Has Andrew Little had a common sense epiphany and now realises that being seen as a perpetual pissy fit leader isn’t very attractive to voters?
Little had to go all the way to Canada to find someone he would listen to, telling him he needs to present something positive to voters.
Duh.
Andrea Vance wrote at One News: Little should take a leaf out of Trudeau’s buff book to pull voters
Andrew Little’s taken himself off to Canada to lick his wounds.
But it’s not too late, Little. A year ago, Justin Trudeau’s Liberal Party confounded expectations to win the federal election… and the hearts of millions of women around the world.
I doubt that Little is in the same league regarding hearts of women.
Here’s what Little can learn from Canada’s JFK.
Sunny – not sulky – ways
That advice in itself would be a great start.
Trudeau didn’t go negative. He had poise even in the face of ridiculous attacks on his hair – and Stephen Harper’s attack ads.
“You can appeal to the better angels of our nature and you can win while doing it,” Trudeau said.
His campaign focused on a “positive, optimistic, hopeful vision of public life”. He warmly embraced refugees, as opponents fear-mongered.
This “tone-at-the-top” was emulated by the party as a whole – from candidates through to volunteer door-knockers. Post-election polling showed Trudeau was the main attraction for 20 per cent of Liberal voters.
Little has heard this same message from Trudeau himself and has come back enthusing about it.
If he had listened outside his bubble in New Zealand he could have heard this same advice here, but at least he has finally taken it on board.
I hope Little can turn his image around, I really do. We desperately need a decent opposition, one that isn’t relentlessly negative and sullen and sulky. So if Little gets positive it will be a great start.
But will a sunny positive Little trickle down the Labour ranks? That could be a major challenge for Little.
Labour MPs seem to have become locked into a mostly negative campaign for the last eight years. Some of the sullens are leaving, like Phil Goff (probable) and Clayton Cosgrove. Will they be replaced by sunnies?
Another challenge will be the Labour troops, the door knockers who have had the stuffing knocked out of them over and over.
And an even bigger challenge may be the Labour activists, the online warriors who keep tearing their hair out in frustration and keep tearing to shreds anyone deemed to be an opponent or an enemy of Labour.
Little himself did this recently when he blasted ex-Labour party members as right wingers and banned his MPs from going to the same meetings as them.
The bashing of anyone deemed an enemy of Labour is on show at The Standard frequently, where it oozes bitterness and intolerance.
Burning off potential Labour voters is a stupid strategy, and that has been happening from the top down.
It seems that Little has finally got it, that sulky sullen negative leaders don’t attract support. Now he has been told the obvious in Canada perhaps we will see a sunnier more positive Leader of the Opposition.
Whether that can trickle down the party will be another matter, the Labour troops can’t all be sent to Canada to have common sense epiphanies.
Your NZ 
David
/ 20th September 2016The difference is Trudeau is actually a happy positive person and Little is a dour trade unionists mired in permanent negativity. Trudeau is engaging and charming and bright and Little is just not and proof of that is how he lost the electorate seat that was previously held by Labour and turned it into a safe National seat.
Gezza
/ 20th September 2016Yes. I don’t think it’s in his DNA to be able to make a convincing change to *sunny* and positive, but it’s certainly worth him giving it a go.
Corky
/ 20th September 2016Tautoko. The world isn’t fair. Ironically, Key has the opposite problem…being too flippant and sometimes acting like a clown. I guess at heart, voters never grow up!? They want a side show.
Kitty Catkin
/ 20th September 2016Is pissy fit a typo (a marvellously fortuitous one) or have I just never happened to hear this funny expression before ? 😀
Corky
/ 20th September 2016Its a typo, but I don’t comment on other peoples typos. I have enough of my own.
Pete George
/ 20th September 2016It’s deliberate. I think I have used the term before.
I have:
https://yournz.org/2014/11/22/attacker-hides-behind-notices-and-features/
Corky
/ 20th September 2016Apologies…I have never heard the expression before.
Pete George
/ 20th September 2016Come here for original material.
Corky
/ 20th September 2016Rodger.
Blazer
/ 20th September 2016you only need to look at Clark to see you do not have to have filmstar looks,or have to be charming and bright to win elections.You have to be confident,focussed and positive and not petty and complicated.
Nelly Smickers
/ 20th September 2016…and surround yourself with sychophants and idiots XD
Blazer
/ 20th September 2016Smith,Tolley,Gordon’,Parata,Brownlee,McCully,McClay,….only one missing is Neddy..Seagoon!
Bill
/ 20th September 2016Trudeau’ promise and commitment to Legalising Cannabis, propelled him into power more than anything else. This was what the people wanted and it was clear the Harper Government, like ours was never going to deliver.
Conspiratoor
/ 20th September 2016…and have a very good friend with ice in her veins
PDB
/ 20th September 2016Blazer: “look at Clark to see you do not have to have filmstar looks”
…..and get the taxpayer to illegally pay for your ‘pledge cards’, bribe students with interest free loans, and photo-shop your billboard photo to look more like a film-star!
Kitty Catkin
/ 20th September 2016Some people seem to have a poor opinion of the intelligence of NZ voters and a good one of their own supposed perspicacity.
Blazer
/ 20th September 2016put a …rug …on..it!
Corky
/ 20th September 2016Aunty was looking alright when interviewed with JK in New York. She had the Fifth Avenue thing going. Of course, she can afford it.
Corky
/ 20th September 2016If you look at Cunliffe’s defeat speech, post election, the audience was full of what middle-class New Zealand would perceive as ” losers.” Exactly what an anoymomus Labour MP told Duncan Garner the party was pandering to. Whether sunnyside up from Andy peculates down the party and into the middle class will be the 2017 question.
Meanwhile, disquieting tidings for Labour from Britain.
http://www.express.co.uk/news/politics/711910/Neil-Kinnock-no-Labour-Government-Jeremy-Corbyn-re-elected
Blazer
/ 20th September 2016‘what middle-class New Zealand would perceive as ” losers.’…what rot.What the priveleged 10% would regard as …losers you mean.
Corky
/ 20th September 2016Well, that Labour MP must be a fool..right?
Blazer
/ 20th September 2016no,an anonymous fool.Anyone can come up with a scenario like that….’one anonymous National M.P. confided to (insert name)that John Key was a total liar,who was not concerned with NZ’s future and couldn’t wait to retire to Hawaii.’
Corky
/ 20th September 2016“Anyone can come up with a scenario like that…”
You mean like the election result?
Are you calling Duncan Garner a liar?
Gezza
/ 20th September 2016” ’one anonymous National M.P. confided to (insert name)that John Key was a total liar,who was not concerned with NZ’s future and couldn’t wait to retire to Hawaii.’ ”
Has something like that been reported by anyone in the MSM yet?
Corky
/ 20th September 2016No, should it have been? Because what you say hasn’t happened in MSM, does that mean Duncan’s story is suss? I say it has way more credibility given all the inferences and feigned inside knowledge about Key alluded to by posters. Besides, just watching what Labour concentrates on gives credence to the story.
Blazer
/ 20th September 2016don’t ask completely stupid questions…Gezza.
Gezza
/ 20th September 2016I only do it in response to completely stupid statements Blazer.
Kitty Catkin
/ 20th September 2016How does that person know all that ? Why has nobody else noticed it ? The ‘can’t wait to retire to Hawaii’ remark would need a context. It is the sort of thing that someone could well say, not meaning it to be taken literally.
He could do it now if he wanted to. Did Duncan Garner ask why this hasn’t happened ?
Corky
/ 20th September 2016Yes, apparently Newshub hasn’t got the moeney to fund it.
David
/ 20th September 2016Pierre Trudeau took his three sons on a trip to Siberia because “that’s where the future is being made”, When he went to Norilsk, he lamented why Canada couldn’t build a city of that size so far north. Fun fact, Norilsk was the HQ for the Gulags.
In 1987.
There is a lesson there I guess…..not sure it’s the one Little took.
Blazer
/ 20th September 2016‘Norilsk WAS the H.Q…..’talk about…desperate!
David
/ 20th September 2016I guess I need to spell this out. The reason the USSR could build a city so large, so far north is they used slave labour to build it, 20,000 odd died in the process.
Jr is just as soft brained.
Nick Ellis
/ 20th September 2016The nickel-copper-palladium deposits may have had something to do with it too.
David
/ 20th September 2016Yes, that would be one of the reasons for building the city. It just makes it so much easier when you don’t care about either the environment or the lives of the people you imprison.
Luckily for us, Trudeau was wrong about Siberia being the future.
Kitty Catkin
/ 20th September 2016I suppose that the death toll wasn’t even higher than that was because it was more convenient to keep most of the workers alive than train up new ones all the time. Unskilled ones were (I imagine) expendable.
Kevin
/ 20th September 2016So long as the true believers think that Labour isn’t left-wing enough Labour is done. Time to stick a fork in it.
Gezza
/ 20th September 2016Andy possibly gave the new man idea a go on Breakfast on One this morning. He was shown backing John Key & hoping that he would be able as Security Council Chair to manage to get the two big powers to do more to stop all the various players killing each other, though he explained the difficulties he thought Key or anybody would face given the number of warring factions involved.
Gezza
/ 20th September 2016* In Syria, I meant to say.
Pete Kane
/ 20th September 2016And whose book should Ms Vance take a leaf out of?
Iceberg
/ 20th September 2016The Hagaman defamation action will show him for what he is just before the election.
Bye bye Sunny Boy.
Blazer
/ 20th September 2016dream on dreamer…Hagaman will drop off.
Iceberg
/ 20th September 2016Amended;
The Hagaman defamation action has shown him for what he is.
Blazer
/ 20th September 2016it has…a litigous ,right wing ,weekend at Bernies …impersonator!
Kitty Catkin
/ 20th September 2016What ???