It is impossible to imagine many Labour MPs being comfortable with Goff's "nationhood" speech, despite their best efforts to rationalise it on the grounds he had the right to speak out, says John Armstrong.
What is really going on inside the Labour Party caucus? The show of unity following Tuesday's discussion on the negative fall-out from Phil Goff's "nationhood" speech did not quite square with some rather odd happenings the next day.
For starters, there was Goff's opting out of Wednesday's question time in Parliament. The Labour leader delegated his usual role of questioning the Prime Minister to his deputy, Annette King. That may not seem a big deal. But the ritual nature of parliamentary warfare dictates that party leader take on party leader.
That is because Parliament is the one place where the Opposition leader can confront the Prime Minister face-to-face.
Being seen to equal or better your foe is hugely important in terms of lifting party morale. And this is one of those periods when Labour is in dire need of such a boost.
Goff is the last politician who could be accused of shunning a fight. Even so, if this was a manoeuvre to set the combative King on to John Key - the official explanation - it was a strange time for Goff to withdraw from the frontline.
Eyebrows were raised even higher when Labour MPs lined up for that afternoon's free-for-all general debate.
If Goff's spectacular belly-flop into the whirlpool-filled waters of race relations had been endorsed by the caucus - as Goff assured reporters - why did he not dive even deeper into that subject in his general debate speech? Instead, he and colleagues went back to Labour basics with a theme of how the low-paid were not benefiting from the economic recovery.
The only conclusion to be drawn was that the caucus was trying to purge itself of the bitter after-taste of Goff's brief excursion into what was little short of covert Maori-bashing.
It is impossible to imagine many Labour MPs being comfortable with Goff's "nationhood" speech, despite their best efforts to rationalise it on the grounds he had the right to speak out. While they might say they are supportive of Goff, that does not necessarily mean they support the position he took.
In the unlikely event they do, they are hardly going to give him plaudits for the speech backfiring and failing to win over a significant swathe of voters, while managing to alienate those who have stuck by Labour because they thought they could be safe in assuming the party would never be so opportunist.
Amid all this, Parliament's finance and expenditure select committee was treated to some extraordinary theatrics from Labour finance spokesman David Cunliffe at its meeting on Wednesday. Cunliffe's attempted interrogation of Finance Minister Bill English was Perry Mason mixed with Basil Fawlty - cringe-making and hugely embarrassing.
Any political party with a leader who keeps making tactical blunders while its finance spokesman plays the buffoon is not going to be in a happy frame of mind.
But even if everything was hunky-dory internally, Labour still has major problems externally to overcome before it can hope to gain traction in the polls.
The biggest difficulty is that it is being left little or no room to breathe because of National's arch-pragmatism - amply demonstrated by its u-turn on ACC levies, with the increases for motorcyclists nowhere as steep as earlier flagged.
Likewise, National's penchant for playing safe when it comes to reform could be seen in Gerry Brownlee's announcement that the Government had picked up just about all the recommendations from a review of the electricity market.
With its promise of compensation to consumers if there are future power shortages and moves to engender greater competition, the package is easy to sell politically.
The recommendations might only point towards stabilising what have been soaring retail prices. And Brownlee wisely avoided saying anything that sounded like a prediction that prices will fall.
However, the political virtue of the package is that it fits National's desire for incremental change rather than the big-bang variety exemplified by Don Brash's 2025 Task Force and which could go spectacularly awry.
Labour attacked the electricity package for failing to offer quick relief on power prices. But that stance only begged questions of why it had not done something while in Government and what it would do differently when next in Government.
In many policy areas, National is merely tweaking what Labour did while in power. That leaves Labour with a quandary - to differentiate itself from National it has to rip up its own legacy.
National is surely reaping other benefits from that legacy. For example, some of the increase in elective surgery since National took office happened too quickly for it to be able to claim all the credit.
But National has no compunction in doing so. And its pragmatism is shutting Labour out of the frame - thus forcing Goff to take big risks to force his way back in. In trying to do that he is being hampered by colleagues who want to fight old battles which end up leaving Labour on the wrong side of the argument.
A prime example is National's intention to force primary schools to meet national standards in numeracy and literacy when it comes to pupils' performance.
Trevor Mallard, Labour's education spokesman, may find Education Minister Anne Tolley easy meat. But the end-game here should be the huge segment of middle-of-the-road voters worried about what kind of education their children are getting - not the teacher unions whose opposition to national testing is driven by self-interest.
The unions' supposed concern that schools in poor areas will be stigmatised by failing to meet standards is a cynical cover for their real worry - that teachers' inadequacies will be exposed by league tables which will show exactly which schools in richer areas are failing to deliver for their pupils.
The smart, though admittedly brave, move for Goff would have been to endorse national standards and even raise the benchmarks for satisfactory performance. In one swoop, that would have outflanked National and nullified Labour's image of political correctness.
Mallard's onslaught on Tolley means that opportunity has passed.
Goff, however, has to find other issues where Labour can get back onside with the voters it lost last year - but without jeopardising its core vote. He also has to change a mindset in parts of his caucus that finds comfort and solace for Labour's predicament in expressing solidarity with traditional allies and causes.
Labour this year has only caused National any grief on three issues - emissions trading, ACC and cutbacks to night-class education.
That Labour has claimed some huge victory in highlighting the latter shows how desperate and delusional things have become.
National's Tony Ryall summed it up on Wednesday when he said Labour was suffering from RDS - "relevance deprivation syndrome".
The term may have been coined by Australia's former Foreign Minister Gareth Evans, but the Health Minister's diagnosis was spot-on.
In short, Labour is desperately hunting for relevance and hurting badly in not finding it.
