July 31, 2019 4:00pm by David Farrar

Identity politics friendly fire

Is there anyone who isn’t a middle-aged white male in this party? Doesn’t look like it with this reshuffle. https://t.co/yrgHeSetFP
— Sue Moroney (@suemoroney) July 30, 2019

A fairly silly tweet by former Labour MP Sue Moroney. The so called reshuffle (due to a retirement) involves two MPs – Todd Muller and Scott Simpson. So judging a party off a two person reshuffle is pretty silly to put it mildly.

But it is fashionable to decry white males in politics. So let’s see how National and Labour compare. Let’s look at Labour’s Cabinet Ministers.

There are 16 of them. How many are white males – Robertson, Twyford, Hipkins, Little, Clark, Parker, Nash, Lees-Galloway and O’Connor. So 9/16 or a majority.

And let’s look at National’s top 16. The white males are Goldsmith, McClay, Mitchell, Brownlee, Woodhouse, Simpson and Bishop. Just 7/16.

So the party Moroney was complaining about actually has white males in a minority in their top 16 while her party has them in a majority.

Identity politics can be so blind.