Boy were we ever right about these clowns, we doubters, we lefty dreamers.
Despite the very best efforts of some excited reporters, this never looked like a National Party that was up to much, or indeed anything.
Cometh the crisis, cometh the emperor’s complete lack of clothes.
Luxon of course beats his chest about working 20 or is it 60 hours each day, working the phones to save us from a future empty of petrol, fertiliser and goods, full of the illusion of accomplishment that comes so readily to a self-regarding drone of the managerial class.
Tova O’Brien asks him if he’s been taking some kind of back seat in recent days. He endeavours to disabuse her of this incomprehension of the great work he does from a great height by explaining My job is the CEO. Tova cuts right in with: Your job is the Prime Minister. She’s so very right and most everyone gets the point except for the guy she’s saying it to who is terminally infected with vaulting self-belief.
If you were good at this prime minister stuff, if you had actual leadership skills, you could be playing a highly influential and helpful role right now. You could be taking people with you. You could be getting them thinking about how we might use energy differently; more so in the future, sure, but even right now, to the extent that it’s individually possible.
We’re already seeing more people waiting for buses, out on bikes. We could potentially be using this to make the great leap into turning energy to our advantage, because we actually have the potential to make a great amount of it here.
But of any such thing we’re hearing sweet fuckall, nothing that sounds like an idea of any sort.
Meanwhile he’s making squeaky noises implying he’ll imminently reverse-ferret on that dopey-from-the-off idea about an LNG terminal. But because he’s so fully infused the cabinet with the delusion that running a country is like running a business and being a CEO, minister Simon Watts is dutifully pressing on with delivering the stupid thing and saying No, full speed ahead, why do you ask? because that’s what dutiful managers do.
As if all of that weren’t dispiriting enough, now here comes Nicola Willis saying the inflation number might be higher, but she’s not saying how much higher. Not yet.
They slammed the brakes on spending because they maintained this was what was needed to fix inflation. Wrong, of course. Misguided of course. Way off-course of course. But they’re the grownups in the room and the party of business. Now we hear inflation could be way north of 3.7%.
I’m not sure how much more of this managerial genius we’ll be able to take.
The shift we have so long needed to make is now the obvious and necessary one. The economic case, the security case and the climate case are all now lined up for us.
And we are extraordinarily well-placed for it, with sun, wind and water offering us the potential to generate clean energy in abundance, to build a future that doesn't depend on the next tanker arriving.
Lead, follow or get out of the way, the old saying goes. The sooner we get these clowns out of the way, the better.
