Goodbye Charles

Labour MP Charles Chauvel has announced he is leaving Parliament for a UN job. Bugger. He was one of Labour's more talented MPs, a strong voice for equality, republicanism, and the environment, and he would have made a good Minister one day. But I guess watching Labour sleepwalk to defeat in 2014 and the prospect of demotion by the ageing clique around David Shearer was just too much for him.

Meanwhile, I'm wondering how many other Labour MPs will be forced out by the old guard. Labour's focus on incumbent-protection in its 2011 party list has already stripped it of most of the talent it gained in 2008; how much more is it going to lose due to the refusal of ageing time-servers to relinquish their death-grip on the party?