Phil Goff has no virtù

I thought I had little to add to what Lew and Russell have said about Phil Goff's disastrous leadership of the Labour Party. But actually, I do. And its right there in the title: Phil Goff has no virtù.

For those who don't know: virtù is a key concept in Niccolò Machiavelli's The Prince. Roughly translated it means "political virtue", competence in political management and the application of power. The other key concept is fortuna, or as Harold Macmillan would put it, "events, dear boy, events". A politician with virtù is able to manage events to their advantage, or at least to avoid serious disadvantage.

Helen Clark had virtù. Whatever else people may think of her, she displayed consistently good political management, making the right choices for the maintenance of her power (and then fell because, lets face it, a third term is a tough enough hand to play, without throwing in the complicating factor of coalition with Winston). I initially thought Goff was cast from the same mould, only a weaker model - an uninspiring managerial politician, but a safe pair of hands. Since then he's established a consistent pattern of poor decision-making, failing to seize opportunities and act decisively; trying to seize the moral high ground and then failing to follow through; ruining his big policy launch by failing to do the maths; and now a ham-fisted mushroom strategy on Darren Hughes which has left his caucus and party president in the dark and looks like a shoddy attempt at a coverup. Machiavelli warned that

It makes him contemptible to be considered fickle, frivolous, effeminate ["weak" - I/S], mean-spirited, irresolute, from all of which a prince should guard himself as from a rock

Goff has managed to make himself appear all of those things. His default response of echoing John Key with an "and my wife too" just makes him seem pathetic.

Phil Goff has no virtù, and without it he cannot possibly win the upcoming election. The question now is whether anyone else in Labour does, and wants to make a go of it.

A dangerous decision

The decision not to prosecute the police officer who killed Ian Tomlinson isn't just wrong - its is also dangerous. Here's why.

When it comes down to it, I am some form of Hobbesean. No, not his absolutism, or his idea that there was an actual contract, but his core idea (which is the foundation of most modern political theory) that government exists by consent and that its primary purpose is to save us from the state of nature. One of the ways it does that is by protecting people and arbitrating disputes. Locke refines on this and basically says that government has to deliver justice; while he shrouds this in superstitious nonsense about "implementing the law of god", the cynical reason is more compelling: because otherwise people take matters into their own hands.

When the government's justice is so transparently biased, it raises the risk that people will seek their own justice. Now, I don't really think the aggrieved family of Ian Tomlinson are going to get a lynchmob together (and sadly, they can't afford to mount the private prosecution this case deserves) - but the fact that that looks like a more just solution than what the government is offering fundamentally undermines the government's legitimacy, and its a sad commentary on the state of the British government today.