No campaign launch for Labour

Claire Trevett at the Herald reports:

The Labour Party has broken from tradition by deciding not to have an official campaign launch this year.

It will instead mark the start of its campaign in a low-key way – with a policy announcement on savings to media tomorrow in its own caucus room.

The decision not to have a launch event is unusual – the events are considered to provide valuable media and television coverage of a leader speaking to an audience of supporters in the lead up to the election.

This is almost unheard of. A campaign launch generally gets you a couple of minutes on the TV news that night promoting your message, and guaranteed coverage in all the dailies the next day.

For Labour not to do a campaign launch, suggests things are dire.

I suspect they were worried so few supporters would turn up, that it would draw unfavourable comparisons to National’s campaign launch, or even Labour’s 2008 campaign launch.

Or they are broke and can’t afford one, as the parliamentary funding tap has been turned off for them.

A third possibility is they thought two minutes of Phil Goff in prime time would actually lose them votes. But I doubt that is the reason, as they have him taking part in the debates.

Can people think of any other reason that Labour are not having a campaign launch? Apart from the official spin line that they are concentrating on policy!