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Mike's Minute: Local election results a wake up call for Labour

Author
Mike Hosking,
Publish Date
Mon, 10 Oct 2022, 10:00AM

Mike's Minute: Local election results a wake up call for Labour

Author
Mike Hosking,
Publish Date
Mon, 10 Oct 2022, 10:00AM

Local politics isn't national politics necessarily, but the change that the polls have indicated is coming next year for the government, manifested itself in a small taster on Saturday.

The country swung to the right, in some cases significantly so.

I am convinced that if Phil Goff and Lianne Dalziel had hung about for another crack, they would have lost. Labour-backed Efeso Collins didn't just lose, he was thrashed.

The bloke in Wellington was in charge of a shambles of a city whose pipes were exploding, and a Let's Get Wellington Moving programme that was comedic. The bloke who was allegedly the favourite to replace him was a Labour MP and was endorsed by our Prime Minister no less. He got thrashed as well. Who is electing a Labour MP to run anything?

So, between Collins and Paul Eagle, that was zero for 2 for the Prime Minister, who went out of her way to put her political heft behind them. If those two results alone don’t send chills down the spines at Labour HQ, nothing will.

In Christchurch, a good, conservative, go-getting bloke who had run his own business got the job. The council also swung right.

In Dunedin, the incumbent was booted out for a bloke and various members of his ticket that wanted more parking, fewer cycleways, and less messing with roads.

In essence, we have had enough. The woke world of buses that don't come, cycleways that bugger everything up, we have had enough of it all. There are a lot of councils and a lot of individual stories, but overall, the message for change is impossible to escape.

Plus, the relationship between central and local government is in real trouble now, especially over things like Three Waters.

It wasn't up to much before Saturday. It is in even more dire straits now. This is yet another reason why I have argued all along the most contentious of Labour's policies around centralisation and ideology will, ultimately, never see the light of day.

What central Labour love is telling you what to do, but not at the expense of not being in power.

The messaging around their demise next year is real and growing stronger by the day. They are arrogant, but not entirely devoid of brain power, and you can't miss the writing on this particular wall.

Collins and Eagle were poster boys for the Labour Party and look at what happened to them. The Labour brand is toxic and possibly permanently damaged.

October 8th, 2022 was a warmup for September or October of 2023.

It's the reddist of red flags.

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