Little boxes

Truly, it has been said by (I think) Colin Espiner of the
Press that the next Labour prime minister is almost
certainly not even in Parliament yet: just as, six years
before he became PM, John Key wasn’t even an MP.
In a highly volatile economic time it can’t be ruled out
that Labour led by Phil Goff will win the next election;
but it’s unlikely. More likely is: Goff loses, abdicates
leadership, some poor sod takes over for 18 months
or so before Andrew Little, who will have entered
Parliament at the 2011 election, surges to the top and
leads Labour to victory in 2014. I say this having just
seen Paul Holmes’s interview of Little on TV1’s latest
current affairs program, Q&A. Little looks the goods
and ticks all the boxes for Labour in a way that other
mooted leadership contenders like Shane Jones and
David Cunliffe don’t. Cunliffe’s a finance minister at
best; Jones may yet scrub up—good idea to get rid of
the beard, Shane—but has a way to go yet, certainly as
far as public perception is concerned. In the meantime,
I do think Little has a problem simultaneously being
Labour Party president and head of the EPMU, no
matter how plausibly he evaded Holmes’s questions
about the potential—no, actual—conflict of interest.