John Armstrong: Greens make politics, not war, with attack on Labour

While the Prime Minister may be irked by the sudden and highly-acidic attack on Labour by the Greens, she will grudgingly accept the political logic behind it.

The Greens' denigration of Helen Clark's Government as "tired" and "rudderless" does not mean the tentative truce forged between the two centre-left allies following their ugly struggle over genetic modification has broken down and civil war resumed.

Jeanette Fitzsimons' weekend speech to a Green candidates' workshop should instead be viewed as part of the Greens' strategy to jolt voters on the centre-left and woo fresh support to her party, which is nervously fluctuating between 4 and 7 per cent in the polls

While Labour will be annoyed with her rhetoric, it may be more worried by her signal that the Greens will overtly target the votes of beneficiaries and the low-paid, rather than just the young and environmentally-minded.

With her talk of building more state houses, boosting the minimum wage and putting student allowances on a par with the unemployment benefit, Jeanette Fitzsimons is trying to reposition the Greens more firmly in territory formerly occupied by the Alliance.

With Jim Anderton's Progressives struggling to attract attention, Labour has been able to move to its right to counter the Don Brash-led National Party with relative impunity as it has not had to worry about what is happening on its left flank.

Labour will not take kindly to the Greens so openly trying to cannibalise parts of its core vote - more so, given the Maori Party is also nibbling away on that front.

However, no longer enjoying the single-issue pulling power they got from their uncompromising stance on GM, the Greens have little choice but to pitch their other policies far stronger and wider.

As it is, the Greens have already made something of a concession to Labour in the interests of portraying stability on the centre-left.

Both the Greens and Labour agree a repeat of the last election campaign's bitterness over GM and the Greens' refusal to offer Labour confidence and supply was in neither party's interests.

Last year, the Greens gave a cast-iron guarantee that next time a party vote for the Greens would be a vote for a Labour-led Government.

As the Greens' other co-leader Rod Donald noted at the weekend, that imposes a responsibility, even an obligation on the Greens to strike a deal with Labour after this year's election. Labour, of course, has not reciprocated. It has other coalition options.

The Greens do not. But while their bargaining power in post-election talks with Labour is consequently reduced, they clearly see their promise to support Labour after the election as giving them some licence to attack it beforehand. That promise also disguises a degree of self-interest on the Greens' part.

They will hope centre-left voters twig that they can safely give their party votes to the Greens without affecting the chances of the next Government coming from the centre-left. Should voters then switch from Labour to the Greens, the latter will increase their ratio of parliamentary seats to Labour's and thus increase their respective bargaining power.

It is a tricky game, however. If the attacks on Labour are too vociferous and too frequent, the Greens run the double risk of confusing voters, who will judge the attacks as confirmation the two parties really cannot work together, while driving Labour even further into the arms of United Future.

Yesterday, the Prime Minister politely brushed aside Jeanette Fitzsimons' speech, jokingly dismissing it as the strangest form of wooing she had experienced.

The next time she may be less magnanimous.