The Ruminator

Chin up kids, it’ll be ok

• Lord Sutch
• 3
• Posted on November 19, 2014November 19, 2014

So the election of Andrew Little was met with a wailing of teeth from my Twitter feed.

It appeared that Twitter’s darling was Grant Robertson who was so close but so far from taking the leadership mantle. I think the best response to it was from Twitter political nerd Lew who said:

If you're in central Wgtn, that noise you can hear is all the Young Labour kids tearing up their memberships and going to join the Greens

— Lew (@LewSOS) November 18, 2014

All the progressive libs are terrified that Little is going to send Labour back to the dark ages and crucify gays, women and blacks. I think.

Anyway, I have been thinking about this overnight and to be honest I think there are actually a lot of positives from a Little leadership:

• the guy took a Union who was having massive infighting problems and whipped them into shape. His climb to the top of that job is infamous for the way in which it was done, heads were trampled on and feelings were not spared. This is exactly what the Labour party needs.
• Little isn’t beholden to factions: so Little was dead last in the caucus vote. What this also means is that a number of “dead wood” Labour MPs who perhaps should have left the building by now could find themselves shepherded closer to that exit door. Little owes very few people in the caucus his leadership so he can afford to be brutal.
• His name isn’t David.
• Bomber is already crying into his cargo shorts, so this can only be a good thing.
• He came out today and said that Roger Sutton should not have been able to hold a press conference, nor should he have been paid out. Good start.
• He worked on some policy to help the victims of sexual abuse not be revictimised through the Courts process – so there is a bit of the urban lib about him
• He has a cat and worked that cat well into his campaign for leader
• He actually has a fairly dry sense of humour. People uncharitably call him “dour” or “dull” or “uncharismatic” but if he is these things, he owns them and laughs at them.

So for fuck’s sake left wing people. Get your shit together. Let’s at least give the guy a chance and get behind him. Besides, he’s hardly going to be worse than the last guy.