According to Colin Espiner in The Press, Don Brash wants to lead National in the next election. I think the only response to this is "bring it on!" By 2008, Brash will be looking old and tired; his reputation as an honest non-politician (already looking fairly damaged by his conduct ">before and during the election) will be tarred by another three years in Parliament; his appeal to social liberals will likewise be undermined by another three years of sucking up to social conservatives in an effort to get the bigot vote; and most importantly, there will have been another three years of demographic change in ways which will not favour his frankly backward positions on women and Maori.
And OTOH, Helen won't be looking that good either. But I think she could still beat Brash. It's people like John Key and a revived Bill English she should be afraid of, not Don.
If we're talking about demographic changes, Idiot, shouldn't we stop using "old" as a knee-jerk term of political abuse? I think the only party leaders under sixty nowadays are Clark herself and Pita Sharples,
ReplyDeleteLabour is way more damaged than National - they have so many scandals it would take me a while to list them and there are still more coming.
ReplyDeleteI think it's a real problem that so many politicians in NZ are, frankly, coffin-cheaters.
ReplyDeleteI think the Greens in particular should look at some sort of system to improve their demographics. Maybe have two lists, one with existing (or past) MPs eligible and one open only to under-30s that have never run before. Then intersperse the two lists (so if 6 MPs get elected then you'd get 3 current MPs and 3 new young ones).