Written By:
mickysavage - Date published:
5:06 pm, January 29th, 2025 - 14 comments
Categories: greens, labour, maori party, politicans, stuart nash, uncategorized -
Tags:
Remember Stuart Nash?
He was a former Labour MP whose career was complicated.
He became an MP in 2008. He missed out in 2011 and instead became Chief of Staff for David Shearer, at least for a while.
He then won Napier in 2014. The existing National MP Chris Tremain had resigned to spend more time with his family.
Nash won the seat by 3,850 votes over the National candidate. The electorate was also contested by Garth McVicar of the Conservative Party. McVicar won 7,603 votes. Nash refused to accept that this contributed to his success.
If you compare the 2011 and 2014 election results in Napier you will see that Nash’s proportion of the electorate vote barely changed but National’s plunged by 19% points because of an energetic campaign by McVicar who at the time was the head of the Sensible Sentencing Trust. It seems clear to me that his success was directly due to McVicar’s presence but hey, in politics winning is all important.
He previously blogged for Martyn Bradbury’s Daily Blog.
The quality of his contributions has caused Bradbury to atomise all traces of them, although they are still available on the Way Back Machine.
In 2015 he attacked this site and accused it of being a bastardisation of a once proud Labour broadsheet.
I am pleased he showed such respect for Labour’s proud history.
My response drew a number of responses from first time commentators including some from the man himself. I must admit I was surprised. From someone who had a senior rank and who was apparently finishing a Masters in Law at the same time I was surprised he had the time.
In his post he lauded his success in Napier and made no mention of McVicar’s contribution. He also said that the party should ask “is this contributing towards a win in 2017? If it doesn’t then drop it, don’t say it and keep clear of it.”
He thought we should all stop discussing politics. Winning was the only thing that mattered.
Earlier that year he claimed that the Green’s support would revert back to historical averages. That year they scored 10.7% of the party vote, well above their usual result.
In 2015 he was implicated in the hiring of Simon Lusk of Dirty Politics who wrote a report on the formation of a centrist party.
Nash said he torpedoed the idea and did not know about it until the report had been prepared. Bowker disagreed and says Nash told them to see him when the report was completed.
He rose to be a cabinet minister but found the role difficult. He managed to:
It was then revealed that in 2020 Nash emailed two of his donors, who were commercial property owners and including Troy Bowker, about a commercial rent relief policy Cabinet was discussing. This was in clear breach of the Cabinet Manual which said “discussion at Cabinet and Cabinet committee meetings is informal and confidential”, and that any proposals “likely to be considered at forthcoming meetings, outside Cabinet-approved consultation procedures” are not allowed to be disclosed.
In his email he said “I am as annoyed (and surprised) about the final outcome of the ‘commercial rent relief package’ as you are”.
He was sacked and not given the chance to resign.
This incident added to the impression that was present in 2023 that the Labour Caucus was a clusterfuck and directly added to the really poor election result that year.
He has always been on the right of the party.
I have gone into this background because Stuart Nash has recently taken to writing columns in Newsroom.
In his first he extolled the benefits of allowing the super wealthy to come and buy up chunks of New Zealand. He also mentioned that he had been fortunate to attend a private dinner with Boris Johnson.
In his second he suggested that Labour had become too radical and should ditch the Maori Party and the Green Party.
He said this:
The Māori seats aside, the major parties will always win the general seats, but as we all know, it’s the party votes that count these days. So why any party would rule out working with Winston is beyond me.
If I was in Labour (and I am no longer, so it is a little academic I suppose) I would be arguing extremely eloquently for ditching Te Pāti Māori once and for all. Cut them loose and make them irrelevant.
I found his post very confusing. Right now the Greens have three electorate seats and Act has two although he is right that the Party Vote is all important.
I don’t know if he meant that he had left the Labour Party or was no longer in caucus. But his views are to the right of Labour.
The suggestion that Labour’s political forbears would be rolling in their grave because Labour is on good terms with the Maori Party is bizarre. Is he not aware of the relationship between Micky Savage and Wiremu Ratana?
And Labour’s political forebears were strong principled people who stood for the rights and interests of workers. They would never have thought it a good idea to have dinner with a former Tory Prime Minister.
He now works for a global recruiting consultancy and hates the idea of a wealth tax. Who is surprised.
I look forward to reading his further columns. But can he ditch the emotional claims that Labour has abandoned its principles. Because what he is advocating the party does would make us resemble National lite, not deepest Red Labour.
I've said it before. Nash got re-elected regularly because he was so centrist that even a lot of National voters in Napier were comfortable with him as their MP and probably many of them wished he was standing for National instead of Labour.
I've never vibed with Stu…that gym bunny-peeni henare- schikt ain't my thing. But I reckon there's votes for labour in the centre. CGT + distance themselves from the woke of greens and TPM…4 million on state houses not whale songs.
Nut job bingo there. Disparage Peeni Henare, say 'woke', and reference whale songs.
You're on the wrong blog, mate.
Nash is a scum bag of the first order.
A hard right tool, indeed his actions are the same as the other brood parasitic mp's – prebble and douglas.
Nash was embarrassing on Brian Ridge's 1ZB show yesterday afternoon. H had the right concept, being selling assets risks services to NZ's most vulnerable, but he was unprofessional and sounded like he was chewing a pixie caramel when not speaking*
* I'm fully prepared to accept that Brian Edge and his nut job producers may have conspired to leave his channel up when not speaking for the purpose of delegitimising him.
But he was crap and that's why he was fired from Labour and has always been associated with National.
Nash was also responsible for the classist legislation that essentially says you can only freedom camp in NZ if you are wealthy.
Far Centre Extremist outs himself
Well done! You’ve passed the Copy & Paste Test with flying colours. Now, your next lesson is to engage your brain and make a comment that shows that you’re capable of critical and independent thinking. The next test as the end of the year which will give you plenty of time to practice on a piece of paper in your room.
Nashy got the slashy from Labour some time back now, leave him to his egotism and concentrate on moving NZ Labour to the position of supporting a wealth tax and a Capital Gains tax.
I'd say this site has stayed in the same position while NZ has made significant shifts rightward. So it's natural we're further apart.
May we stay strong to our truth forever.
Nash is best suited to the Winston First party i think
Nash and Jones are recent examples of some mothers do 'ave em.
Prebble, Quigley and Douglas hasn't stopped labour from learning the lesson and doing it to themselves again since especially with Shane.
NZFirst at 6-8% in 2026 will shunt the Greens out of government again.
Only Labour has the ability to capture 2-4% of NZFirst and push them out again.
That's why Nash and Shane Jones are a loss to Labour.
He has always been "Labour lite". I was involved in one of his campaigns in Epsom many years ago and for him – it was always about Stuart Nash first and the Party second.
He tried there to run a Stuart Nash campaign rather than a Labour campaign.
Fortunately, he had an Electorate Committee who told him in no uncertain terms what his job in Epsom was – which was to get the hoardings up on the major arterials, raise the funds to pay for them and to contribute to the wider campaign, and to get out the Party Vote.
His grandiose dreams were firmly extinguished- and to give him credit, he did run a good campaign. However, I always saw him as self-serving and more recent events have proved me to be correct.