Labour senses it can pull off a mission impossible

By JOHN ARMSTRONG

The Labour Party now believes it has a seriously good chance of achieving the seemingly impossible.

With yet another opinion poll showing support for Labour topping 50 per cent, the party senses not just victory but the kind of overwhelming victory that would enable it to govern alone, unencumbered by a coalition partner.

Not that anyone was so crass as to gleefully raise the prospect of such nirvana in public during the party's election-year congress over the weekend.

Such talk would have reeked of the sort of arrogance and complacency the party is being so careful to avoid.

Worse, it would have unnecessarily offended potential coalition partners whom Labour might need in 2005, even if it doesn't need them after this coming election.

Even the sometimes loose-lipped Michael Cullen put things delicately. "This election is going to be much more of a two-party contest than either of the last two," he told the 500-plus delegates assembled in the Queen's Wharf Events Centre in Wellington.

"The people are looking for a clear-cut result."

Even saying that was enough to upset the Green Party. But Dr Cullen's remarks reflected the two strong undercurrents rippling beneath the surface of this placid congress - the increasing likelihood of a late July election and a quiet determination to hang onto those stratospheric poll ratings and turn them into a landslide on polling day.

Securing enough votes to govern alone requires gouging votes from the political centre - and away from National.

Labour also needs some centre-ground insurance to compensate for voter apathy in its poor urban electorates. In these seats - as party president Mike Williams observed - Labour risks being the victim of its own success. However hard it tries to get people on the rolls, turnout will be low. Labour's overall party vote is bound to suffer.

To its advantage, Labour's private polling apparently shows most voters would prefer a standalone Labour government rather than Labour having to rely on the Greens.

That suggests some voters who would normally align themselves with National might be prepared to tick Labour just to shut the Greens out.

No surprise then that Helen Clark's keynote speech to delegates was decidedly centrist - so middle-of-the-road you could paint white lines down its text.

She gave Labour's utterly conventional economic development strategy the heaviest plug. Traditional Labour rallying cries, such as improving healthcare and housing, received far less attention.

Once upon a time Helen Clark would have trumpeted New Zealand's anti-nuclear policy to cheering delegates; this time she preferred to refer to "an overwhelmingly positive relationship" with the United States.

She talked of "addressing" the causes of crime, but stressed tougher sentencing for serious offenders.

As for the kind of policy agenda Labour might implement in its second term, not a word. You will have to wait for the manifesto - for more of the same.

Helen Clark judges that the last thing people want is "another period of giddy, destabilising change which promises miracles and delivers misery".

But the last thing she is going to do is say or flag anything that upsets conservative-minded voters leaning her way.

In that regard, the anodyne slogan slung above delegates at the weekend congress - Working Together - might have been better rewritten as Boring is Working.

For Labour, being boring is working.