[Frozen Peaches sorely regrets the error in yesterday’s issue. Many a factual error or unreliable opinion we publish without bothering to correct them right away #itsokaytobewrong, but in this instance we promised a big, juicy diagram to sink your teeth into. Dear audience, there was no diagram. The error has since been rectified, and the delay has permitted us to move Chris Hipkins right to overlap heavily with the “fighter” category, which this piece will get to shortly enough. We apologise for any anguish or emotional duress this error may have caused, and pray that you enjoy the rest of the article.]
Right, no time to faff around here. We’re on the clock this morning - the Labour caucus is billed to nominate one candidate unanimously at 9am after reaching a deal overnight for a Hipkins-Sepuloni ticket. [Frozen Peaches would also like to express their apologies for blatantly and erroneously stating that the deputy leader will not change, because Grant Robertson is staying. He was never deputy leader - he is staying on as Deputy PM and at Finance if he has anything to say about it, and the deputy leader spot of Kelvin Davis is up for grabs.]
Anything relevant to that future must be said now; any other speculation that could be interesting about a more competitive race will be saved for tomorrow, for either if the race is competitive and needs new commentary, or as lessons to prepare for future power struggles. [Editor’s note: all 17 items on my Notes app ended up making it in, so no need to worry. Stay jolly, dear reader.]
What we are looking at here is reminiscent of how Luxon got the leadership: after speculation over who might run (notably Simon Bridges), the party recognised it was in their better interests to come together and hammer out a deal. In this case the party had much less ill feeling internally; many more heavyweights willing to sit it out and contribute (Robertson as well as Megan Woods, who has unequivocally ruled out any leadership ambitions and just wants to focus on the campaign - cypher decyphered?); and will probably involve a lot less obvious political horsetrading and rewards for participants. I would still expect promotions in the upcoming reshuffle to be based principally on merit and on making a strong case of a refresh to the public - sure, Wood and Allan might get promotions, but it makes sense anyway for them.
It is little wonder that they want to avoid a fight for the leadership. Besides the terrible public appearance that it would bring, our intel suggests that Hipkins is more popular amongst his colleagues, while Wood is more popular amongst the rank and file of the membership. Such a split vote to make one of them leader would breed resentment amongst the other side that cannot come to pass if the MPs prevent things ever getting to that point. Both MPs are scrappers, and might make things messier than they need to be.
RNZ ran a good article on this that I’m just resummarising now: Hipkins was seen as a puppet for the unions in Opposition (which means that you need to mentally picture him kinda jumping around on my diagram), aggravated the Māori caucus at the time with the dogmatic push to close down charter schools, and is a bit too liable to get into personal attacks. In many respects he seems strong - he’s just going to need to shape up and round out if he wants to come out of an election better rather than worse for wear. (The party is bound to end up worse for wear, but he can surely soften the blow if he does the right things.)
Takes that Grant Robertson would be a more reliable interim (from everybody from Labour insiders to Ibrahim Omer, who I really wish I got to hear speak on more things than this - praying for a higher list ranking) were bad. He is closely associated with Brand Ardern, more so than Hipkins. We just learnt that you should let MPs who don’t want the job move on. He’s already volunteering so much by planning to remain a key part of the infrastructure going into Opposition. Options like him or Little are the last-ditch rock you turn to after you’ve sorted through the rest of the stardust, and Hipkins is already at the top of the cupboard.
I apparently don’t need to speculate anymore on who the deputy is - she’s Carmel Sepuloni. I wish I knew more about her, but through the very simple lens of ticket balancing it makes sense: you balance a young white guy with a woman of the same age and years of experience, whose background includes Samoa and Tonga, in that way preserving the freshness while ensuring representation that I’m guessing is the next-best option for the Māori caucus too.
I’m relieved to see this. I had been fearing a Hipkins-Allan ticket, for two reasons. The first is that you could threaten to rerun the 2017 situation. White guy leader gets a young, exciting female deputy; she starts to rise in preferred prime minister while he struggles; the media calls to replace him with her and, bam, especially in an era where we’re aware of the Jacindamania trick, you’ve sealed his fate.
The second is that we need to put people in high office at the right time. Hipkins and Sepuloni have both been in Parliament since 2008, and now feels like the right time - they’re hitting their stride with energy and youth without being pushed into it far too soon. We just saw with Jacinda the cost of pushing in somebody who is not yet ready: she did amazing things, but it will burn you out. Don’t give Kiri Allan and co. the same treatment.
Let these wonderful people have their chances to get the lay of the land, have conversations with their colleagues, think about their next steps, and then, when the time is right, Labour’s hopefully much-improved, rejuvenated and reorganised list can storm an election and finally deliver some big tackles to the runaway problems in our country. I don’t see that coming out of this election, and I’m thinking Labour don’t either. Good call; time to rally the troops and put up as good a rearguard fight as they can this election. Who knows, they might just scrape it out anyway.
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