NZ POLITICS DAILY: How to win friends and influence people

For a supposedly professional communications adviser, Clare Curran, the Labour MP for Dunedin South, seems to be remarkably adept at having her communications received very poorly. This has been especially so in the last 24 hours. Following up on yesterday’s rather odd blog post on the The importance of being Labour, she continued the theme with another Red Alert post, The importance of being Labour #2, in which she appeared to rather arrogantly bash the Green Party and make a claim of entitlement about voters.

This is covered well in both Andrea Vance’s Clare Curran stirs blog controversy and David Farrar’s How to win friends and influence people. Other bloggers have entered the fray, with the Labour aligned Standard blogsite even saying Pull your head in, Curran and the Labour-friendly Imperator Fish asking, Is Red Alert Damaging Labour?. Similarly, No Right Turn has labeled Curran’s communications, The ugly face of Labour, and the Dim Post has said the incident shows why the left should vote strategically. 

While all of this commentary is useful in understanding the bizarre Clare Curran incident, surely further explanation is required.

Most simply, Curran’s communications and apparent arrogance probably epitomises the desperate state that Labour MPs find themselves in. Polling and criticism of their poor performance is undoubtedly putting Labour MPs under pressure, with some responding by lashing out and not thinking very clearly. 

In Curran’s case, there may be additional pressure in her own ‘safe’ Dunedin South electorate in which she is possibly facing a significant reduction in her electoral majority in November.

While this wouldn’t bother some MPs in supposedly safe Labour seats, unfortunately for Curran she has introduced the precedent of Dunedin South Labour MPs being vulnerable to de-selection – she accomplished the virtually unprecedented task of rolling an incumbent Labour MP when she won the Labour nomination for the electorate of David Benson-Pope.

And those that ‘live by the sword, die by the sword’, making her political future fairly uncertain if she fails to impress. In this regard, it’s interesting to note that the iPredict stock on ‘Labour to win Dunedin South’ has dropped suddenly from a 95% likelihood to 86%, no doubt fuelled by Curran’s outburst. For further background to Curran’s behaviour, check out the guest post on the liberation blog by John Moore – see: Facile MP, Facile Party: Clare Curran and the Labour Party.