You don't go back to your ex

Unless he's changed. And Hipkins hasn't.

Hey fam,

How are we? It’s a wildly but mildly undecided Auckland morning - sunny, rainy, warm and chilly all at the same time. An underwhelming breakfast buffet of weathers.

And I’m back in your inboxes with the latest column - alllllll about Labour’s strategy recently of lying low and saying absolutely nothing in the hope that Luxon will single handedly fck up the election - and everyone will come running back to Labour.

It’s kinda topical because everyone’s been talking this week about how Luxon’s gonna get rolled. (The ides of March and what have you.) And obviously everyone in cabinets been in the press this week saying he has their full support. (Hail Ceasar.)

And I could write about that - but normally I take the view that if everyone else is covering that, then why on earth would I write that too? You don’t want to read me if everyone else has already said it.

Plus, I don’t think he’s gonna get rolled. I know it’s bad, I know it’s very very bad if everyone’s coming out saying he’s got their full support. But equally it hasn’t solved the bigger question of - who on earth would replace this dude? There’s only one real contender now - after Chris Bishop’s weird brief forray into an attempted coup back at Christmas - and that’s Erica Stanford.

But she’s not exactly making a lot of noises about it, is she? In fact, none of them are. And whilst they could replace Luxon with a total unknown - step forward Tod Muller like it’s 2020 again - how likely is that? Given that they tried that already with Muller, then Collins, and was a total shambles….they’ve probably still got PTSD.

It feels to me they’re still waiting. Waiting and flapping and running around saying - something has to be done! But no one actually knows what.

Which is funny, because it feels a lot as though all of NZ is waiting right now.

Not just the Right - or the Left - but all of us normal peeps.

We keep looking around thinking, man, we’ve got some really big problems here and someone needs to start coming up with solutions!

And naturally you look to governance for that. And yet…it feels we’re still waiting for our Batman. Intellecutally and ideologically, we’re waiting for a leader to come out and start addressing these pressing issues.

Especially since it feels we’re running out of time on the big ones.

Ever since the tragedies of Mt Maunganui - we’ve seriously woken up to the risk of extreme weather events caused by climate change. And our total and utter lack thereof of preparation for them.

And there is a palpable frustration at the inactivity, and total lack of planning, which you can feel in our collective consciousness.

Not only for resilience against extreme events, but also about wider conversations about climate change, our energy market, and how we pay for all the infrastructure upgrades we desperately need under the austerity budgeting….

In other words, we want to have big conversations. But our leaders aren’t starting those conversations. And no one else seems to want to step in.

And that creates this huuuuge sense of intellectual panic - and then paralysis from panic - that is the backdrop to how we feel right now.

And we know we’re panicking, and we know it’s paralysed us, which makes us all the more hungry for someone to break the paralysis.

Which is why Labour’s strategy of do nothing, say nothing, and hope everyone just wanders back is precisely the wrong approach.

Right now, we have a desperate hunger for someone - ANYONE - to start having hard, long term conversations that tackle these problems head on.

But none of our leaders seem to want to act. They all want to tinker - or lie low.

And in lying low, they’re also not showing us that they have any ideas. No bright thinking that can get us out of this.

And crucially, they look exactly the same as they did in 2023. They haven’t changed one jot. Hence why I wrote this week’s column on,

“Hipkins, you don’t go back to your ex unless he’s changed…”

Because you don’t. You may not vote National and Luxon this November. But that doesn’t mean you’ll go back to Labour.

It just means people don’t vote. If you hate both - you vote for neither.

Anyway, have a read, have a think. As ever, I’m right here. Ping me, I’ll get back to you - I’m just a bit of slow replier.

Much love as ever - stay caffeinated out there, team - see you soon,

Vee xo