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The Soap Box: Labour leadership race down to two men

Author
Barry Soper,
Publish Date
Mon, 17 Nov 2014, 3:09PM

The Soap Box: Labour leadership race down to two men

Author
Barry Soper,
Publish Date
Mon, 17 Nov 2014, 3:09PM

So Labour will finally choose its new leader today and they're hoping he'll be the glue to fix the party through until the next election.

It'll be their fourth leader since Head Girl Helen's departure and if they don't get it right this time Teflon John Key could potentially become the political rust in the Beehive, he'll keep on keeping on.

Their choices since Clark were more bricks than mortar. Phil Goff was the logical successor, but like everything in politics, timing for him was like a badly set alarm clock which was essentially beyond his control.

The country wasn't ready for the wake up call, they wanted more than one term from Key but because of the disarray in Labour, he's just got his third.

Dithering David Shearer was a political infant and could never handle the demands of leading the opposition. Martin Luther Cunliffe had an absolute belief in himself that no one else shared.

So whoever they choose today will almost certainly run for the Prime Minister's job. It'll come down to two men, the affable Grant Robertson, who his colleagues like but who has a pink elephant on his shoulder which will be too heavy for many in the party to bear.

Former trade union boss, Labour President and now list MP Andrew Little's the other one. Even though he saw National's majority in his hometown of New Plymouth, where he stood for the second time, jump from four thousand to ten at the last election the party likes him and they hope the public will too in three years time.

If he does pull it off today though, and he's now the front runner, it really will show that MMP does turn losers into winners. Less than two months ago he wasn't even sure whether he'd be back in Parliament!

Still Little has the ability to heal the Labour wounds, which by the end of Cunliffe's rein had become festering sores.

MPs, card carriers and trade unionists will have listed their preferences from one to four. If there's not a clear favourite, winning more than 50 percent of the vote, the least popular drops off and the second preference is stacked up, and so it goes on, possibly to a third ballot before the puff of smoke goes up from the Labour caucus room.

We'll know the result mid afternoon but one thing's for sure, whoever wins will be more popular with his colleagues than Cunliffe ever was!

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