NO ONE REALLY KNEW where they came from, but their impact was immediate and immensely disruptive. Those of us on the left of the labour movement, many already planning our departure from the Labour Party of Rogernomics, assumed they’d been recruited by Trevor de Cleene’s infamous “Backbone Club”.

You need at least a Silver membership plan to access Insight articles.

Known principally for his political commentaries in The Dominion Post, The ODT, The Press and the late, lamented Independent, and for "No Left Turn", his 2007 history of the Left/Right struggle in New...