The Leader Labour Needs To Win?

Future Tense: Articulate, good-humoured, open to new ideas and smart enough to turn them into credible policy, Cunliffe looks every inch the leader Labour needs to win.

IS IT POSSIBLE that Chris Carter is right? Would Labour have a better chance of winning the next election under a new leader? Is Phil Goff really the best, or even, as most political commentators emphatically insist, the only option available? And if, as those same commentators contend, Labour cannot win under Mr Goff’s leadership, does that mean Labour cannot win – full stop?

A few days ago I would have conceded (albeit reluctantly) that those commentators were more likely to be proved right than wrong. And I use the word "reluctant" advisedly, because I count myself among Mr Goff’s long-time supporters.

As far back as February 2008 I was urging the Labour caucus to persuade Helen Clark to step aside in favour of her Defence Minister. It was clear to me then that the ties binding the Labour-led Government to its core supporters were becoming dangerously frayed, and that only by installing a new leader more in tune with the values and attitudes of traditional Labour voters could the election be won.

But, Labour did then what it shows every sign of doing now: it dug in and hoped for the best. And, as so many of the Government’s supporters feared, their "best" was nowhere near good enough. That Ms Clark relinquished the party leadership on election night, and then organised Mr Goff’s effective coronation as her successor, can only be read as a tacit admission that the "out-of-tune with Labour’s core supporters" argument was correct.

Swift and efficient though it undoubtedly was, Mr Goff’s unchallenged accession to Labour’s leadership did the party very little good. Centre-Left political organisations don’t generally opt to transfer power in the fashion of a feudal monarchy. "The Queen is dead. Long live the King!" is a curious approach for a party whose constitution still proudly upholds to the principles of "Democratic Socialism".

In an ideal world, Ms Clark would have remained in place for the six months following her election defeat and used the time to muse very publicly about the love Labour lost. She’d have offered apologies to all and sundry and generally encouraged the broader labour movement to engage in a wide-ranging debate on the party’s future direction. Only then would she have signalled her departure, and invited Labour’s most talented parliamentarians to slug it out.

At least that way the voting public would have been able to tell which of Labour’s long-dormant factions "had the numbers". Would it be Clark’s social-liberal faction? Or would the defection (and abstention) of so many of Labour’s traditional voters persuade the Caucus to throw its weight behind a more socially conservative candidate?

Waging this fight out in the open may have been embarrassing for the Party, but, when it was over one faction, after a long and very lively debate, would have emerged victorious with a clear mandate. More importantly, the new leader would’ve been free to strike out in a new direction without having to worry about being white-anted by the losing side.

As it is, the factional in-fighting continues to seethe – just not where the voting public can see it. At best, we have caught brief glimpses of the main dividing-lines.

When Mr Goff attempted to harness growing public concern over the National-led Government’s handling of Maori-Pakeha relations, for example, the social-liberals in his caucus very publicly over-ruled him. And when he indicated that he wasn’t all that fussed about workers voluntarily trading away the fourth week of their annual leave, the former trade unionists in his caucus laid about his head with great force.

Everything we have seen since the 2008 election points to a deadlocked Labour caucus in which no one faction possesses the numbers – or leadership – to give either the party, or the country, the clear new direction it so desperately needs.

There are only two ways that Labour’s factions can resolve this impasse: the first is to wage a long and bitter war of attrition (as the Australian Labor factions did between 1996 and 2006) and be left with whoever is the last man (or woman) standing; or, to swallow their pride and, ignoring faction, elect the person best equipped both intellectually and presentationally to lead them to victory in 2008.

Last Saturday morning, on TV3’s The Nation, David Cunliffe demonstrated conclusively that he is that person. Articulate, good-humoured, open to new ideas and smart enough to turn them into credible policy, Cunliffe looked every inch the leader Labour needs to win.

The conventionally wise insist that he lacks sufficient allies to mount a successful challenge. But, from the perspective of Labour’s deadlocked caucus, Mr Cunliffe’s absence of factional baggage may yet prove to be his most telling political advantage.

This essay was originally published in The Press of Tuesday, 10 August 2010.