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Friday, November 16, 2012

The Political spectrum splinters again with launch of new Party - should Winston be concerned?

Farmer Smurf goes to Wellington

The Northern Advocate beat me to it, there is a new right wing Rural Party launching this weekend.

The political spectrum of NZ has been splintering as the economic pressure of the global financial crash continues to drive countries into recession or near zero growth.

This in turn leads citizens frustrated by the economic pressures to demand different political representation when the current Parties can't or won't move on issues deemed central to those voters.

The Rural Party will run a Party list only and it will be the usual reactionary things one could expect from a Rural Party - it won't take kindly to Maori water claims, will have trouble with basic science over climate change but most interestingly it will be completely against assets sales.

This is smart play and it identifies reactionary rural voters while making clear policy differences to National without threatening vote splitting in electorates.

National have a problem with the MMP review in that they will not dump the coat tailing rule. It's the only feature of MMP that benefits National, and the idea they would kill off that edge is politically naive. To take some of that heat away from coat tailing, National could offer to lower the threshold not to 4%, but to 3%.

This would make National look more democratic than it actually is and it could benefit National. A 3% threshold could be crossed by the Conservative Party and it could be crossed by this new Rural Party.

Winston should be concerned by this new addition to the political spectrum. NZ First picked up a lot of protest vote from National voters not happy with Key's assets sale program. That protest vote could transfer very easily to this new party and with deep farmer pockets, the Rural Party has the resources to focus on the rural voting block far better than any other Party.

Of course, it could all horribly backfire as well. The Rural Party, Conservative Party and NZ First could all split that sub threshold vote 4 ways with National and end up with those 3 Parties all falling under the threshold and being wiped out.

2014 will be fascinating.

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2 Comments:

At 16/11/12 1:37 pm, Blogger Nitrium said...

Obviously I have not had a look at their political agenda at this time. But if they want to put Government finances in order (i.e. run a balanced budget), but without the pointless bennie bashing and pandering to the police it sounds like there might finally be a party I could support.

 
At 16/11/12 9:41 pm, Blogger Tim said...

Let's hope Winnie doesn't poo and realises that his best hope of achieving the things that are important to him are not going to be with NaCt 'types' or anything on the right that resembles them.

Oh and btw - there is this push to have tutoring on the Holocaust made mandatory in schools...... let it roll - just so long as when they do, they let those little minds become familiar with the Fascist ideology that was at the Holocaust's core.
I'll put money on same little minds thinking......'errr arrrrrrr, hang on a minute..... this sounds awfully familiar' (already).

 

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