Patrick Gower: Goff finally discovers the right way to win

It was a year to the day of taking over as Labour leader that Phil Goff finally got his first real "good on ya, mate" reaction from the public.

It took race to do it - his visceral attack on Hone Harawira's "white mother f******" email was calling it the way many people saw it, and a step ahead of John Key's initial shrugged shoulders on the issue.

Goff started by calling it "racist" language.

By the next morning, Goff was still mad, but there was a bit more method in it. He called Harawira an out-and-out racist, attacked the Harawira family and dropped lines like "he bludged off the taxpayer" and "one rule for everybody".

It sounded like he was blowing a political dog whistle - code words that hit an intended frequency.

The message certainly got to talkback world, with arch-conservative Michael Laws declaring Goff relevant again.

Goff continued the race debate in the House this week, with a double-barrelled attack portraying National as beholden to Maori interests.

First Goff castigated the special deal that could give some iwi multimillion-dollar concessions in the horse-trading over the emissions trading scheme.

Then deputy leader Annette King went after National's support of the Maori Party's whanau ora policy which will give Maori separate money for their social programmes.

It points to a revised backroom strategy. This was the political "wedge" to follow the dog whistle.

By making National look as if it was giving special treatment to Maori interests, it could create discord among its support base - particularly the hard-core who find cosying up to Maori anathema.

The race card may not have been fully played, but Goff certainly had his finger on it, which left some of Labour's more liberal MPs feeling uncomfortable.

Key accused Goff of indulging in the politics of race, which Goff could plausibly deny.

Goff has never been tinged with racism. Labour's caucus, including its Maori MPs, was upset about the proposed iwi deal and the way it appeared to be reopening treaty settlements.

The attacks on whanau ora could be defended as jibes at National's flip-flop on race-based funding with the recent Iwi/Kiwi billboards a recent memory.

Even if the attack on Harawira was not initially contrived, Goff's strategists will have noticed how it worked for him.

However, race tactics are never going to be part of an overt strategy for Labour, because it would risk dividing its own base and re-igniting the left/right factions.

The episode was still useful in exposing weaknesses in National's governing arrangements, and reconnecting Goff with the "blokes" Labour lost at the last election. It was also the first real exposure of the negative side to Key's relaxed attitude.

But what is most instructive is the effectiveness of Labour jumping over into the right.

Labour got more traction with the public through Goff's attack on Harawira than it has from its most successful other issues - the cuts to funding of night classes and the ACC levy increases that infuriated motorcyclists so much that about 5000 of them marched on Parliament this week.

He got another marker in the ground this week, renouncing a 20-year bipartisan approach to monetary policy and the way the Reserve Bank operates with a view to making life easier for exporters and first-home buyers.

For much of this year, Goff has largely been written off, for his low poll-ratings and his out-of-touch "Robo-Goff" machine image.

His involvement in the tawdry Richard Worth-Neelam Choudary fiasco resulted in a serious setback for him.

But Goff has moderated his approach from his earlier full-throttle ways.

There has also been more "Goff - the man" put about; his speeches are increasingly littered with stories of how he was cleaned out by a car while on his bike (to protesting bikers) or how putting up a barn on his farm took months to get planning consent (Federated Farmers).

He is starting to look a decidedly different Labour leader to Helen Clark, who he still trails as preferred Prime Minister in some opinion polls.

Goff is working hard to dismantle Labour's namby-pamby image, starting with his apology for the Nanny State at the party conference.

His speech even carried the line "it's not something to be politically correct about", but the way he skimmed over rather than emphasised it showed he was perhaps conscious of any nervous nellies among the liberal wing.

That it took a deviation into race for Goff to connect with the electorate for the first time in a year shows how difficult his job has been as he trails in Key's wake.

But Goff has been beavering away and doing just about anything he or anyone else could in the role.

He has tried to engage National for a grand coalition on the emissions trading scheme, and made overtures on a capital gains tax, but was rejected on both counts.

He also repositioned Labour on the left in calling to resist American pressure to send the SAS back to Afghanistan to prop up a corrupt regime.

Goff will need to get a few more markers down. He may need to take even more deviations to the right given the success with the Harawira attack. Supporting national standards in schools in face of union opposition would be one such way to catch the public's imagination.

The rise of conservatism is causing some concern in the Labour caucus, but there is an internal acceptance that Goff is the only viable leader. Labour must deal with the fact the electorate has shifted firmly to the right. Its normal reactions just will not work - public servants losing their jobs is not necessarily a big issue outside Wellington, for instance. Labour must challenge some of its own orthodoxies.

Labour's strategy is centred on Goff. The risk in this is that it is based on the assumption that the sheen around the political phenomenon of John Key will wear off. Senior levels in Labour still believe the public will someday "see through" Key.

Asserting himself as Labour leader against Helen Clark's record was a huge challenge - and one Goff is progressing on.

Taking up the challenge against John Key is a tougher one altogether.