitalization of the party. Instead NZ Labour remains the political eunuch it currently is and John Key keeps that little box under his bed for another three years.

So in the wake of that speech I am pumped up and keen to see what Corbyn will do next. I am sure those who oppose him will bide their time and lick their wounds before trying again but every day that passes its become clear that Corbyn will be strengthening his hold on things and it will be harder and harder to try another counter revolution.

Also I don't expect the media to be kind to Corbyn but I don't think he really cares, when you have 500,000 party members behind you things like a bad opinion piece quickly comes off as the weak willed words they are.

So to end, Corbyn has show there is a way out of this for the Left in these very interesting times but its not an easy path to tread, this is politics old style, with a clear purpose and a clear mandate to do it and I have not been this excited about politics for a long time even if its only as a spectator.

Unlike the US which is all the fun of a chimps tea party to watch (poop flinging and all that) this has the makings of being worth the time and the effort to get into.

So Andrew Little and Co; the way forward has been shown, dare you try to tread it?

Viva Corbyn!

I could not help but grinning a little when I read this morning of Jeremy Corbyn’s clean sweep of the polls in the leadership election (here, here and here) in the UK.

I suppose that lays clear a good chunk of my political views but then again I have never been shy about advertising it and that does not mean I can’t be critical of left wing antics which are bone headed, petty or just plain stupid. But still I was grinning.

Also I wonder what Andrew Little, current glorious leader of Labour in NZ, will make of this, but more of that in a moment.

Whats clear in the UK is that despite the best quisling efforts of the bankster Labour MPs to get rid of him through such means as open dissent, voter disenfranchisement and outright political skulduggery; Corbyn came though and with an even stronger mandate via increased turnout and a higher polling for him. In anyone’s terms he saw off all challenges, held firm and then some.

I do also like Corbyn for his underdog position, at least as portrayed by the media, and the fact that even now when he could be scornful in defeat he is still willing to work with those who opposed him although I don’t think they will ever be willing to work with him because what has happened here is that power in UK Labour has shifted well away from the MPs who had assumed that once they got elected they were on the gravy train for life and instead are now finding out that their accountability goes all the way back to the actual people who voted for them and not just the little club of fellow MPs who they work with.

And with this shift goes the last real chance of the Blairites to hold onto power in Labour (of which previous Labour leader Ed Milliband was one). Milliband, had obviously tried to keep Labour on the business friendly, pro EU course but in the end he was little more than a slightly younger, less seedy version of Tony “poodle” Blair and things had changed, his five years as Labour party leader were mediocre at best and killing time at worst.

It was less Milliband as the man himself but that his values were out of touch and out of step with the mood on his side of the tracks and in the end he paid for it at the polls, which had UK Labour not been a rat’s nest of cosy business interests and status quo politicians, he would have seen coming. Instead he did not, could not or even possibly chose not to see the what was barrelling towards him like a truck filled with overpriced luxury items, more fool him.

As for those Labour MPs that opposed Corbyn, they now only have two options, or only two realistic options, which are quit Labour and politics or toe the line fully.

The possible third option of forming a new party is political suicide as their mandate to form one would be limited to those few who actually supported them and that rare combination of person who wants Britain to remain in the EU, supports Labour and would see any value in a watered down, middle of the road rehash of Labour; not many of those people around.

But despite Corbyn offering the olive branch I suspect there will be a purge of sorts, he has hinted as much and the worst offenders are very likely to get their marching orders in one form or another. There are two meanings to Corbyn wanting to “wipe the slate clean”; the first is to heal the old divisions and move on but the other is a political purge pure and simple and I do not doubt that he will have the will to pull the trigger.

Because at this moment he has them politically stunned and in shock and with only some deft manipulations of the political controls could we see a few fatalities like this (all be in political form only: although if he did actually pull his skin off and breath fire that would sure be one way of enforcing party discipline).

So the reality now facing those rebel Labour MPs is pretty bleak, they represent something on its way out; in decline and their actions to stop the inevitability rank alongside those of the Republicans in the US to thwart Trump getting the party nomination.

Not that Corbyn is on par with Trump but both of them are riding a wave of electoral anger right into the top spot and no amount of media manipulation or party trickery has stopped them as they represent the actual party members not the entrenched party elite (the MPs and assorted advisers) who thought they had everything under control and now it’s too late, the democratic beast has woken and its hungry.

Of course none of this is any guarantee that Corbyn will turn out to be a good PM or be able to lead the UK out of its current state but it’s does show that where it counts he has support for whatever he proposes because he has made no bones about his agenda and has not hidden it one iota, which is a big step up from many of his recent predecessors who tried to keep the Labour name but in all other instances were steering the party towards the right (by claiming to be moving to the center) and abandoning all but the core few who were benefiting from their actions.

Meanwhile in NZ, Andrew Little must be wondering what to make of this. His own efforts to remake the NZ Labour party, or at least raise its poll ratings seem to have failed and he is left, King Canute like, to shout incomprehensibly at the reality washing around his legs.

Unfortunately for him (Little that is) Corbyn by his very presence and political endurance (30 years as a lowly backbencher) is a repudiation of all the old and ugly that Tony Blair and his subsequent clones stood for when he kick-started new Labour in the 90s. Also UK Labour only had the horrid stain of the Iraq war to wash away and in Corbyn that can be achieved by removing the last of the Blairite dregs from the senior roles in the party and by … pause … returning it to its roots.

In NZ, Little and Labour still have yet to renounce their actions in the 80s and Little is a political spring chicken when compared to Corbyn, his protection inside the cocoon of union politics is not probably going to help him if Labour NZ gets nailed to the cross in 2017.

So while I suspect that Little might want to wish his UK counterpart well in his electoral outcomes it’s his own fortunes here and in 12 months’ time that he may wish to try and learn from if only he could.

The key take away for Little from Corbyns win is that honesty is the best policy, not some cheap tricks for raising polling or a grab bag of often nifty, but often terminally lame policy planks. What little needs is a fire in his belly and a willingness to come clean about Labour and its current doldrums in the calm waters of the political middle. 

The current is now heading to the outer edges (both left and right) and his recent rejection of Clark’s advice to stay in the middle shows he may be starting to figure out what is actually needed to win an election (no matter how much David Farrer crows about it).

Corbyn is where he is by rejecting the status quo and by sticking to his guns and probably his political instincts (honed no doubt by 30 years in politics). Little does not have 30 years to wait and needs to move now, MP backlash or not.

And if it seems that I am trying to transfer the situation in the UK onto what’s happening in NZ then you would be correct, I am. Regional flavorings aside, what’s happening in NZ has enough parallels in the UK for a previously friendly party of the worker to take back that mandate it lost through the inevitably foolish move to the middle, especially as times get tougher and the income gap grows.

Viva Corbyn and Beuna Suerte Little!