Thanks Labour

Well done Labour.

Your conference was an opportunity to show a united face.

It was an opportunity to showcase forward looking policy which would help New Zealand become a happier, healthier, wealthier, better educated, more secure country.

It was an opportunity to show your caucus as a government in waiting.

It was an opportunity to cement David Shearer as leader.

It was an opportunity to get some positive publicity.

And you blew it.

The publicity has been almost all negative because your party looks divided.

The policy which got most attention was about internal reorganisation which has further destablised leader David Shearer.

Vernon Small sums it up:

Bitter conference is manna from heaven for Key’s machine, writes Vernon Small .

In its headlong rush to give grassroots members a greater say in future leadership votes, the Labour Party may have just pushed its current leader over the cliff.

Even if the damage to David Shearer isn’t fatal, it has made the party’s already difficult job that much harder.

However good his speech is today – and he was already under pressure to deliver a blockbuster full of core policy and “mongrel” – for the next three months he is the man on a knife edge.

If just 14 of his 33 caucus colleagues opt for change, the first two months of 2013 will be steeped in Labour bloodletting. . .

Thanks Labour.

You’ve provided journalists looking for a headline over the summer season with easy stories on your leadership.

You’ve made yourselves look like a bunch of naval-navel-gazing, faction riven political incompetents.

In doing so you’ve made life so much easier for the government and its supporters.