Editorial: Elephant in the caucus room

Chris Carter. Photo / Dean Purcell

Whatever else might be said about Chris Carter's spectacular act of political self-immolation this week, it has to be said that he had - and still has - a point.

Attention has focused on his approach, which was bungled almost beyond belief. But his erstwhile collegues are reluctant to talk about the elephant in the room: Labour's, and in particular Goff's, dire polling, and the certainty that, as things stand, they do not have a prayer of forming the next Government.

That Carter's political career is over is now certain. He says he won't stand at the next election and he will assuredly be expelled from the party next weekend.

And anything less than expulsion would be unthinkable, even if his recent record were not as sorry as it is. In doing what he did this week, he was both dishonest and disloyal.

Worse, he was incompetent: delivering, and being seen to deliver, recognisably hand-addressed envelopes suggested either an appalling error of judgement or a political death wish and very possibly both.

Carter's move was also extraordinarily miscalculated. If, as he claims, he was speaking for a significant faction in the caucus, and in the interests of the party, he would and should have worked with others to do the numbers and build momentum for a spill behind closed doors.

In politics, you don't announce battles like this until you've already won them.

It does nothing for a party's credibility when its dirty linen is washed in public and it did nothing for Carter's that he used a clumsy attempt at anonymous leaking to the Press Gallery as the means to his end.

If anything, his attempt at white-anting has had the opposite effect, forcing the Labour caucus to circle the wagons and shoring up support for the leader.

For now. As any politics-watcher knows, caucus protestations of loyalty to a leader never sound so heartfelt as just before he's toppled. On that basis, Phil Goff can probably take some comfort from the fact that his caucus colleagues' assurances that his position is secure sound offhand and pro forma.

But they are scarcely warm. Even Goff himself, when asked on Newstalk ZB whether his leadership was safe, said that he had been unanimously elected by the caucus - a politician's answer that would have done a lawyer proud.

He has looked decisive enough in dealing with Carter's excesses but he has never looked even faintly like Prime Minister material. If his caucus doesn't know that he can't lead Labour to victory next year, they are missing something that is very plain to everyone else in the country. The even worse news for Labour is that there is no more promising replacement waiting in the wings.

Frustratingly for the party, this diversion comes at the very time when it should have been making inroads into the Government's popularity. The Nats' teflon coating, seemingly impermeable to any kind of political misfortune, has been bubbling and blistering slightly in recent weeks.

It was forced into an embarrassing backdown when its proposals to open up high-value conservation land to mining sparked furious opposition. Both Prime Minister John Key and Energy Minister Gerry Brownlee tried to depict the climb-down as proof that it was a Government that listens but the change of heart was so at odds with Brownlee's original bullish bluster that it seemed weak and unconvincing.

In truth, this increasingly looks like a Government driven by polls rather than principle. It shelved plans to lower the drink-driving limit for adults - despite official advice that such a move would save lives - because, as Key said, "we need to take people with us."

It is a depressingly pallid response and an Opposition that had its wits about it would have made mincemeat of it.