The next Labour leader
Andrea Vance at Stuff blogs:
Camp David Cunliffe must be a pretty lonely place right now.
Labour’s lost the argument on the numbers. Phil Goff was allowed to front up to the public woefully unprepared on Labour’s economic policies.
That was one of two things: incompetent or a deliberate undermining of the leader.
Now we have the numbers, they are not so convincing. Labour appeared to be hiding $6 billion of extra borrowing to restart contributions to the Super Fund. And it seems they have overstated the revenue stream from SOE dividends.
On top of all this Cunliffe looked nasty and sexist with his snide comments about police minister Judith Collins (who I’m pretty sure doesn’t want to breed with him either).
He’s been in parliament for more than a decade – but he’s a little short on allies within the caucus.
Saying all his, he was impressive – and confident – in a head to head debate with finance minister Bill English yesterday. He was also well-received on his last appearance on TVNZ’s Q+A a couple of weeks back.
David will never be accused of lacking in confidence!
I also rate his abilities. He was a good Minister, and if there is to be a Labour Government again at some stage (which is inevitable), I think he would be a better choice for Finance Minister than any other alternatives. Whether he has the skills to be leader is not yet known.
iPredict has markets on who will be the next Labour Party Leader. The current probabilities are:
- Cunliffe 35%
- Parker 32%
- Shearer 13%
- Robertson 5%
- Jones 5%
- Little 4%
- Mallard 2%
- Street 0%
The only thing that looks certain is the next leader will be a bloke!
This is in some contrast to National. If Key retires around 2016, then I suspect we could have three women as realistic contenders for National’s leadership.