Newton stated that, for every action in nature there is an equal and opposite reaction. Therefore, it stands to reason that, for every sane and sensible blog post written in the world, there is an equally insane and ludicrous blog post written to counter act it!
Well, the NZ blogosphere is not one to disappoint us, and has handily proved Newton correct some 317 years later.
In his sane and sensible blog post, Scott Yorke at Imperator Fish has commented that, with today’s caucus vote of confidence in David Shearer, we should all move on and focus on holding National to account, rather than continuing with the petty in fighting.
Surely now all of Shearer’s many faults and flaws have been exposed and discussed at length, unless Chris Trotter is holding back more dynamite. Perhaps we’ll learn that Shearer was the mastermind behind George Bush’s War on Terror, sleeps in a coffin, and has been carrying on a torrid and secret romance with Rodney Hide for the last decade.
Barring any such revelations, or some other unforeseeable event, David Shearer will take Labour into the 2014 election.
But will today’s 100% endorsement silence the dissent? Certainly not! It’s not how we do things on the left. Our noble tradition of infighting needs to be honoured.
Tradition is important, which is why I wouldn’t dream of suggesting that Labour people just get in behind their leader for the good of the party, because someone will then accuse me of trying to shut down debate, even though the debate has become tedious, and even though nobody really has anything interesting to add to it.
I’ve commented before that, as a party, Labour needs to move on and work, not only for the good of itself, but for the good of all Kiwi’s, especially those who are struggling in the current economic meltdown bestowed upon us by “hand-off” National.
It’s a two-way street though, and a return to the front bench for Cunliffe later this week is not an unreasonable expectation, indeed, anything less from Shearer could be seen as unnecessary schadenfreude.
However, less than an hour after Scott posted his blog, Martyn Bradbury at Tumeke lets loose with a rant in defense of David Cunliffe, a man who, by his own admission earlier this year, was going to vote for David Shearer.
Shearer is the leader. Long live the leader. This PR pantomime of the leadership vote means little after the political violence meted out to Cunliffe by Hipkins and the ABCs post the media manufactured leadership challenge at the Labour Party conference.
It has all the validity of a North Korean election. But it’s done, the Labour Party leadership have won in not allowing the wider membership or unions to have a say in the process, we are lumped with Shearer so let’s just roll our eyes privately and soldier on.
Of course, there is a huge assumption on the part of ‘Bomber‘ and many of his Standard commenting cohorts, and that is that Cunliffe would win the support of the membership and unions if there were ever a wider ballot. He also, somewhat ironically, makes this comment:
The reality is that the ABCs hate Cunliffe so much that even if Cunliffe had won, many MPs would openly conspire to destroy him and the Labour Party with it.
Erm, Shearer won, and isn’t that what the pro-Cunliffe camp (I don’t doubt WITHOUT his sanction) have been doing ever since?
I do wonder when Tim and Phoebe at Tumeke will reclaim the blog from the ranting Bradbury for the good of social justice?
For the benefit of cosmic balance, Cam Slater will be publishing an anti-post to this one at some point later today.
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Chris Richardson
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