Chris Trotter thinks it’s too late for Labour to turn voters around:
What John Key’s managed to do over these last three years in make National in a way New Zealand or at least New Zealand as it is seen by nearly two thirds it would now appear of the voters. And those who are in the other parties in a strange way are almost now out of that definition and that it is an absolutely fatal place for a political party to find itself in and it makes it extremely difficult both for the party and the party’s leader to get back in the race.
I think you’ve got to go back to that 2005 to 2008 period, the last term of Helen Clark’s government, when New Zealand really fell out of love with Labour. More and more people, even traditional Labour voters began to see Labour as not really representing them, whereas John Key’s performance really made him one of us, he’s our sort of guy, he really talks our language.
And that has just consolidated over the last three years to the point where it’s a flat line you know of National’s support and it’s you know about 20 percentage points above the flat line of Labour’s. . . it’s quite an achievement on National’s part . . . it’s almost as if he’s made Don Brash’s statement of 2005,mainstream New Zealand is National, which was wrong then but is right now. . .
You really do get the impression that New Zealanders have looked at Labour, decided a) they don’t really sound very much like us, like me; and b) they’re just not ready, look at them, they’re all over the place. . .
John Key’s personal popularity, an acceptance that National has had an unprecedented series of serious events outside its control to deal with and the Kiwi sense of giving a first-term government a fair go are all conspiring against Labour.
But its failure to learn from the lesson the electorate gave it in 2008, disunity and ill-discipline have turned off all but its hard core supporters.
They have less than eight weeks to persuade voters to trust them. But how can a couple of months of words turn around opinions based on several years of misguided and increasingly unpopular actions?
Homepaddock 