TOBY MANHIRE : FLYING THE FLAG FOR CENTRISM

Toby Manhire enjoying a laugh with Jacinda Ardern.

Mildly liberal Toby Manhire of The Spinoff has got all excited that the centrist UK publication Prospect has named another centrist, Jacinda Ardern, as second in its list of the world's 'top thinkers'.

THE SPINOFF is a largely centrist pro-Labour Party website and editor Toby Manhire is one of its chief Labour Party cheerleaders .So it comes as no surprise  that he should enthusiastically write that 'the star of Jacinda Ardern continues to shine bright in the international firmament.'

The reason for Manhire's excitement is  that the British magazine Prospect has named her 'second in the world in a list of the world’s top 50 thinkers for the Covid-19 age.'

Manhire though forgets to tell his readers that Prospect is a largely centrist publication that was lukewarm to downright hostile towards the left wing Labour Party of Jeremy Corbyn. It has backed its new leader, the unremarkable and centrist Keir Starmer to 'deal with the legacy of the Jeremy Corbyn era' and that 'Starmer needs a year or two to reset Labour’s policies and carry the party with him.'

Prospect is calling for 'unity' after it spent much of its  time trying to undermine the leadership of Corbyn.

The major shareholder in Prospect is the Resolution Foundation which is owned by wealthy British businessman Colin Cowdery. According to the Sunday Times he is worth in the region of 140 million pounds.

He is a longtime associate of former British Prime Minister Tony Blair and he shares Blair's disdain for anything that even resembles socialist or left wing politics. Such was his dislike for Jeremy Corbyn and his policies that he donated 300,000 pounds to the election campaign of the Liberal Democrats.

That Prospect should commend the centrism of Jacinda Ardern is also hardly surprising given that its hoping that Starmer can achieve the same electoral success for UK Labour.

Interestingly, in a March 27 2019 article for Prospect, Max Rashbrooke, another pundit of liberal views, wrote that Jacinda Ardern's 'radical plans are shaking up her country’s economy and society.' But he has had a change of heart about Ardern since then and he wrote in the Guardian this week that Ardern has entrenched the status quo and that 'not much change' should be expected from a second term Labour government.