Quote of the Day - 26 July 2013

Newstalk ZB's chief political reporter Felix Marwick is pretty moderate as press gallery journalists go; he's certain unlikely to do a Patrick Gower, chasing Chris Carter through the corridors of Parliament.

So when Marwick ventures an opinion on David Shearer's leadership of the Labour Party, it's worth taking note; Marwick opines:

David Shearer’s reshuffle of his office staff this week has once again put the longevity of his leadership back in the spotlight. He’s now on to his third chief of staff since he got the job, with his former chief press secretary Fran Mold taking up the role.
David Shearer’s says the change was long planned, but that’s not stopping observers from speculating it’s really an attempt to steady what’s become a very shaky ship. The question now is; will a change of staff it be enough, or is it too late?
In fact it’s probably largely irrelevant as the challenges facing David Shearer are deep and have been there ever since he got the leadership.
Part of the problem he’s faced is that as a relative newcomer to politics he’s not really had the time to form his own power base. On election night 2011, as the manoeuvring began for the leader’s job, I recall him saying that he didn't think he’d have a lot of friends in the new caucus. His position appears to be the result of compromise and deals and doesn't have the solid foundation that some of his predecessors and peers have enjoyed.
Compounding the problem was the way he started. I’d argue he failed to stamp his own style on the party right from when he got the job. When he made his first speech to Parliament after getting the job it sounded, to my ears, like a carbon copy of one Phil Goff would have given. There was no visible immediate break between the leadership that got Labour 27 percent in 2011 and the leader that was supposed to turn that around.
Now if you were to make a comparison with National in 2006 when John Key took over from Don Brash, there we saw the whole tenor and direction of the party change in the space of a week. With Shearer it was business as usual.
There’s now a very strong sentiment in the corridors of power that it’s a matter of when, and not if, he may go. On a polling comparison Labour’s numbers are similar, if not worse than they were at the same point in Phil Goff’s leadership reign. Then the whispers were loud for his removal, yet none of his colleagues were prepared to take the chance.
Phil Goff was tagged by Chris Carter as the nice guy that wouldn't win. There’s now a real chance the same label could be applied to David Shearer.
So can David Shearer turn it around? And if he doesn't, will anyone in his caucus be prepared to take up the poisoned chalice that Labour’s leadership appears to have become.

Hmmm; the "poisoned chalice" of the Labour leadership. We reckon that Helen Clark should take some responsibility for that, having micro-managed Labour during her nine years as PM, instead of grooming a successor. As a result, Labour was left in a leadership vacuum, where the only realistic contender is despised by his caucus colleagues.

The word that we've heard from a wide variety of sources is that there's some fun and games in store within Labour in the first week of August. It might be time to stock up on the popcorn.