The leftward and other blatherings of Span (now with Snaps!)

Wednesday, March 09, 2005

she devil

I've been really struck, since joining the blogoverse, with the venom right wing bloggers reserve for the new Speaker, Margaret Wilson. I've been musing on it a bit and chatting to a few people about it and the level of hatred for her really does seem to be higher than for any other Labour MP, even Clark, and I haven't observed a similar universal vehemence towards a right wing MP from the lefties (nominations for this dubious honour in the comments please).

So the following reasons why the right hate Margaret so much, in combination in my humble opinion:

- she's not "clubbable" - meaning, like many women, she can't get into the Boys' Club, and she doesn't seem to want to either. not being interested in being "friends after 6pm" does seem to really piss some men off.

- she's, for want of a better word, flawless - unlike many other Labour Ministers she hasn't had a major culpable stuffup - no Paintergate, no drink driving, etc. I think many people need to see a bit of imperfection, a touch of corruption, to identify with many politicians - those with untarnished integrity tend to inspire dislike as they seem to uphold a standard others don't think they can meet. I think being Speaker will give people more exposure to Wilson as a human being which may dent some of the venom.

- she was behind one of the big leftwing changes (if i was in a grumpy mood i would write one of the only leftwing changes) this Government has made, the repeal of the ECA and passing of the ERA.

i don't think any of the reasons does it on their own. For the record I have never met Wilson but from what i hear of her i have quite a bit of time for her.

thoughts?

5 comments:

Rich said...

I suspect a large part of it is that the right still can't get used to the idea that they are out of power and that (gasp) left-wingers might get appointed to posts in the gift of government.

Having said that, it might be a good idea to change the selection process to try and get a speaker with cross-party support (as happens, rather imperfectly, in the UK).

David Farrar said...

Calling Wilson flawless is hardly a fair an assessment as the so called venom from the right.

The main reason I know right wingers dislike Wilson is her very high level of arrogance, which she displays on occassion. During the ERB debate she would ignore all criticism of certain part of the bill, right up until the day they were amended as unworkable.

The thing she has done which has most upset people is her unilateral redefinition of consulting over semi-judicial appointments. National in Govt did true consultation (before nominations were made to Cabinet) with Labour over appts such as Human Rights Commission and in one case even allowed Clark to veto the appointment.

Wilson when making these appts writes to the Opp Ldr saying I am nominating so and so in two days time, do you have any comments.

So WIlson single-handedly destroyed a tradition of decades of bi-partisan semi-judicial appointments. And you wonder why some do not like her?

Span said...

in my defence DPF i did say "flawless" was not the best word for what i was trying to convey.

i can think of many arrogant MPs from the opposition benches but i can't remember being as venomous about them (even the ones who had a big impact on my own life and acted imho odiously, eg Lockwood Smith, Tony Steel, Brian Connell off the top of my head). Of course I did burn one or two of them in effigy so maybe that is just as bad ;-)

greg - in terms of most hated rightwing MP i think that would be a pretty hotly contested title. i shall have to muse further on it to come up with my own contenders.

rich - i wouldn't have a problem with a speaker supported across the parties. however i did think, and i might be wrong, that whichever party gets the speakership they don't (currently) get that MP replaced by another from their List? it might be easier to get impartiality i think if the Speaker was removed from their party caucus in this way. (bit ignorant about this though, so maybe that already happens?)

stephen said...

I'm a left person. My low opinion of Wilson has been formed partly from first-hand accounts of her behaviour to friends of mine when she was at Waikato (rude and arrogant are the words that come to mind), and partly from her determination to make me married by default unless I opt out, which is the single biggest thing the Labour Party has done to annoy me since election.

maps said...

I think the widespread antipathy - and I'm talking about Radio Pacific land, not parliament - to Labour's 'PC brigade' or 'Chardonnay socialists' is quite contradictory.

On the one hand, there is some quite reactionary sentiment in
there (sexist sneers at Clark's clothes or hair or lack of kids; philistine sneers at the degrees held by the likes of 'pointy heads' like Wilson and Maharey).

But there is also a perception that the likes of Clark, Wilson, and Maharey are arrogant technocrats with little understanding of the culture of working class (or blue collar working class) and provincial NZ.

I think this perception is quite justified, and that it reflects the contradiction between the social composition of Labour's leadership and the social composition of its base, which continues (sadly) to be working class. In the past thirty years, Labour has had only one leader of working class extraction, Mike Moore, and he was seen as such an embarrassment - swearing in press conferences, ill-fitting suits - that he was sent down the road ASAP (he deserved to be shafted for far better reasons, of course).

The higher echelons of the party are dominated by university-educated professionals from middle class backgrounds. There are a few trade unionists who have graduated to cushy jobs as brown noser MPs, but then the trade union leadership is itself increasingly dominated by professionals (compare Ross Wilson to, say, Tom Skinner).

The reason for the split between the class background and culture of the Labour leadership and its base is not hard to discover. Since its defeats in the 80s and early 90s the union movement and the party's rank and file has not had anywhere its old pull over Labour Party policy-making. (It's quite sad to see so many union organisers hailing the ERA as some sort of major win, when the same legislation would have provoked an uproar if it had been proposed by National in 1990.)

Sooner or (more likely) later, though, Labour will run into the sands of recession or unpalatable foreign policy, and the contradiction between the leadership and the base will reassert itself, as it did in 1989 and 1940. The critique of Tony Blair's 'middle class' image and leadership style being made by the hordes of British unionists unhappy with his government's policies gives us an idea of what to expect.