#TeamKey and #TeamCorkery agree on one thing at least: they both want talk to be about policies, not dirty politics.
#TeamCorkery’s wish didn’t come true however because her Sugar Daddy wanted to talk about hacking. So, thought the media, hacking it is. [UPDATE 1: Curiously, the story, which was all over the news yesterday, is in the process of disappearing down the memory hole. UPDATE 2: Or is the story’s disappearance ‘round the net just a correction, all having previously said DotCon had “admit[ted] to hacking.”]
Hard to complain about their subsequent questions when they were being taunted from the stage.
On the other hand, maybe it’s better if the media didn’t focus on National’s policies, because what they’ll find if they do is pretty damned limp – an effective vote of no-confidence in their own stated values. From the point of view of the left, as Danyl McLaughlan summarises, they’ll find a virtual reverse takeover:
National’s ideology and values are not (yet) delivering any policy ideas during this campaign. Free money for first home buyers, free doctor’s visits for children and MOAR ROADS are not right-wing (or ‘centre right’) ideas, in the way that the partial sales of the energy companies was. Having a popular right-wing party simply unable to campaign on its values or ideas is a pretty sweet place for the left to be, long term. It would be nice to be in government, but having National in there implementing left-wing policies for us is the next best thing.
John Key: the best left-wing Prime Minister since the last one.
2 comments:
Key was explicitly elected as a prettier face on Helen's policies - but in practice, Key/English have governed well to the left of Clark/English.
For a start: there's no way the markets would have allowed a Labour government to borrow sixty billion in five years. No way at all. But under National, borrowing sixty million isn't just fine & dandy: it's a "Rock Star Economy". (And prehaps it is, because rock stars tend to buy expensive cocaine on borrowed money and end up raddled and in rehab, or dead in the gutter in their own vomit).
Yeah, but you people went out and elected him. You have no right to complain!
Amit
Post a Comment