Dialogue: It's time Helen Clark overcame her demons

By JOHN ROUGHAN

A line in Brian Edwards' new book, Helen, Portrait of a Prime Minister, surprised me. Helen Clark told him: "The one thing I hate is the National Party. I think they're loathsome people. I do."

The admission came in a discussion of scuttlebutt that Helen Clark has had to bear over the years. You probably know what I mean. I am not going to print it here, though I safely could, thanks to her cooperation in this foolish book.

Prominent people who are a little unconventional, particularly in politics or sport, attract the kind of rumour that anybody with an ear for truth instinctively discounts. It is normally too trite, as is the assumption that it is started by political opponents.

Beneath any society there is a sewer of gossip which is impervious to denials and which the media dare not entertain without evidence, or unless the subject acknowledges it.

The vehemence of Helen Clark's "hatred" of the National Party is much more interesting than the context in which she declares it.

Distant observers of politics will wonder that I should be surprised. In Parliament and in election campaigns, politicians give a fairly convincing impression that they detest members of the other side.

But they don't, most of them. They are mature, well-adjusted people who understand their differences and can disagree deeply without harbouring what they would call hatred.

Until this year, I would not have been surprised to hear that Helen Clark was an exception. As a backbencher, minister and well into her time as Opposition leader, she had a dark, suspicious, defensive attitude in interviews and debate. There was fear in her stare and sarcasm seemed her only amusement.

But last year, when she was newly in power and wearing it so well, I thought she had settled her demons.

She faced down the distrust of the business world and brought it into her orbit. She became not just a confident contributor to economic conferences but must have discovered that she has the measure of corporate leadership in this country.

In politics, of course, she is unrivalled now. She dominates her Government like no Prime Minister since Muldoon, commands Parliament with ease, has the press gallery feeding from her hand and enjoys the confidence of a country weary of change. Unless something extraordinary happens, she will be re-elected next year in a walk.

Yet just a few months ago, sitting in her Mt Eden conservatory, having gentle weekend interviews for this book, she surprised even Edwards with her still festering hatred. "Loathsome people."

One of her reasons, according to him, was that National "made great play" of the fact that Jenny Shipley has two children. Edwards writes: "Though it was never overtly stated, the clear implication was that the leader of the Labour Party was somehow not a real woman."

Really? Labour people have always seemed hypersensitive to Helen Clark's childlessness; assurances of her warmth, generosity, care and devotion to her parents, sisters and their children are a constant refrain in the book.

No doubt childlessness is an electoral disadvantage but a minor one, I would have thought. Party leaders normally parade their families occasionally, usually at the request of magazines. I don't recall Mrs Shipley doing so more than most.

What was she to do? Keep her children hidden out of sensitivity to her opponent? Quite possibly Labour people believe so, but I doubt that Helen Clark does.

Her problem with National, I suspect, has a much deeper root.

The only other element in her life for which she seems to have the same abiding hatred was her secondary school, Epsom Girls Grammar.

Edwards makes much of the difficulties for a Waikato farm girl making the transition from a tiny country school, and it must have been a shock - for maybe the first term. But Helen, as the book calls her throughout, was by all accounts deeply unhappy for her entire five years.

The boarding hostel was like prison, but that cannot have been the entire problem either, because when she moved out to board privately for her final year she was still miserable and didn't want to go to school.

She has explained the reason in another book, Head and Shoulders, interviews of various women by Virginia Myers. To her, Helen Clark said: "The school draws pupils from the most affluent suburbs, Remuera and Epsom, as well as from less elite areas.

"It was heavy going, coming from a back-country farm where I'd never mixed with people like that. Girls from those elite suburbs perceived country girls as rough and not very civilised."

Loathsome people? There is an echo of hockey sticks in the phrase. It was not until she went to Auckland University and gravitated to the political studies department and the Labour Party that she felt she was in her element.

It is all a long time ago, but she still seems acutely conscious of her origins. When Edwards remarked on her modesty, even on the night she became Prime Minister, she said: "I have this thing about remembering where you come from. Where did I come from - modest farmers, hard-working sort of people. You are not born into any kind of upper class that assumes wealth, money, status ... "

It is undoubtedly that easy assumption of status and power that Helen Clark notices in the National Party and hates. She has no need to. She is bigger than that now.