James Griffin: Labour, I am your man

Labour Party leader David Cunliffe. Photo / NZ Herald

I know officially it is too late for me to throw my name into the hat for the leadership of the Labour Party, but I figure that at some stage in their arcane selection process someone in a position of power will look at the list of candidates and go "really, this is the best we've got?" And once this thought threshold is crossed, it is surely only a matter of time before they go, "People, we need to think outside the square here," and outside the square is the place where I live and do my best work.

Another thing working in my favour when it comes to me getting the nod to be the front man in the Labour firing line, taking on the benevolent Keysian dictatorship, is that when it comes to Labour thinking outside the square they don't have to go very far because their square is quite small and getting smaller with every election. In fact, if they continue to go the way they're going, and the square keeps shrinking, Labour could become the first political party to split the atom.

Luckily for me, even though the square is tiny and also shrinking it is full; of a vacuum, a leadership vacuum. Given the chance, I can be the vacuum cleaner that sucks up that vacuum and fills the squares with fresh ideas; ideas from outside the square where there is fresh air for the ideas to flourish and grow, which is something that cannot happen within a vacuum-filled square.

One of the great points of difference Labour has over National is that they come across as the party who actually cares about actual people, ahead of caring about profits and looking after your mates. If anything, Labour seems to care too much about actual people and not enough about being an actual political party.

My suggestion, as leader-in-waiting, is that Labour needs to build on this caring reputation by having all their MPs spend the next three years not in Parliament, in a futile attempt to be the Parliamentary Opposition, but actually out in the community, caring about people. Leave the pompous oppositional speechifying to people like Winston, who love having a soapbox from which to pontificate. Instead of spouting meaningless rhetoric at a bunch of people in blue ties who never listen anyway, Labour's MPs should spend their days working in animal shelters or delivering meals on wheels or even just running little B'n'Bs where the hosts are really nice people. New Zealanders love people who are nice, possibly even enough to vote for them.

Obviously some kind of formal alliance with the Green Party would be near the top of my leadership agenda. The process of forming this alliance would involve a complex series of negotiations, probably starting with inviting however many leaders the Greens have at this point in time over to my place for a pot-luck dinner.

If this went well, and my vegetarian lasagne was a hit, we would progress to a series of ministerial-level working bees to nut out common policy areas and election strategies, whilst planting community gardens together, to prove our Green-ness. It may take a year or so, but eventually the red and the green would mix to become, well, a sort of muddy brown; the colour of the earth beneath our feet; the thing under the grass-roots where the best voters live.

To achieve these bold political visions clearly requires great political skills. Yes, I am hindered at the moment, in my bid for the Labour Party leadership, by being neither a sitting MP (or even a list MP) or even actually being a member of the Labour Party.

Once the sides if the square are breeched, however, I firmly believe I embody many characteristics of the great Labour leaders of the past - Michael Joseph; Norm; David; and Helen. Sure I may not embody many of their greatest characteristics, but on a purely genetic level I am right up there with any of them.

Leaving behind my refreshingly coherent vision for the future of the Party and my unquestionable leadership skills, the most powerfully seductive thing about my bid for the top job is that I am unsullied by the stench of defeat. Defeat, for the Labour Party, comes in many forms: the devastating humiliation of recent electoral annihilation; the weight of history crushing the life out of today's paler shade of red; and the hopping-on-one-foot-and-swearing pain that comes with repeatedly shooting itself in the foot every time it plays musical chairs at the top table.

Labour, I am your man. I may not look like it, sound like it or even act like it but let me ask you this one question: what the heck have you got left to lose?