I think Andrew Little might have made his first major mistake as Labour leader.

It’s generally accepted he’s made an excellent start. Polls show him to be a real contender and a worthy opponent of the Prime Minister. But then he wandered into the self-governance debate at Waitangi and instead of doing the sensible and dare I suggest obvious thing and reject it, he started suggesting we should look at it and talk about it.

Separatism and its debate is political dynamite.

Self-governance of any sort of description is a recipe for political disaster.

It is the domain of the angry, the bitter, the radical.

The concept in a country this size that you can start slicing off pieces and handing control over is madness.

Where does it start and where does it stop? 

Even the state system you see in places like America or Australia is deeply flawed and that’s got nothing to do with race, just geography. 

By the time you add race to the whole debate you have bought yourself a fight you’ll never get out of. 

And that’s before you get to the bit where once you start and set a precedent, how long is that queue? That’s also before you get to the bit where a country this size is about cohesion and cooperation and coordination. 

Just look at all the places round the world where race or culture or history is involved in legal or governance debates, from Belgium to Canada, to Australia, to the United Kingdom. It always ends in tears and shambles. 

But that’s not Andrew Little’s real mistake. 

His real mistake is he’s stepped outside his brief as the leader of a Party looking to head back towards the mainstream. 

This is a bloke who needs to haul his Party from 25 percent to 40 percent, and there is no way in hell you do that by wandering off down the separatism track. 

40 percent support is found in middle New Zealand, mortgage belt New Zealand, suburban New Zealand. 

Regular ordinary everyday Kiwis and those people aren't into radicalism. They’re not into separatism; they’re into housing, schools, the cost of living, and jobs. 

The National Government is into its third term, because it inherently gets that and delivers on it. 

For every second Andrew Little talks outside the middle, he’s appealing to the wrong crowd, and a bloke on trial with a 25 percent share can’t afford to do that.