A couple of articles I've seen in the last couple of days is leading me to conclude that Labour is either totally in denial over its current electoral plight, or the Party is not prepared to concede what is obvious to nearly every commentator, even those who are left-leaning. Labour is heading for a hiding at the polls, whenever they are, but it continues to put a brave face on things.
Helen Clark apparently neither saw nor heard the truck protest on Friday, so to her mind, it didn't happen. Likewise the anti-crime march in Botany on Saturday where up to 15,000 turned up in foul weather to send a message to her government. And this morning she has told Paul Holmes on Newstalk ZB that she is "not even prepared to contemplate" to possibility of handing over the Labour leadership to someone else, and that the gap between National and Labour will narrow as the election campaign heads down the home straight. What Clark fails to contemplate after her week from hell last week, is that the next round of polls is likely to be even less flattering to Labour than theses supposedly "rogue" polls have been (yes, all of them!), and as more and more of her colleagues see their prospects of gainful employment slipping away, they will decide, as she did in 1990, that desperate times call for desperate remedies.
And Michael Cullen made an interesting accusation on Friday, suggesting that the truck protests were a planned political stunt:
""There may well have been [a misunderstanding] but I think there's a great deal of politics about this as well. It's not an entire coincidence, I'm sure, that the head of the Road Transport [Forum] is a former National Party cabinet minister.""
What is it with these people? Has arrogance become so ingrained in them that they think that they are automatically right, and everyone else is wrong? One thing is for sure - the public has had a gutsful of this kind of treatment from Labour, and just because Helen Clark didn't see and hear the anger on Friday doesn't make that anger towards her any less real.
3 comments:
Didn't see the truckies' protest in Auckland either, but on the way to Turangi last Thursday arvo/evening, there were more trucks than cars on the other side of the road. Couldn't help wondering whether I was subsidising the protest though. I mean, all that diesel they were burning...
Did you catch a fish or three JP? Anyway, all that extra diesel - tink of all the xtra tax it will generate for Mikey C!!
They are electoral deniers always, and Helen will have to be pushed, she will never jump. Arrogance like I've never seen in NZ politics before. Nonetheless, the general electorate is absolutely furious, even more so than dear Helen.
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