John Armstrong: Ghost of GM past haunts Clark

COMMENT

You would have thought centre-left parties had worked out by now that they risk paying the ultimate price of losing power when they attack one another in public.

Apparently not.

It took Labour and the Alliance the best part of a decade to reach a rapprochement which gave voters enough confidence they could be trusted to run a stable government.

Amid the rancour over GM, the Prime Minister is sending the opposite message by describing prospects of a Labour-Greens coalition as "rather dismal".

Helen Clark's caustic assault on the Greens on Monday was calculated to get her back on the front foot after a terrible week during which Government woes - Corngate, the foreshore and seabed, and the flatulence tax - compounded on one another and put the Beehive under severe stress for the first time in a long time.

But expediently dumping on Jeanette Fitzsimons was of dubious short-term advantage. You have to have a solid case to dent the Greens' co-leader's wholesome image. Clark did not have one.

The Prime Minister castigated Fitzsimons' "highly partisan" chairing of the select committee inquiry into the handling of the GM corn scare of December 2000 - the source of Clark's current Corngate frustrations. But Labour did not object to Fitzsimons being in the chair when the inquiry was initiated months ago. It is a bit late to do so now.

Dubbed as Parliament's Steel Magnolia and Mother Theresa, Fitzsimons wisely turned the other cheek and responded to Clark's character assassination with characteristic reasonableness.

The Prime Minister looked like she was playing the woman, not the ball.

The temptation to go after Fitzsimons would have been overpowering, however.

Not only does Fitzsimons chair the select committee inquiry, she personifies the campaign to stop the lifting of the moratorium on the commercial release of GM organisms at the end of next month.

For Clark - apoplectic at Corngate getting a rerun - Fitzsimons is the ghost of GM past and GM present. Discredit her in one role and you undermine her in the other.

The danger is that the denigration damages the longer-term relationship between Labour and the Greens - a relationship that might be pivotal to Labour's ability to run a government after the next election should the tide go out on United Future.

On one level, Clark's attack changed nothing. The Greens did not rip up their co-operation agreement with Labour. Senior advisers from both parties continued to consult over Government policy.

Greens MPs still met Labour counterparts. The Greens will still vote for Government legislation they feel they can support. And yet, Clark's attack could change everything.

Ignore Labour's stellar poll ratings. The down-to-earth reality is the centre-left won just 63 of Parliament's 120 seats in last year's election - three less than in 1999, mainly because of the collapse of the Alliance's vote.

It is a fair punt that the centre-left is more likely to lose seats in 2005 than gain them, and United Future will struggle to hold on to its eight MPs.

The margins are extremely tight for Labour.

At present, Clark has the luxury of being able to turn to either United Future on her right flank or the Greens on her left to pass legislation. She is just two seats away from the misery of having to rely on both those parties, who are fundamentally at odds on most things, to get anything through Parliament.

That is a recipe for paralysis.

Yet Clark launches a tirade against Fitzsimons which will make it more difficult for those in the Greens' hierarchy trying to nudge party rank-and-file towards the notion of working more formally with Labour, possibly in coalition.

The Prime Minister is playing hardball, however.

Clark would probably prefer to run a Labour-only minority Government propped up by the Greens' giving her support on confidence and supply.

She knows that although the Greens might withhold support on confidence motions now because of the lifting of the moratorium, they would have to grant confidence if push came to shove.

She is also saying to the Greens that they should not expect to think they will be able to supplant United Future in her favours once the lifting of the moratorium removes the major obstacle to a supposedly better relationship.

The Greens - having ruled out working with National - have nowhere else to go but Labour.

But holding someone hostage is not conducive to healthy relations.

And Rod Donald, the Greens' other co-leader, gently reminded Clark this week that his party's votes in Parliament are crucial to Labour delivering to its core constituencies, such as trade unions.

Clark's outburst will also make the Greens that much more determined to keep GM on the political agenda for the next election - something Clark had expected to be thwarted by the lifting of the moratorium letting the GM genie out of the bottle.

However, the Government is now trying to defuse public concern at the ending of the moratorium by saying it does not expect a flood of applications for commercial release and it may veto initial ones for GM food crops.

The genie may remain in the bottle, at least partially.

But that only delays Labour and the Greens constructively engaging in how they get beyond the GM argument and achieve some kind of trust-building accommodation.

Instead, Clark is effectively saying, "we cannot work with the Greens", at least at the moment.

The risk is middle-of-the-road voters - already nervous that Labour would be pulled leftwards by the Greens - will interpret this as meaning a Labour-Greens coalition would be inherently unstable.

To stop them shunning Labour, Clark's missive against the Greens is a reminder to voters that Labour desperately needs "centrist" options like United Future.

And it was notable that Peter Dunne also weighed in behind Clark, claiming his party had shown during the past year how to be a "responsible" partner to a minority government without compromising his independence - unlike the "fanatical" Greens.

Dunne will be judged on his impact on Labour policies, however. So far, the measure of that is "not much" - which could leave Labour stuck with the Greens. Unhappily so.