Is the Bell Tolling for Labour?

Evening Standard - London › July 25, 2005

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Summary

ON the face of it, National leader Don Brash has a point. Why shouldn't New Zealand follow the United States on foreign policy if such a move was in our best interests? After all, that's what foreign policy is supposed to be all about, even if nations do try to disguise their self-interest as something else from time to time. What is rich about what Dr Brash was saying, however, is that he sacked Rangitikei MP Simon Power as the party's shadow defence minister last year for saying something similar. Hopefully, if he wants it back, Mr Power, a keen student of American politics, will be returned to the defence portfolio after the election, win or lose. For it is little short of bizarre for someone from Northland - - John Carter -- to be in the job. Northland isn't known for its defence ties, whereas Mr Power has Waiouru and Ohakea in his electorate and Linton down the road.

Of course there is much game-playing going on just now, in the phony war phase of the election campaign, so that stuff MPs said years ago is dredged up and used against them, as if most people much care about what a politician once said, short of porkies actually being proven. Even MPs, after all, are allowed to change their stance, or to retract a hasty opinion. There is an old saying: "When the facts change, I change my mind. What do you do?" Dr Brash was incautious enough to come over all gungho about the American invasion of Iraq, but kneejerk anti-Americanism too often becomes the other side of this coin.