Open skies

Hopefully, before too long, we’ll know who the next leader of the Labour Party is. I know someone else has just got the job but it’s by no means clear that David Cunliffe is destined to be a long-term Labour leader; the best of luck to him but like Goff and Shearer he could well turn out to be another stopgap, a place-holder, someone temporarily occupying the position that rightly belongs to another. The same would be true had Grant Robertson or Shane Jones got the job. None of them has looked really right for it. This is the legacy of Roger Douglas and, to a lesser extent, Helen Clark: a party so diminished that the kind of outstanding political talent you’d normally expect to come through, generation by generation, has failed to show. Cunliffe, Robertson and Jones are all thoroughly competent politicians fit to be cabinet ministers in any administration; but none inspires as a real leader should. Each in their own way, to tell the truth, has come across as awkwardly ill suited for the top job. Let’s be frank: did any of them really excite anyone?

If another golden age of power is possible for Labour, then somewhere out there, in the mists of the future, is the real leader who will take them to those glorious heights. She or he is probably not even in Parliament at the moment. In fact, they aren’t. I can think of two, if not three possible future Labour leaders, all of whom must be weighing up their prospects now; though not in the House yet, they could swiftly be parachuted in. Pay attention to the open skies; you never know what will be coming down.