The deck chairs have been slightly rearranged but has the party, that was not too long ago heading towards an iceberg, changed course?

Andrew Little's been at the helm of the Labour Party for just over a year now, winning by a whisker over Grant Robertson after an exhaustive ballot among the party's rank and file.

So what has he brought to the top job? Well for starters, he sounds much more like a down to earth Kiwi bloke than Martin Luther Cunliffe, who was ashamed of being a man, ever did.

But the party hasn't moved much in the popularity stakes with a paucity of policy with Little preferring to say what he won't do with some confidence which is rather easy, given that things like a capital gains tax and raising the pension age were firmly rejected by the electorate.

He hasn't had much to say on what he will do but he's now told us who he'd like to do it with.

Cunliffe's on the outer, even though he wasn't a bad Cabinet performer in the Clark cabal which unfortunately for him didn't extend to leadership. It's a similar position that Bill English found himself in after taking National to its biggest ever routing in 2002, but unlike Cunliffe, he was given a second chance and look where he is today!

Little's kitchen Cabinet includes the wily woman known around the place as Auntie Annette King because she's seen as a butter-wouldn't-melt-in-her-mouth type, when in reality the softest part of her is her teeth.

The rising stars are Jacinda Ardern, who's something of a whiskey connoisseur, preferring a single malt to a blend which in political terms wouldn't work in a broad church Labour lineup. And Kelvin Davis, who calls a spade a shovel when it comes to name calling Key on his way into Parliament's bear pit, has been rewarded for defending crims in Mt Eden against their nasty Serco guards and going over to battle for those who're being chucked out of Australia.

So Little's team's in place, now we await the policy they'll get to play with. His first year in the job has been spent successfully it would seem, calming the waters and largely ignoring the waves.

In fact Labour's becalmed, the popularity wave continues to break for National with Key hanging ten on a personal rating of 40 percent compared to Little's eight.

But then Helen Clark was once known as Miss Three Percent!