Bumbling Carter may yet cook Goff's goose

BY TRACY WATKINS

OPINION: There were hoots of laughter in some press gallery offices when disgraced MP Chris Carter claimed on television that his bumbling attempt to destabilise Phil Goff's leadership with an anonymous letter-writing campaign was how it's always done.

Not in living memory it isn't. And probably not ever.

If it wasn't so Keystone Kops it would be easy to label Mr Carter's inept smear campaign the beginning of the end for Phil Goff.

It certainly has all the hallmarks. Think back to 2003 when an angry Maurice Williamson publicly denounced Bill English's leadership from one side of the door as the then National Party leader attempted to rally the party faithful in Christchurch from the other side.

Mr Williamson likened his party's plight under Mr English to the Titanic.

"I'm yelling: Will somebody tell the orchestra to shut up. Will everybody get up on deck and man the lifeboats", was one memorable line.

Mr Carter walked off a plane in Auckland to announce: "I no longer believe it's possible for [Phil Goff] to win the election. I think I owe it to the people I represent and the people who voted for our party that we have a leader who can win the election."

Deja vu? Not quite. Mr Williamson was motivated by anger over National's 2002 election night rout.

His was just one voice in a whispering campaign that went on for months to destabilise the English leadership. And he spoke from a position of strength.

Mr English's inability to have Mr Williamson expelled from the party was evidence of that. It was a sign that his leadership was already fatally weakened.

Mr Goff should have no such qualms over his disgraced backbencher. Mr Carter's expulsion from the party is pro forma.

He may have friends within the caucus but they know how his actions will be viewed - as the last vindictive gasp of a man whose dream of one day swanning around the world as foreign affairs minister was snatched away by his leader.

Worse for Mr Carter, he has also made himself a figure of fun. He left a trail of breadcrumbs so wide it took Mr Goff and Annette King just hours to track him down as the culprit behind the letter to press gallery journalists alluding to moves against Mr Goff by union members within the caucus and predicting the Labour leader's imminent fall.

No-one is going to put their hand up as being party to such a crude and farcical plot.

So Mr Goff wins by getting to look tough and decisive by acting so swiftly against Mr Carter. But it is not as if he had any choice. Any hint of hesitation would have made him look weak and given weight to Mr Carter's complaints.

Mr Carter's actions are destabilising none the less. There are few things more damaging to a party than having an attack mounted on the leadership from within. Voters are inclined to see it as a sign of the party unravelling.

Mr Goff's challenge is to keep the matters raised by Mr Carter's letter in the same box as the more farcical elements of his renegade MP's campaign.

The efforts to do so began in earnest yesterday, when the gloves came off and MPs lined up to question Mr Carter's mental state.

But, as with Pandora's box, the questions over Mr Goff's leadership are now out and may be impossible to put back in. Especially since much in the letter rang true, even if elements of it were overcooked.

Mr Carter claimed there was a union backlash against Mr Goff's easy dismissal of National's plan to let workers cash in their fourth week's annual leave.

This was not new - talk had already been doing the rounds before the letter landed that elements of the caucus and Labour's union base were angry.

The letter also talked about a union campaign to wrest Manurewa off George Hawkins, a man whose prime attributes include stubbornness and a thick skin.

There has been talk for years of manoeuvring Mr Hawkins out of the prime Labour seat, none of it coming to anything. But the battle over Manurewa resonates far more loudly now against the tittle-tattle about a power struggle between Mr Goff and party president Andrew Little.

Mr Little, who has now shown his hand in New Plymouth, where he plans to seek election in 2011, is touted by many as the logical successor to former Cabinet minister Steve Maharey, whose departure at the 2008 election left Labour's Left without a natural heir apparent to Helen Clark and no choice but to swing in behind the Goff leadership.

Mr Little's arrival in Parliament will immediately spark speculation of a leadership stoush should Mr Goff fail to carry Labour to victory in 2011 - an achievement that is looking increasingly remote.

Which is where Mr Carter also struck a nerve. His denunciation of Mr Goff might only have been the wild flailing of a man whose ship is going down, but he was also voicing what some in Labour must now believe - that 2011 may already be a lost cause.

The extent to which Mr Carter also represents a faction who believe that, in leading Labour too far away from the Clark legacy, Mr Goff will only lead them towards a rout remains to be seen.

There was a revealing moment on Thursday when Mr Carter defended Labour's 2008 election night result as only the narrowest of losses.

By implication, staying the course with the policies of the Clark years would lead Labour back to victory in 2011.

Considering that National very nearly walked away with an outright majority, this seems to be a heroic assumption on Mr Carter's part.

But it may also be a theory that has some credence among some within the caucus.

It reinforces the worry that many within Labour are yet to be convinced that their 2008 election loss was anything more than a moment of temporary insanity by voters.

The staggering longevity of National's unreal poll ratings should have reinforced to them by now just how little voters found to like about the last Labour government in its final years.

Mr Goff's leadership is about distancing the party from the most unpopular aspects of the Clark government's legacy - light bulbs and nanny state-ism among them - and retilt Labour back toward the values of middle New Zealand, which is now firmly National.

In doing so he risks distancing the caucus from the party hierarchy, even if not necessarily a chunk of Labour's traditional constituency, particularly its Pacific and Maori support base.

But even that has been mostly about tone and perception - a workmanlike repositioning of the party, rather than the bottom-up, grassroots-led re- examination of what the party stands for, of a type which usually follows heavy election defeat.

The tidy handover of the leadership in 2008 was designed to avoid such turbulence.

However, Labour can't avoid that eventual day of reckoning, painful as it might be.

Who knows? In his own bumbling way, Chris Carter may even have helped bring it on.

- © Fairfax NZ News