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The Soap Box: Will Little ever get the big job?

Author
Barry Soper,
Publish Date
Fri, 21 Aug 2015, 7:48AM
(Getty Images)
(Getty Images)

The Soap Box: Will Little ever get the big job?

Author
Barry Soper,
Publish Date
Fri, 21 Aug 2015, 7:48AM

It's often said in politics that being the leader of the opposition is the most frustrating position to be in.

You're the apprentice Prime Minister but many never become the journeyman.

Helen Clark used to confide that being the Government's lead opponent disguised the real her. She privately complained that she was always portrayed as unsmilingly glum which she was most of the time during her six long years waiting coveting the ultimate political prize.

With the adversarial nature of the business, leading the opposition is just that, opposing which by its very nature is being negative.

Angry Andy Little must be wondering whether he's ever going to lay claim to the ninth floor of the Beehive, even though he's only been in the job for less than a year. After Martin Luther Cunliffe anyone was going to look good, although just being good isn't going to cut it against the flashy, self confident, verbose Prime Minister.

It seems the great unwashed have little concern about the collapsed dairy industry, probably because Teflon John Key's been jawboning up other industries telling us we've got nothing to worry about. And the dodgy Saudi Arabian farm deal seems to have been water of the duck's back to punters who're probably convinced the whole thing was Labour's fault anyway given that's what they're constantly being told by their great leader.

If the latest Morgan poll's anything to go by, Key's crowd will be laughing all the way to the ballot box. The Nats have picked up more than seven percent, giving them an outright majority while Labour's plunged into the psychologically damaging territory of 27 percent, a drop of five percent.

The trouble for Labour is that it tends to react without reason.

Over the past couple of days for example, Angry Andy fumed over Murray McCully holding on to his portfolio while the auditor general's looking into his greasing the palm of a Saudi businessman with our hard earned dosh. He knows full well the PM's not about to put him on gardening leave when we've got the world to run on the UN Security Council.

And then there was Mike Moore clone Clayton Cosgrove mouthing off about how Genesis shouldn't have cancelled their coal contract with Solid Energy and instead should have shown cooperation in the public interest, given they're both owned by us.

Yeah well there's no public interest left in Solid Energy, it belongs to the banks.

Labour needs to start showing us where it's going to go rather than concentrating on where others have gone wrong and then getting it wrong themselves!

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