Audrey Young on Mr Shearer

I have worked my way through Ms Young's analysis of Mr Shearer's Labour Party, and it reads to me as a recipe for tail-ending National, wrapped up in a rhetoric of "re-engagement" with Labour's constituency. It is a statement of the view that National occupies the only disposable political terrain available in NZ, and that Labour must displace National by being more of (and better than) National. It is a model of political unitarism, in which Mr Key makes the rules, and Labour must play to them.

This is not the Labour Party of Ms Clark (despite what some might say). Neither is it Mr Goff's view, though he was somewhat closer. It is a view of a caponed Labour party, in which Mr Shearer is to preside over a constrained centrism, afraid to take "radical" positions, unless they have been sanctioned by the rule of that new unitarism. Fortunately, it is only Ms Young's view. If it were to be that of Mr Shearer, his troops would be thin on the ground.