THE CURIOUS POLITICS OF MARTYN BRADBURY

Martyn Bradbury : "Maybe I'm a centrist left winger."

Martyn Bradbury of The Daily Blog claims that the Labour Party leadership wanted the Campaign for Change to collapse because it had a left wing agenda. But Bradbury's supposed new-found conversion to left wing politics comes at a time when he has been a consistently loyal defender of Labour's doggedly centrist views.

SINCE HE HAS been promoting it on The Daily Blog, it comes as no surprise that Martyn Bradbury has leaped to the defence of the Labour Party's 'Campaign for Change'. In the process he contradicts mostly everything the Labour top brass have been saying. Leader Andrew Little has described the campaign as being "wildly out of control" and the treatment of the 85 overseas students - or 'interns" - as "embarrassing".

Bradbury however, refusing to give up while he's behind, claims that the Campaign for Change has been the victim of an orchestrated smear campaign, driven by the corporate media. But he provides little evidence for this big claim.

His most curious charge is that the Labour Party leadership itself wanted the Campaign for Change to collapse because "Labour Party HQ Wellington become (sic) panicked by how big the Campaign had grown and despite green lighting it started dragging their feet until the thing fell over."

Bradbury goes on to say:

"A whispering campaign targeting the funders strangled off money because Labour Party HQ Wellington’s preference is to win over voters who are existing voters because the policy platform doesn’t have to be particularly radical for that.

What Labour didn’t want was a huge campaign to the Left of Labour pressuring them for a Corbyn or Sanders platform."

He then highlights what he says is the 'Campaign for Change Manifesto'. It isn't however a manifesto but a list of ten demands including an eighteen month rent freeze, a $20 minimum wage, a lower voting age of 16 and free school lunches.

He provides no details of how this 'manifesto' was derived. We don't  know what discussions took place. We don't know who was involved. We don't even know who wrote it.

But since the Campaign for Change was all about mining databases and drumming up potential votes for Labour, it is curious that 85 overseas students doing this work should also be involved in formulating a list of political demands.

It becomes even more curious because while he claims that the Labour Party could not tolerate such a left wing agenda, Bradbury himself has been a consistent and loyal defender of the Labour Party's centrist politics and election strategy. While he writes that "the real story is Labour’s fear of a courageous left wing platform' he wasn't so long ago criticising the likes of former Green Party Keith Locke for not supporting the centrist politics of Labour and describing it as 'righteous left wing condemnation."