Let David Cunliffe speak on TV3's 'The Nation' Facebook group

Your right, or my left? Which direction will Labour go?

Is that what needs to happen? A Facebook page group set up begging to allow some political dialogue under David Shearer's leadership? Really?

Cunliffe's 'True Labour' speech is exactly what Labour needs. The nearly one million voters who didn't bother voting were not inspired by a Labour Party slightly less blue than National. Sure Labour went with their most left wing agenda for decades fronted by a man who had championed the failed free market agenda first time around, but maybe the flatness of that result was more disbelief than inspiration?

Cunliffe's renouncing of the Milton Friedman dogma while noting Labour's on going passion for it and sourcing that as the reason so many couldn't be bothered to give Labour their vote is a first necessary step in a dialogue about the political direction of Labour in a world economy melting down because of free market failure.

To gag that, to shut that down, to vilify Cunliffe in the caucus meeting on Tuesday the 8th in the manner he was must have repercussions in November when the party rules allowing the wider membership base to have a say in the leader are changed. Members who support what Cunliffe said are livid that this gagging has happened, this debate needs to be had, stymying it is the worst type of intellectual gerrymandering.

As Trotter points out in todays devastating critique, the ABC clique who put Shearer in power are already scrambling to water down or push the changes off a year...

Unsurprisingly, it is also rumoured that Labour's caucus is doing all it can to prevent such changes coming into immediate effect. The party's annual conference in November promises to be a bloody affair.

Courtiers make poor campaigners. As Game of Thrones addicts know, power is not always to be found among the wielders of swords.

As often as not it lies in the hands of eunuchs and whoremasters: the manipulators, tricksters and casters-of-shadows who keep their daggers hidden and seldom venture beyond the palace gates.

Which is why Shearer's muzzling of Cunliffe is so very worrying.

...and over at The Standard, the denial seems so ridiculous that they are seriously trying to suggest in the comments that Duncan Garner and TV3 are secretly trying to create leadership tensions that don't really exist. Seeing as The Standard was one of the first to note the 'new blood' challenge by Robertson and Ardern, to now claim 'nothing to see here' is as credible as Cameron Slater's protestations that he has no idea who tips him off.

Watch to see if the new powers allowing the members to have their say are watered down or put off till next November to know who wins this.

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