HoS on Goff

Some interesting and amusing aspects in their Goff profile:

“I don’t regard myself as being arrogant,” he says. “I’ve never regarded myself as being nakedly ambitious. I’ve actually set out, rather, to do the jobs that have been given to me as well as I could.”

Did he manage to say that with a straight face?

There are numerous superficial similarities with Helen Clark: both became involved in Labour when they were young; both were pointy-headed young political scientists at the University of Auckland; both were elected to Parliament straight from university; they ended up in adjacent Auckland electorates.

But Goff is anxious to highlight the differences: she was a farm girl, his dad was traditional Labour blue-collar, a fitter and turner with the railways. His grandmother, widowed in 1934, lost her house in the Depression. She thought that Michael Joseph Savage, the first Labour Prime Minister, walked on water.

Goff worked in the freezing works in his school and university holidays, with men who had been there since the 1940s. “I learned a lot at university, but I also a learned a hell of a lot working on the factory floor.”

And Goff is much much more centrist than Clark. If he gets Labour to drop their almost unique ban on asset sales (which would outflank National) I would almost vote for him.