After its electoral disaster last year, the Labour Party has undergone a period of navel-gazing couched as an organisational review. And Labour list candidate Jordan Carter blogged about it yesterday at Just Left; under the byline The Hope Project: changing Labour's organisation Carter opines:
Yesterday I said that overhype can lead to disappointment, and foreshadowed what will happen to John Key as it becomes ever more obvious that he can't deliver a "Brighter Future". I was asked by a few people to expand on what Labour has to do.
Labour is going to need to pitch as the party of the future and as the party of hope, to reconnect with past and possible supporters.
Too many of those people don't think that is what we are about. Some of our own conduct and choice of messages has helped create that impression. That is why we need to change.
We received an e-mail overnight alerting us to Jordan Carter's post, and just as an aside, suggesting that we Google "the hope project". Naturally we did, and we discovered that there are 465,000,000 search results. They include a Hope Project helping Muslims in India, a Hope Project helping the victims of domestic sex trafficking in the USA, a Chinese public service project organized by the China Youth Development Foundation (CYDF) and the Communist Youth League, and an Irish resource and information site for parents of children with special needs. That's on the first page alone.
These are all noble programmes making a difference in the lives of the underprivileged or disavantaged. Some would argue that "underpriviliged or disadvantaged" describes the Labour Party pretty accurately just at the moment, but we wouldn't dream of drawing that analogy.
But if "The Hope Project" is the working title for Labour's internal review, we would suggest that it's poorly named. The Hope Project evokes images of being asked to find a dollar a day to feed, medicate and educate starving Labour MP's. We already do that; it's called tax!
7 comments:
Hoping isn't doing.
There's too much hoping that Government will fix things, hoping that a party will be depicted by media as a solution and seen that way when the party itself is it's own problem.
Hope doesn't get things done.
Hope doesn't get things done.
You've got it in one Pete.
The title? That's all you've got? Lame, even by the low standards you set for youselves. National good, Labour baaaaaaaaad....
"Labour needs to reconnect with the constituency it has walked away from..."
Whatever that means. You'd never find the Nats walking away from farmers and rent-seeking businessmen. As an example see the new WINZ board.
Ask Damian O'Connor if Labour has walked away from its key constituency Judge; remeber the "gaggle of gays and self-serving unionists" comment. Ask Josie Pagani; the LEC's choice for the Mana by-election who missed out after Goff's office bussed in staffers and EPMU members to get Kris Fa'afoi the nomination. I'll find more for you after I've had breakfast.
"What will happen to John Key as it becomes ever more obvious that he can't deliver a "Brighter Future"."
It's obvious, isn't it.
Back to Hawaii, hurry-scurry.
Oh dear Anon; you really need to get some help to deal with your obsession with John Key and Hawaii. You're starting to sound like Robert Guyton.
My problem is that the Labour Party is obsessed with finding the right talk, rather than bothering with doing any of the actual walk, so to speak.
Labour used to be a party that stood up for working people, but across all of the industrial action in the past decade they haven't backed workers in the slightest. Any party reorganisation will be futile unless they address this.
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