Bonfire of the inanities (Patreon)

Chippy coming out and continuing to butcher Labour's policy programme isn't a surprise, but gosh it's cynical politics.

Everyone knew that National was planning a small-target strategy when it thought it would be going up against Jacinda Ardern, but now that's changed and it's Labour taking the small target path. This has left National with ... fuck all.

And you can tell they know they have fuck-all. After yesterday's burning of Labour policiy programme, and then the release of the Very Bad Poll for Luxon, National rushed out a press release; the main point was:

"My message to Chris Hipkins is stop spending, and cut taxes".

This despite the fact that tax cuts are very unpopular at the moment, and National had said it wasn't going to do them given they have an inflationary impact.

Poor ol' Nicola Willis has spent the past few months banging on about National having a plan for inflation (that didn't involve tax cuts), only to be undone because National is starting to panic after one Very Bad Poll.

And the poll was pretty bad. It gave National zero path to Government (National + ACT + TPM was 60 seats...not a Government). This is the first time that configuration has happend in a while. It also had a 1 in front of Luxo's preferred PM rating. And while PPM is a bullshit metric, it's problematic that Luxo is on the slide. Because he'll start dragging National's vote with him. Meanwhile Hipkins has had a steady rise in his PPM rating.

The irony of all this cynical politicking by both our majors is that it's going to result in either the most right-wing, or most left-wing government NZ has ever had. As Labour clamber for the centre, they're going to need the Greens and probably Te Pāti Māori. Hopefully TPM is better at extracting left-wing concessions than the Greens are*.

Kudos to the new Labour team. It's depressing that JA was such a drag on Labour's vote, but a phenomenal act of service that she recognised that and stood aside. And new Chief of Staff Andrew Kirton has made a big difference too, with his strong eye on the retail side of politics.

That said, I didn't think Labour could get any more centrist, and yet every day they do. 

Beehive strategists that I talk to allowed themselves a small celebration last night that their strategy is working, but they're very conscious that this year is likely to bring shit economic times which doesn't usually favour an incumbent government, so they are taking nothing for granted.

Meanwhile National folk are greeting their slow demise with a shrug. A sort of "what can you do? If people don't like Luxon, they don't like him". And they don't. And now the poor bastard has Covid. You have to ask if his God is abandoning him.

*after Hipkins torched a bunch of climate policies yesterday, the Greens released a very tepid press release basically amounting to saying they were disappointed. Get some teeth Greens. It was fucking terrible to shelve so many climate policies. Fucking say so.