CHRIS TROTTER : THE JESTER IN JACINDA'S COURT

"My TPPA is this big!", exclaims Chris Trotter.

Chris Trotter forgets to tell readers of The Press that he used to oppose the Trans Pacific Partnership Agreement - but this doesn’t stop him from attacking those who still do.

CHRIS TROTTER'S record on the Trans Pacific Partnership Agreement (TPPA), now described as the Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific Partnership (CPTPP) - is characterised by the political hypocrisy that he is becoming increasingly well known for.

Although Trotter, rapidly disappearing up his own backside, likes to portray himself as a measured and knowledgeable commentator, his increasingly erratic and contradictory views are marred by lies, half-truths, caricatures and attempts to smear and discredit Labour's political opponents - particularly the growing numbers to the left of Labour. As I've pointed out  several times before, Trotter's most virulent attacks are reserved not for the political right but for a left he is increasingly out of touch with and which he struggles to understand.

While he's now pretending to readers of The Press that his support of the reheated TPPA has been consistent and principled, it wasn't so long ago that he was strenuously opposed to it.

In 2015 he wrote that Labour was being urged by the political establishment to drop its position to the TPPA:

"Applying the maximum of public pressure to Labour will be the responsibility of the news media and the numerous business lobby groups. Behind the scenes, however, Labour MP's will find themselves on the receiving end of one-on-one briefings from old friends and colleagues (senior civil servants, leading academics) "deeply concerned" that Labour has positioned itself in the wrong place, on the wrong issue. "

He warned that "....money and resources will, very swiftly, begin flowing in the direction of these TPP supporters is equally certain. Metaphorical megaphones will also be handed to TPP supporters within the wider labour movement. Expect to see them popping-up again and again on radio and television."

Trotter was of the view that the political elite could not afford to have an anti-Labour Party voted into office:

"Were Labour's opposition to the TPP allowed to stand, an opportunity would open up for voters to elect a government committed to its rejection. The election of such a government would not only put at risk all the secret material pertaining to the negotiation of the TPP, but it would also force into the open all of the deeply undemocratic assumptions underpinning the deal. Such exposure would seriously compromise the reputations of the politicians and civil servants involved in negotiating the TPP. Even more seriously, it would expose the true intentions of New Zealand's "friends" and "allies". It is the duty of the Deep State to make sure that such potentially catastrophic political revelations never happen."

But, having cynically piggy backed on the nationwide opposition to the TPPA, Labour is now a resolute supporter of that very same agreement.

Such political opportunism would be commented on by any political pundit with any degree of integrity. But we're talking Chris Trotter here. Now that Labour intends to sign the free trade agreement on March 8, it comes as no surprise that Trotter now suddenly supports this abysmal agreement. Wherever Jacinda goes, Chris Trotter will uncritically follow. He's the Jester in Jacinda's court.

Displaying the same kind of corrupt and lazy politics he displayed when he attempted to smear an anti-TPPA group as a police front, Trotter is now trying to caricature the nationwide opposition to the TPPA as merely the protestations of a few on the 'hard left'. We can thus, says Trotter, safely ignore this opposition because " the hard-Left itself represents only a tiny fraction of the electorate.'

Trotter's politics have moved so far to the right that   just about anyone who doesn't support Labour runs the risk of being caricatured as 'hard left' by Trotter. It  also means he doesn't have to explain why over 100,000 marched down Queen Street against the TPPA in 2016. Presumably, applying Trotter's logic, they were all members of the hard-Left. Such a  casual dismissal of a grassroots campaign against the TPPA reveals where Trotter's political loyalties really lie - and it isn't with the working class that will be the victims of the agreement that Jacinda Ardern  will sign and which Chris Trotter now supports.