Red alert; red alert!!

The cries are gathering for Labour to permanently moderate its Red Alert blog. And it's this post from Raymond "Thanks for losing Carmel" Huo that's sparked the latest outrage on the Left; Huo blogs:

Note: I wrote this on December 23 but given the Christmas holiday period was upon us I thought it was not appropriate to have it posted then. Therefore it is posted now.

Now that David Farrar is holidaying in South Africa and sending us pictures showing how big the turtles are there and how Hyenas are eating dead baby elephants. I wish to take his holiday spirit and send him this letter as my Christmas present.

His Kiwiblog is powerful and I hope this letter plays a small role in helping make his blog a bit fairer on some issues.

While on a roller-coaster over the past three weeks of being in and out of Parliament, I was told that Mr Farrar, rather indirectly, blogged on me by saying more than once that to the effect that: “It will hurt Labour. While not a huge contributor to Labour within Parliament, I understand he is a relatively large fundraiser for Labour”.

It is unfortunate that David Farrar made this sweeping comment without delving deeper into the subject.

Later on however, Huo DOES 'fess up to being a funraiser, so his faux outrage towards DPF is hard to fathom; read on (our emphasis added):

I did organise public meetings and fundraising dinners quite successfully over the past few years, as acknowledged by David Farrar. For an opposition back-bencher I don’t have an ever-popular Prime Minister to offer smiles and photo opportunities which must have enriched National’s support as reported in the NZ Herald. This only proves the point that I am popular and have done a good job.

When the time was not with us and the trend was against us, this kind of response is regarded as a form of approval and endorsement by the constituency.

It is unfortunate that he seemed to imply that we Asian MPs are ATM machines for political parties and are token inclusions in Parliament. I hope the National Party does not have this same expectation of its Asian MPs. It is certainly not the case in Labour, where the vision of inclusive and strong communities has inspired many, including myself, to enter into politics.

New Zealand is a multi-racial country now. We need to remind ourselves of the need to make a departure from ignorance and patrionising.

The comments section of this thread makes for enjoyable reading, especially if you like a bit of trouble at t'mill. We won't bother reproducing any, but there are some real doozies, and it's not stretching the truth to suggest that Raymond Huo might be wishing he hadn't posted his cyber-letter to DPF.

And it hasn't taken long for the reaction to start to flow through; here's a selection from the buffet:

• Robert Winter from Idle thoughts of an Idle fellow sums it all up in four words:

  Better dead than read?

• Eddie from The Standard is scathing; under the byline Shut it down (s)he says:

  The same day as we learn that Labour won’t be allowing press gallery journos free access to their wing of Parliament as previously (apparently a desperate attempt at message control by keeping off message MPs and journos apart: someone better tell Fran Mold what a cellphone is), Labour’s bizarre cult of David Farrar has performed its first human sacrifice.

  If you want to read Raymond Huo’s piece, it’s here. But I wouldn’t bother. Just think the whining passive-aggressiveness and poor execution of Clare Curran’s haiku combined with long-windedness and an abysmally poor understanding of even the basics of politics.

  Basically, Huo spends about a thousand words pleading with Farrar to be nice to him an recognise all the important work he does so that the voters will recognise the good he does. As if Farrar is both a fair arbitrator and an opinion leader. Wake the fuck up, Raymond. Farrar’s a political player.

• Danyl from the Dim Post has analysed the frequency with which people were mentioned in January

• But Scott from Imperator Fish provides the most amusement. Under the title line Shock as Labour discovers that David Farrar is not The PM, he blogs:

  Labour Party MPs are said to be red-faced, after discovering that prominent blogger David Farrar is not the Prime Minister of New Zealand.
  
  Mr Farrar has been the target of numerous attacks by Labour Party MPs over the last couple of years.
  
  A source inside Labour has confirmed that party officials identified Farrar as the leader of the country shortly after the 2008 election, despite being given evidence to the contrary. Rumours that John Key was the actual leader of the National Party as well as the Prime Minister of New Zealand were dismissed at the time as mere speculation.
  
  But this morning, in a shock announcement, Mr Key revealed that he is in fact the Prime Minister, and that David Farrar is merely an enthusiastic National Party member with a popular blog, a couple of newspaper columns, and only moderate political influence.
  
  Commentators have observed that Labour’s obsession with David Farrar has been a distraction that has turned off many left-leaning voters.
  
  Labour MP Trevor Mallard admitted today that the party had made an “embarrassing but understandable error” over the identity of the Prime Minister.
  
  However, he was unrepentant over Labour's policy of giving free publicity to David Farrar by attacking everything the commentator writes or says.

  
  

Labour is taking an absolute panning over Red Alert, and whilst we'd hate to see Labour pull the plug on its blog (even though we're still not allowed to comment there; so much for Open Labour!), we're starting to think that maybe it needs to review Red Alert's future. Yes; it would create issues for us as a blogger from the other side of the political divide in that there would be less juicy blog-fodder. But how many more self-inflicted wounds can Labour sustain?

And "Eddie's" post is especially interesting. We have no idea who the current user of that moniker is, but we're aware that there have been at least two previous incarnations of "Eddie", both of whom are Labour Party activists and insiders but not MP's. If this is how the party's activists are feeling about Red Alert, Labour really has a problem.

Stuart Nash has only been David Shearer's Chief of Staff for a couple of days. How will he and his boss handle this one? And how would H1 and H2 have handled it?