Little’s u-turn

Jenna Lynch reports:

Labour leader Andrew Little has pulled a u-turn on dirty electorate deals, accepting a Valentine’s Day gift from the Greens, The Dunne Deal.

The Greens will step aside and not run a candidate in Ohariu, giving Labour’s candidate Greg O’Connor a free run to take out Peter Dunne.

Just don’t call it a deal to Andrew Little.

“It’s not a deal,” he says. His more palatable term is “electoral accommodation”.

It’s a sensitive topic because the Labour leader himself criticised these deals during his first election back in 2011 when ACT stood aside for National in the seat he was vying for – New Plymouth.

“If you’re a party and you’re fighting in a general election you put your candidates up and you put your people up and we’ll be the judge. People don’t like being deprived of that choice,” he said at the time.

They may indeed find people don’t like being deprived of a choice in a general election seat.