Vernon Small: Arrogant Labour misread signals

"Party vote Labour" a smiling Helen Clark urges from the billboards.

"They could say why," our 11-year-old muttered.

Exactly.

Labour has based its re-election campaign on Helen Clark's leadership and popularity, and the need for stability. For stability, read "Labour with a majority ... or at least close".

Other Labour billboards have been dominated by the same minimalist message; the name of the local candidate and the party, with a tick beside each.

According to one strategist close to Labour, it is this failure to define headline policy issues that is most to blame for its slumping poll ratings.

Even the new pledge card promises are general and, in some cases, backward-looking.

In response the minor parties have filled the policy vacuum - with GM, crime, the Treaty and immigration.

Labour has also poured vitriol on almost all its potential allies, which ironically must have undermined voters' confidence in the very message of stability Clark was so keen to sell.

That, in a nutshell, is why Labour's support bled from a high in the mid-50s to just under 40 per cent during four weeks of campaigning.

The day after the hoopla of her Auckland campaign launch, Clark was given the first warning that savaging your allies may not be the best plan.

While campaigning in Invercargill, she had been interviewed by the local press, visited a paua factory and went walkabout downtown - a regime that became standard fare up and down the country.

In a local eatery, she joked with the owner about the Greens and their "anarcho-feminists and Goths". The owner had seemed to be saying that Greens coming into his shop seemed "normal".

She had told the Bluff Community Board her plan for her main rival: Ignore. Never mention Bill English or National by name.

That tactic worked like a dream, marginalising National and denying it headlines for the first weeks of the campaign. So far so good.

Her other tactic was to fight for an absolute majority, with Jim Anderton's help, to avoid relying on "ankle-tappers" and "fringe" parties.

That required a controlled attack on the minor parties, especially the Greens. But it had to be kept under control, or the centre-left infighting would become the issue.

That night in Invercargill, Clark addressed a public meeting dominated by party faithful. She ran through her pledge-card promises and again pleaded for a clear majority.

Then came the warning, couched in a question from the back of the hall: "I've always voted Labour and will this time, too. But I wish you would stop demonising the Greens. They can be a bit odd, but they are our friends. They are basically good people and they challenge us with their ideas." Surprisingly, the man got a ripple of applause.

But in the following days, Clark kept up her controlled barrage. It was a high-risk strategy, but both parties thrived in the polls.

That all changed on July 10 when Nicky Hager's Seeds of Distrust book was sown into the campaign.

Clark went ballistic at the Greens, and the Greens bit back. Clark flew at TV3's John Campbell. Support for both Labour and the Greens went into freefall.

A week later, Clark was savaging New Zealand First - something her union backers would have preferred from the start - and then she rounded on the struggling Alliance, claiming their Waitakere poll was fabricated.

Three attacks on three coalition partners on her side of the political divide.

And not a thought for endorsing Laila Harre in Waitakere, which could have curbed the Greens and assured Labour of another mate.

The ground was tilled for the "Worm-driven" rise of Peter Dunne - an apparently reasonable man talking common sense - as voters opposed to a change in Government cast about for a bride for Labour.

Briefly, Labour turned to Dunne.

One senior minister even asked rhetorically: "Who would you rather have? Rod Donald or Peter Dunne?"

A prickly Green or a pragmatic conservative?

A leftist party which has backed you on most votes against a morally conservative one that has backed you on very few?

Finally, late last week, Labour and the Greens got the message.

The same public divisions which had sunk a centre-left victory in 1996 were being played out again.

The attack ads were pulled and the airwaves crackled with cooperation. Calls were rapidly exchanged at the highest levels to prepare the soil for the morning-after talks.

On current polling, Labour does seem to have survived its mix of arrogance and over-leaping ambition.

But its strategic errors - and the equally dyspeptic response from the Greens - has ensured it will not achieve the centre-left rout that was on the cards just two weeks ago.

This morning's Herald-DigiPoll shows that Labour and the Greens are struggling to muster 48 per cent, compared with a combined 65 per cent at their peak.

Meanwhile, Clark's demeanour during the campaign has allowed a dogged but unspectacular Bill English to start narrowing the gap in "attitudinal" polls of the respective leaders' personalities.

That is at least a start on the long road to 2005 as he tries to reassemble the centre-right vote into a coherent alternative Government.

Full news coverage:
nzherald.co.nz/election

Election links:
The parties, policies, voting information, and more

Results coverage begins 7pm Saturday on nzherald.co.nz