Politics
Life is imitating GoT- style art to a disturbing degree for the political left.
One of our top public watchdogs issued a plea on social media this week for clearer labelling of people’s posts, because he could no longer tell when he was reading about the latest instalment of Game of Thrones and when the subject was New Zealand politics.
Privacy Commissioner John Edwards may not have been entirely kidding. The gory TV blockbuster’s infamous Red Wedding episode has been a little too allegorical for comfort these past few weeks: rival clans negotiate a sacred pact for a reigning truce – only to shock us with sudden knifings.
Metiria Turei’s story arc has had all the sweeping drama of the medieval fantasy – with the press gallery supplying a fair atmospheric approximation of thundering hooves and ravening dragons.
The Green Queen had just gone all out to cut Labour’s throats, little dreaming she would soon be up against a new Red Queen, who although supposedly benign, turned out to be just as handy with the knife and lost no time in returning the favour. Not even GoT casualties get opinion-poll torture before their demise.
The cliffhanger for watchers of # Nzpol, #GoT- style is which of Parliament’s warring kingdoms will do best out of this brutal repositioning.
Ordinarily, any outbreak of disunity in the Opposition bloc will make National and its wildling allies rub their hands. But the possibility of Jacinda Ardern doing more than simply halting Labour’s poll decline puts all normal reckoning into doubt.
Besides the opinion polls, a useful barometer is Winston Peters’ smile. The New Zealand First leader’s resting-face ranges from an Elvis “just you wait” sneer to the full baskingcrocodile “gotcha!” On Day One of Labour’s leadership change, the smileo-meter suffered total failure, as Peters realised he was no longer centre of attention as putative kingmaker. By about Day Six, the smile-dial was at Cheshire Cat. He had worked out he might now have a genuine choice, if Jacindamania was more than a flash in the pan, between a fattened-up Labour Party and a newly reduced National Party with which to form the next Government (though only after much suspenseful consideration; Winston is GoT- grade at torture). By Day Eight, the needle was hovering at half-croc. Peters could now enjoy the extra frisson of a Green Party so reduced he might not have to sharpen his elbows to best them in any negotiations with Labour.
NOT SO FAST
Still, if Turei’s benefit-confession gambit teaches us anything, it’s that there’s only a factoid or two between triumph and a drubbing in politics. Best to wait a while before counting either one’s chickens, or one another’s vultures.
The Greens co-leader piled points onto her party’s poll rating with her polarising confession of having cheated on her benefit in the 1990s while at law school as a solo mother. The lift came at Labour’s expense, reducing the chances of a change of
Turei teaches us there’s only a factoid or two between triumph and a drubbing in politics.
Government, but to the Greens it still felt like a win. Turei had put the undeniable ill-treatment of beneficiaries on the agenda.
Unfortunately, it soon proved she had mischaracterised herself as an archetype of the desperate struggling battler, given she’d had options many beneficiaries don’t, including family accommodation and financial and other support. Inconvenient further details emerged: she’d registered for an election as living at the house of her daughter’s father’s at the time she had said she was flatting and not disclosing the extra rental income.
Suddenly, the story became one about her probity, rather than the