So David Won - now what

David Shearer needs to undertake a clean sweep throughout his party to do this requires two things.

1) A root and branch review of why they have lost touch and hemoraged votes to the Greens and Winston.
2) A brand new fount bench. Throw out most of the old guard and let them know it is time to go. Otherwise the back bench will be wanting to know when they will get promoted. It also allows for a new look and a new evaluation of policy because people defend their old polices.

Then go through their policy manifesto and throw out any promise to repeal popular National party policies like three strikes or national standards.

After this lay off the unions. Let them go. Remove them from the power structure of labour and get ordinary members in.

Finally find an issue to take the public attention for the next few years. I recommend asset sales. Start a citizens initiated referendum which will then force the government to defend the issue for the next year or so. Keep the issue in the public mind. 

Ok where to now for the Reds?

Mr Kiwiblog has done a very good post on what Labour must do to win the next election on his Stuff Blog.

I must agree with what he has said.

Geoff standing down is occurring far too early. They must review why they lost and then change the leader.

They must

1) Get rid of the old guard. Keep a few to help the rest but out with the rest. Sadly this election has done the opposite.
2) Move to the centre. Stop attacking popular Blue policies such as National Standards, and three strikes. If the Blues can keep interest free student loans so can you.
3) Do not be held hostage to the unions. Out with 1970's union policies, in with the national standards. Get a membership base which is apart from the unions. All Union members are labour party members, all unions pay money to Labour.
4) Re-build links with buissness. Show that you are buissness friendly. Do not scare away people who are going to vote for you. A rise in the minimum wage is nice but what about losing jobs?.
5) Have a root and branch review, National did this in 2002 and this worked out well.
6) Get a new face, a leader who can connect with the voters. Somebody who was not in when Helen was there. Someone who will be a Natural person like Key.
7) Fight asset sales. Keep up the pressure - 2/3rds of those polled oppose this. Geoff should have announced that they were going to start a Citizens initiated referendum on asset sales. It would have kept the focus on the issue and not let it die. It would have also given Labour the spotlight on this issue and kept it away from the Green's and Winston.

The reds need to tone down scary policies. Like raising the pension age (which must be done) and liberal reforms such as smacking bans. The big scary policy they had was spending. When the country is in recession spending money is no longer cool. People become more conservative. They need to give the impression they will be a steady hand. They need to increase their vote to the 30's or 40's so people will think they will not be run by the Greens.

Labour will be back again (as Muldoon said it is always nice to have Labour in for a term - all the Lino's gone). The thing is how long that will take.

Labour is not so bad, but what about their friends

Labour are an OK party. They are by no means perfect but at least we can bear them and sometimes they do good stuff. However Labour is not dong that well which means that in a left wing government they will have less clout.

Who are their friends?

Well those who want to spend, spend and spend. Now to be fair this spending will do much good if it spent well. But everything you spend has to be earned or borrowed. And since we are in the red at the moment we need to save as much as possible.
The thing with borrowing money is that you should be able to pay it back. Now that is fine with a mortgage because you need the house and will pay it back, but if you were to try and pay your daily spending off with the credit card, there is only so long you can go before you run out of cash.
Now things like Green Energy are great if they are going to pay themselves back, but I doubt the government will sell them off to pay the construction costs or use the dividend costs to reduce debt.

The other friend is Winston. And you know what I think of him.

Then we have Mana - thankfully Mana will be a one man band, but Mana is very left radical supported by John Minto and Bradford. I am sure these people mean well but I still disagree with most of what they want.

Finally we have the Greens, thankfully they have mellowed a little but then they have their hard core liberal  addenda.

Tomorrow I am voting Right by voting for the blue team.

Things I like about Labour - From a National Party Voter

Despite the fact I am voting blue, there are some things I like about Labour.

1) They gave New Zealand Rodger Douglas and Richard Prebble. By the early 1980's National under Muldoon was going no where, was stuck with far to many civil servants and doing things such as running business which they had no need to be in. New Zealand needed to break up the old way of doing things and these two people did a lot of work to achieve this.

2) They gave us Kiwisaver. Kiwisaver builds up savings and helps people in their old age along with buying their own home. The worst factor of Kiwisaver was that they should have started sooner (although they did try in the 1970's) and that it was not compulsory (but they had to do that at first to get it past the anti compulsory savings crowd). Yet Bill English was quite against Kiwisaver.

3) They are generally ok. Despite the fact they are centre left, they are still a centralist party and thus will not leave the place in a mess, compared to what some people like Mana would do. New Zealand survived Helen Clark, we did not get invaded, we stayed in surplus (although some tax cuts would be nice), roads got built, ( I can not say the trains ran on time due to the fact we do not have very many trains!), We got a free trade pact with China. Many things Labour did were supported by National (I understand many bills past by both National or Labour governments receive joint support such is the nature of politics).

I would survive a Labour Government and enjoy their Kiwisaver policies, but harm would be done to other areas of the economy (take at $15 minimum wage for example).

4) Raising the Pension age. When Act supports Labour take notice. We are all getting older and somebody needs to pay the bill. I guess John Key is hoping that somebody else will raise the pension age because he made an irresponsible promise not to raise it while he was PM.

I would like to note however that the problem with Labours policy is that they will be raising it far to slowly.

Some may ask where is number 5 a nuclear free NZ. Well I oppose the Labour Nuclear Free policy.