From The Standard:
Labour’s three factions:
“It’s interesting how little understanding there is of the state and politics within the Parliamentary Labour Party. A lot of the coverage of Labour’s internal workings has tended to personalise the tension – it’s been focused on Shearer vs Cunliffe without any questions about what lies beneath.
As always, there’s a lot more to it. Most of the drama within Labour since the last election can be put down to the power struggle between the Parliamentary party’s threefactions. I think it’s time to shine a light on what’s going on so members can better judge the behaviour of their parliamentary representatives.
Questions of ideology, loyalty, and personal advancement all play their part in the makeup of Labour’s three factions. Each faction has a core group of hard support as well as a handful of soft supporters who can and have switched allegiances from time to time. This is much looser and informal than the Australian system of factions.
Broadly speaking though, Labour’s three factions are as follows:”
The Right
David Shearer (leader)
Phil Goff
Annette King
David Parker
Clayton Cosgrove
Shane Jones
Damien O’Connor
Kris Fa’afoi
Ross Robertson
This is where I start to disagree:
Chuck Chauvel has gone to the UN and the territory has shifted throwing a rather different light on the different camps:
Though calling it “The Right”: Eddie is above describing the Left Wing Faction. For the sake of accuracy I shall refer to it as the UN Left Wing Faction. That is: The faction of Labour whose ideals align largely with those influencers whose ideals are shaped by radical feminism or a stint with the UN. Very sympathetic to the union movement but not to the point of letting the tail wag the dog: I’ll remove a couple of individuals to other factions, showing my changes in yellow:
The UN Left Wing.
1. David Shearer (leader)
2. Phil Goff
3. Annette King
4. David Parker
5. Clayton Cosgrove
6. Kris Fa’afoi (too new to have made solid alliances but too near Wellington and Goff not to be loosely aligned with The UN Left Wing. )
7. Ross Robertson (wants to be the next Speaker
8. Phil Twyford pragmatic enough not to see himself as the next Phil or David but the most likely deputy for whoever fronts as leader following Shearer .
 9. Andrew Little.
As you can see it is shaky shaky ground for Shearer. he only has the firm support of 9 MP’s. But as Eddie says, there is a firm understanding between camp UN and camp Careerists, that it is not in the best interests of either camp to throw their toys just yet.
The Careerist Left:
10. Grant Robertson (leader)
11. Chris Hipkins (twisted the knife on silent T)
12. Jacinda Ardern
13. Clare Curran
14. Maryan Street
15. David Clark
16. Trevor Mallard
17. Darien Fenton
18. Megan Woods
19. Ruth Dyson
20. Carol Beaumont
21. Moana Mackey
Here we have twelve votes. Eddie puts Beaumont with Cunliffe. I do not, because of her long union career. This is significant: If she is indeed with Camp Cunners then Shearer has a maximum of three months left in the job.
Eddies Left. The Sleeping Right or Camp Cunners.
22. David Cunliffe (leader)
23. Nanaia Mahuta (firmly Camp Cunliffe)
24.Louisa Wall
25.Sue Moroney: (firmly Camp Cunliffe)
26.Su’a William Sio: (firmly Camp Cunliffe)
27.Lianne Dalziel (firmly Camp Cunliffe)
28. Parekura Horomia
29. Rajen Prasad
30. Rino Tirikatene
31. Raymond Huo
32. Iain Lees-Galloway
 33. Shane Jones
34. Damien O’Connor
13 votes – This camp only needs one more to push another leadership vote to throw Shearer.
I’d be looking seriously at the question of why and where and how things will go now that Chuck is at the UN?
If Chauvel made a calculated move to replace himself as a dedicated Cunners follower, with Beaumont as a dedicated Cunners follower, then possibly Chauvel and Cunliffe have cooked up the scenario where Labour tries to throw the Ohariu vote to Shanks.
Labour left this to Gower and the rest of the fourth estate to do at the last election but they couldn’t shift Peter Dunne. Whoever does gains a lot of inherent mana.
It is well known that if Shanks is ever allowed to pull the vote from Peter she’ll split the vote and possibly throw the seat to Labour. Labour effectively gets two extra seats from this. One from the electorate MP being Labour and another because of the overhang rule. Essentially, Charles was not able to do this at his time at the coalface and because of the nature of the factions he was not ever likely to go up the ranks.
The most important MP’s before or during the next election:
Peter Dunne and Carol Beaumont. Runners up: Moana Mackey and Kris Fa’afoi.
Note: Cunliffe is being very active on Red Alert with regards to United Future:
http://blog.labour.org.nz/2013/03/26/tax-pain-time/
And from a few days ago:
http://blog.labour.org.nz/2013/03/19/united-futures-awful-week/
One has to ask oneself if these are the actions of a loyal lieutenant.Â
I have to stop there as I’m a very busy housewife.
I’ll update.
