Hopefully,
before too long, we’ll know who the next leader of the Labour Party is. I know
someone else has just got the job but it’s by no means clear that David
Cunliffe is destined to be a long-term Labour leader; the best of luck to him
but like Goff and Shearer he could well turn out to be another stopgap, a place-holder,
someone temporarily occupying the position that rightly belongs to another. The
same would be true had Grant Robertson or Shane Jones got the job. None of them
has looked really right for it. This is the legacy of Roger Douglas and, to a
lesser extent, Helen Clark: a party so diminished that the kind of outstanding political
talent you’d normally expect to come through, generation by generation, has
failed to show. Cunliffe, Robertson and Jones are all thoroughly competent
politicians fit to be cabinet ministers in any administration; but none
inspires as a real leader should. Each in their own way, to tell the truth, has
come across as awkwardly ill suited for the top job. Let’s be frank: did any of
them really excite anyone?
If another
golden age of power is possible for Labour, then somewhere out there, in the
mists of the future, is the real leader who will take them to those glorious
heights. She or he is probably not even in Parliament at the moment. In fact,
they aren’t. I can think of two, if not three possible future Labour leaders, all of whom must be weighing up their prospects now; though not in
the House yet, they could swiftly be parachuted in. Pay attention to the open
skies; you never know what will be coming down.
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