David Cormack
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The major parties continue to blunder
🕑 Added 2023-07-27 21:28:18 +0000 UTC
Yesterday National was cock-a-hoop. And you might think that was because of the succession of scandals and mistakes that Labour had been making over the last month or few. I mean everyone was talking about Labour's blunders. Nobody was talking about any of the bread-and-butter issues that Labour was desperate to talk about.
I'm told that Labour sees its numbers go up when it talks about bread and butter. But not so much when it's stuck talking about itself.
So Labour would very much prefer to talk about bread and/or butter.
And so National, aquiver with excitement, rushed out that they'd been leaked a central plank of Labour's tax policy for the election: that Labour would remove GST on fruit and veges.
And so now people are talking about Labour having a policy on removing GST on healthy food items. Which is very much a bread-and-butter issue.
And not only that, but it's a super popular policy. Beehive strategists have told me that this tests through the roof with focus groups. And it's easy to understand why. Because if I look at the price of cauliflower, I see that it's $5.00 at the moment. And that's fucking expensive. But then I hear that Labour has a policy to remove GST on it, and that would bring it down to $4.25. Roll that out to all fruit and vege and it becomes an attractive proposition.
In some ways it's even more tempting than an income tax cut, because the outcome of it is so clear cut - cheaper fruit and veges! I can afford to give my family fruit and veges instead of whatever microwaveable dietary abomination I had previously been able to afford.
National has fallen for the fallacy that Wellington political-nerd shit is the way to win elections. If it is truly Labour's policy then yeah, it's not great that it's being leaked, but in the end the leak doesn't matter as much as the popularity of the policy. And the policy leads the news last night. And now Labour will get a second bite of the (affordable) cherry if/when they do announce the policy. Just dumb-ass stuff from National, really naive rookie material.
They had options.
If they trusted the source of the leak, then they could have:
a) looked into a similar policy that was even better
b) announced that they were looking into removing GST from fruit and veges which would've meant Labour would've been unable to do it
c) teased that they'd been leaked something from Labour's tax policy and dragged the story out about disunity for far longer
And those are just off the top of my head now. So many better options than announcing a very popular opposition policy right when they're besieged by scandal.
I tell ya, just when I think Labour has completely fucked the dog and have no chance of getting back in, I forget that a National party blunder is just around the corner. So once again I remain deeply deeply confused as to who will win this election.
