LITTLE TO GET EXCITED ABOUT

Because YOU didn't ask for him! Andrew Little is Labour's new leader. Would the last person to leave the Labour Party, please switch off the light...


THANKS TO THE SUPPORT of a cabal of union bosses it is the uninspiring and charisma-free Andrew Little who is now at the helm of the Labour Party.

Although Little likes to describe himself as 'left wing' he is not. Little is  a market politician and always has been.  His conservative politics are such that he once described the mild  Keynesian-inspired economic policies of the Alliance as 'extremist'.  Neither he or his Labour Party will be storming the citadels of capitalism anytime soon.

Labour might have a new leader but he will deliver up the same old neoliberal policies that both National and Labour have delivered over the past three decades.

Genuinely left-wing politicians talk about dismantling capitalism or radically reforming it. Little does neither. He talks  business as usual and thinks he's being 'pragmatic'.

The fact that Little feels comfortable describing himself as left wing is an indication of  just far to the right mainstream politics have travelled over the past thirty years.

Even someone as politically flexible as  Martyn Bradbury of The Daily Blog cannot find it in himself to come out in support of Little. He concludes  that the best 'progressives' can hope for is a "less mean version of the National Party."

So nothing changes. Labour is still the 'lesser evil'. Labour could be led by Krusty  the Clown or Attila the Hun and it would still be the 'lesser evil'.

Which puts Bradbury, in his view of Labour at least, firmly in the camp of  Socialist Aotearoa and the International Socialist Organisation.

Those on the right meanwhile can  carry on regardless, secure in the knowledge that in the next general election, all of New Zealand's parliamentary  parties will once again be led by men - and one woman - who think that neoliberalism is the only game in town.

In the absence of a genuine and independent left wing party, we can expect the Did Not Vote Party to triumph again in 2017.