We read Bill Ralston's headline - Blogosphere shows Goff must watch his back - and read the story with interest. But rather than Ralston reporting on right-wing bloggers, he's alerting the Labour leader to attacks from much closer to home, and from gentlemen and ladies with a vested interest - read on:
Phil Goff had better start looking over his shoulder. When it came to power, National was banking on six to 12 months of destabilisation in Labour as it feuded and fought over the leadership once Helen Clark left.
That failed to happen then, but it's starting now. It took just a couple of minor miscalculations by the Labour leader. His handling of some of the Richard Worth scandal stirred up internal party rumblings but these were muted by the need to maintain a united front for the Mt Albert byelection.
A stumble over the dole for all followed by the fiasco over Bruce Burgess, the unemployed man who was supposed to be the poster boy for Labour's dole plan who turned out to have two rental properties, and the anti-Goff movement is under way.
It is occurring in the blogosphere, and not on the traditional centre-right sites that love to lampoon Goff and Labour but on centre-left sites.
Ralston then goes on to list them; Chris Trotter (Find yourselves a new leader), Russell Brown (if he "wants to float ideas, could he please ensure they don't have any holes in them when he pushes them out from the jetty".), and The Labour Party Staffer Known As Eddie (Phil, get your shit together). That's pretty potent stuff, from people who do have some standing in the blogosphere.
And if the identity of Eddie from The Standard is who we have been told it is, that must be hugely worrying for Labour, and indicates some overt disloyalty towards Goff. We have been reliably informed that The Labour Party Staffer Known As Eddie was moved to Auckland from Wellington for the duration of the Mt Albert by-election campaign, so that person is an insider, not someone sniping from the fringes.
Meanwhile, Ralston notes the role of the blogosphere:
The blogosphere means we now hear what party supporters once said in private discussions over a beer. That the whingeing about Goff has started after a couple of small mistakes means there is a deep enmity to him on the left of the party and his opponents are beginning to gather steam.
He has done himself few favours with his media team in Parliament. With the Worth and Burgess stories, they held back from journalists material that didn't suit their case, thus earning a big black mark from the press gallery, with whom they desperately need a relationship of trust.
We concur with Ralston here. Goff's media minders, and by definition Goff himself have now twice "cried wolf" with the media, and have been ruthlessly exposed as dodgy, misleading and even outright dishonest. So much for the high and mighty Labour Party which fought the last election on the issue of trust!
And in closing, Ralston effectively writes Goff's political obituary, with which we agree wholeheartedly:
Goff was an intelligent and able Cabinet minister but now I hear Labour supporters wondering if that is enough to make him an Opposition leader capable of winning an election. Frankly, at this stage, there is no one better to lead the party.
Nevertheless, the knives are being sharpened and over the coming year the destabilisation of Goff is likely to intensify. This may not lead to his overthrow but it will ruin Labour's chances of presenting itself as a stable alternative government.
The most interesting part will be seeing who on the left will first raise their head to make a push for the leadership. As a great New Zealand thinker once said: "It won't happen overnight but it will happen."
