Put Alan Gibbs money where Muriel Newman's mouth is

Intrigue mounts in Epsom
NATIONAL COULD face a serious challenge from an emerging centre-right party in the blue-ribbon seat of Epsom. The possibility of another rival also intensifies pressure on National's partner in government, Act, which has five MPs in parliament on the strength of Rodney Hide's victory in the electorate in 2008, when National stood aside.

I don't wish to goad and tease the far right into launching their own Party while I explore the possibility of a New Left Party to change the MMP math in Parliament knowing that the Far Right couldn't ever get over the 5% threshold wasting even more of the right wing vote, I don't wish to do that, but

BUT...

What a sad, sad, sad gutless pack of wimps the Hard Right are! Those Cathy Odger acolytes, those Deborah Hill (desperately needing a) Cone sycophants, those Whaleoil wannabes - NONE of them can organise themselves into forming a new Hard Right Political Party - how embarrassing. Hone, Sue and Matt could organise a New Left Party, yet the hard right despite their 70 person meeting at Alan's sprawling mansion last year still can't organise themselves? Ayn Rand must be turning in her grave at the humiliation.

And don't tell me ACT is your party of choice, everyone knows National will slash Rodney's throat if his party vote can't lift above 1% which looks more and more likely now the Sensible Sentencing Trust is as damaged as that despicable David Garrett. The hypocrisy of ACT and the Sensible Sentencing Trust means they will not be able to gain the 3.6% they managed in 2008, sure rednecks are stupid but when their precious 'tough on crime' sensibilities are shown up to be a political joke they get all sulky.

So the political landscape needs a new hard right party - surely amongst you climate denial nutters, you Coastal Coalition freaks who think Vikings settled NZ and the Free Marketeers who still hump the leg of Milton Friedman despite the recent economic collapse showing Free Market deregulated dogma works about as well as Paul Henry would as a race conciliator you can't organize yourselves into a new political party?

If the New Left Party launches, it will put immense pressure on the Far Right to launch theirs, they simply couldn't live with the humiliation that the Left could organize themselves while they couldn't.

The right wing have been pretending for sometime that the 2011 election will be a cake walk. That hubris has taken a blow by this latest Horizon Poll which alongside IPredict has been suggesting a down to the wire result. That said, David over at Kiwiblogh is desperately attempting to discredit this poll as quickly as John Key's PR people because of course David makes his bread and butter from these status-quo-biased-brain-fart-cheap-telephone-polls and his role as all seeing oracle of the right is going to have implications for paying the bills if he is getting it wrong.

Incidentally, I hear that John Banks numbers people were telling John right up until he received the phone call telling him he had lost by a landslide that he had won it by tiny majority. If the right are that off in their political antenna, Kiwiblogh should be worried.

The many problems with the mainstream media's reliance on status-quo-biased-brain-fart-cheap-telephone-polls have been listed before, the Horizon Poll are much more transparent with their weighting, total number and use of not decided voters gives a much broader representation of public opinion. It can be argued that the left are not getting recognition in these polls which is why the large jump to the left in the local council elections caught the political media establishment so off guard.

Recessions produce great societal pressures, and when all National have to offer is an economic Darwinism seen as not severe enough by the fringe right, then splintering of political parties to represent these building pressure points is the next stage from an economic recession that starts to now slip into depression.

The possibility of a double dip recession akin to the 1929 crises of Capitalism is a topic well canvassed here, domestic and international economic structures are weakened and any shock can trigger domino entropy.

Add European austerity measures with those looming in America alongside Australia's latest GDP Q3 predicted at .5% but coming in at .2%, with US unemployment growing not receding and with China inflation higher than expected, all the canaries are gone.

With economic downturn comes political friction, the Horizon Poll suggests with our MMP 5% threshold that there is room in this political environment of anxious uncertainty for the political splintering to occur.

Splinter to the Right
As Deborah Coddington points out and as Colin James has pointed out, there is an anger on the right that is brewing. The garden-variety-bigot-economic-free-market-pro- corporation-mafia fronted by Don 'maaaaaaaaaori get too much' Brash are mixing with the flaky vikings-settled-NZ-so-Maori-have-no-Coastal-rights-Queen-Sheeba-of-the-desert-white-people-were-here-first-mythology of Muriel Newman alongside the base redneckness of John Banks. If this inbred bastardization can tie in the flaky rural right wing global-warming-is-a-hoax brigade they could not easily reach 5%.

NZ far right fascism will be like NZ, casual.

New Right Party List
1: John Banks
2: Muriel Newman
3: Don Brash
4: Michael Laws
5: Cameron Slater