Country’s choice of leader not a laughing matter

Andrew Little may not have quite known how to take the back-handed compliment handed to him before his post-Budget breakfast speech at Te Papa yesterday. In his remarks introducing the Labour leader, MC Brayden Smith noted that, if Little won the top job on September 23, the reaction wouldn’t be ‘‘it’s hilarious’’ as it had been to elections in other parts of the world. Presumably it was a tangential reference to United States President Donald Trump, but Little seemed unsure how to react.