With their mounting cavalcade of ministerial imbroglios and idiotic political management, it’s not surprising Labour is getting a shellacking in the polls. What is surprising is that there are still people willing to admit to complete strangers that they intend on voting for them. Perhaps if they had to admit it to their friends and colleagues the shame would be too much. What could possibly excuse voting for this car crash of a government?
1. Entertainment
If you view politics as a spectator sport, the current Labour Government has given outstanding entertainment value. Scandals, U-turns and colossal incompetence. If it was a movie it would be a Roland Emmerich disaster flick, The Day After The Election, with Dennis Quaid screaming at everyone about marginal seats.
You’d be better off with a Netflix account. And it would cost the country less.
2. You’ve been in a coma
Perhaps back in 2017, you were an excited Labour voter celebrating the forming of the sixth Labour government with that nice Ms Ardern at its head. In ecstatic abandonment, you jumped on the couch and bounced trampoline-style headfirst into a ceiling fan. Ever since you’ve been languishing in a hospital bed, deep in a coma, reliving your eighth birthday party on an endless loop. On Election Day 2023, a careless nurse spills hot coffee down your backless hospital gown and you’re once again in the land of the living. For some reason, your first priority is not friends and family, but getting yourself to a voting booth, ignorant of the carnage of the preceding six years.
Yeah, then you have an excuse.
3. You’re mental
Just as in a court of law, an insanity defence is plausible here. Perhaps you are a committed sadomasochist thinking a Labour vote will increase the chance of a gang member breaking into your house and beating ten types of crap out of you. Or you could be suffering from Stockhausen syndrome whereby after Labour locked you in your house for three months you started to identify with your captor. Or perhaps you just hear the voice of Mighty Eric, the pan-dimensional fire demon living in your head whispering ‘Vote Labour’ every time you try to sleep.
Whichever, we get it, you’re nuts and not responsible for your actions.
4. Local Labour party officials are holding your wife and children at gunpoint in a warehouse in south Auckland, threatening to off them, unless you tick red.
Understandable, but even then…you have a choice.
5. Balance
You’re one of those freaks who believe in the balance of democracy or some such crap. Yin and yang etc, etc. You think National and Act will win but don’t want the major opposition party to be destroyed because then the new government will rule without checks and balances. Yes, I too would rather not witness the sight of a cocky, power-crazed David Seymour free to introduce toll booths on footpaths or whatever libertarian madness he has planned.
But the alternative – a Greens-Labour-Maori Party nightmare coalition – is infinitely worse.
6. The local National candidate slept with your wife.
Even then you’ve still got plenty of other candidates to choose from. Unless your wife really got around…in which case you’ve got bigger problems than whom to vote for.
7. You’re a Labour Party candidate.
Here’s hoping you have an attack of imposter syndrome in the booth and vote for someone else.
8. You’re married to a Labour Party candidate.
In the interests of marital harmony (and family income) as the spouse of a potential Labour MP, you could be forgiven for voting red. But then again, in the privacy of the voting booth you have a chance to make up for the wrong choice you made when you answered ‘I do’ at your wedding.
9. You’re planning to emigrate.
But just think of the rest of us who can’t leave. You lucky bastard.
10. You’re drunk or dyslexic
Either way, when you get in the voting booth all the words on the ballot start whirling around and you just tick a box to make them stop. There’s a chance it could be Labour. There’s a chance it could be the Independent candidate, keen on nudism and healing crystals.
Stay home – it’s not worth the risk.
11. Your accountant advises you to move out of Serbian Dinars and into South African Krugerrands to short the NZ dollar when it collapses due to the inevitable mismanagement of a seventh Labour Government.
Fair enough. I hope you get enough to buy a mansion with walls and 24-hour security. You’ll need them when the country goes all Mad Max …and we come looking for you.
12. Compassion
You look into Hipkins’s puppy dog eyes and feel sorry for the guy. Well, just like a dog that’s been run over by a bus but still limps on, this government needs to be put down. It’s the humane thing to do.
13. Fear of the law of unintended consequences.
After an election defeat, all these Labour MPs will lose their government jobs and be forced to seek employment in the private sector. There’s the slim possibility one of these numpties could become your boss…