Granny Herald pulled out the wedgie omnibus today with old man Armstrong and old man Roughan both taking their best shot at helping Key’s attempts to wedge the Greens and Labour.
They’ve clearly decided they’re not gonna shift the greens so instead they’re going concern-troll on Labour here’s Roughan (a man that has never, ever, had Labour’s best interests at heart):
Shearer is an intelligent fellow, still fairly fresh to politics and must be finding some themes of policy and events particularly interesting. He needs to make the most of those subjects. They might not make headlines, his economic leanings, I think, are orthodox and sensible. It may be that while he is talking to small audiences more combatant parliamentarians in his party will command attention and commentators will start writing, Where’s David Shearer?
Geddit? “David mate, you’ve got a good head on you, come away from those awful Greens. You don’t need all that kooky left wing stuff.”
The only thing more palpable than Roughan’s insincerity is his sweaty desperate fear that the neo-liberal project he’s spruiked for for so long is soon to be no more.
Armstrong also tries to push Labour from the Greens with lickspittle flattery but finishes on a different route:
This weekend the Greens will try to render as null and void Key’s potent line that next year’s election will be fought between “the centre-right and far left” by claiming he is the extremist, not them. It is a claim that is most unlikely to wash, however.
Do you get that? The Greens (who, by international standards, are a social democratic centerist party) are the extreme left and when they try to claim they’re not it won’t work. Not because of any reality but because, like Roughan, Armstrong is panicking as he sees the right wing status quo he’s so wed to disappearing over the horizon and he thinks if he denies it hard enough it’ll go away.
Watching these two frightened old men desperately fighting against the weight of history would be funny if they weren’t so mendacious. The truth is that when Labour and the Greens stand next to each other the electorate see the next government. Which means it’s in the interests of Armstrong, Roughan, and the right in general to try to convince them to stand apart as much as possible.
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