Labour has battled the unforgiving demons of Roger Douglas' neoliberalism in a red dress and its ill-conceived attempts to appeal more to the centre-right. In consequence it has been reduced to a fumbling shadow that no one knows quite what to make of, let alone vote for. Little's leadership has not helped much.
Strong on occasion, he is often conciliatory when he should be combative, and tends to save his best shots for the obscurity of Parliament, leaving those more adept at the sound bite to impress a short-span electorate.
The situation is worsened by most of Labour's front bench being largely invisible. Apart from Grant Robertson as finance spokesman, I'm willing to bet most folk can't name more than a couple of other shadow ministers.
This is one area where the Greens can do a united Left package a big favour. James Shaw, Metiria Turei, and Kevin Hague are all recognisably astute, and folding them into a combined shadow cabinet would improve the substance of its joint appeal.
Enough to make it a winning team? Maybe yes. But only if Labour take the blinkers off and recognise they must not only go green but stay green.
Green technology, green infrastructure, green workers are all increasing at full-boom pace. National gives this "green economy" lip service but wouldn't know a green job if it tripped on one, which it will, if the Greens manage to instil a bit more up-to-the-minute nous in Labour's thinking.
And only if this fledgling combo-party unites to shut out Winston. Peters may be a politician par excellence, but he is also a dinosaur; he is too old school to properly understand and adapt to the green-ness of the future, and can only rail against what he cannot appreciate.
This - even more than his party being a one-man band - is his major weakness and a Labour-Greens coalition needs to expose it, exploit it, and complete his extinction. Whether the electorate is quite ready for that is moot, but if they don't do it, they risk being hung by either having to cosy-up to NZF or spend another term in Opposition.
Redefining what it means to be "left" in terms of what it is to be "green" is the big challenge, one I'm sure the Greens are tired of waiting for Labour to catch up with.
That Labour is now hinting at an epiphany is great. What they must not do, for their own sakes, is renege, again; because that will spell their doom.
That's the right of it.
- Bruce Bisset is a freelance writer and poet.
