Welease Wodney

NOW WITH AK UPDATE!!:
Evangeline van Holsteren (head barmaid at the Old Entomologist) called our attention to the missives and epistles amassing in the Riddled mailbox / drinks-tab / dud-cheque-depository behind the bar. She also called our attention to the absence of "Riddled Secretary" written anywhere in her job description. Strong language was used, contents may offend, adult themes and human anatomy references.

So once our ears had stopped ringing, AK and I ran our eyes over the letters -- some penned in scented violet ink upon tinted deckle paper and some reeking of marker pen and Lynx weaponised body spray -- and wouldn't you know it, everyone was asking "What's Don Brash been up to lately?" Except one letter that called him 'Dunny Brush' for which the finger of suspicion points at Mentis Fugit.

A swift recap is in order. Once upon a time the Don parachuted into the job of Leader of the Opposition. During his tenure, taking strategery advice from the US Republicans, he returned the National Party to its roots as a force for resentment and exclusivity, and went into the 2005 election campaigning for the votes of "Mainstream New Zealanders" whose identity was defined by not being unionist, gay, brown-skinned, female, poor or any other form of Other. Yet despite campaigning on an overtly-racist platform of "Kiwi vs. Iwi" -- in New Zealand! -- he still contrived to lose the election, and if you say "Whadda loooser" then no-one's going to argue.

Since then (as documented by AK) Brash has been administering the occasional speech about the failure of democracy and the incapacity of voters to recognise the policies that would be good for them, i.e. the electorate has failed to properly represent the government and should be dissolved and replaced with a more representative one. He has also been serving as Head of the Independent Commission for Giving Government the Independent Advice it Wants, a sinecure created in 2008 in recognition of his sacrifices.

Tradition demands a Hans Bellmer
image with every mention of ACT.

But now, Cincinnatus-like, the Don is called back into public service! Circumstances oblige him to claim the leadership of the right-wing ACT party.* Chief circumstance being ACT's triumphant climb from its previous low of 3.7% popularity to the dizzy heights of 2%. Don ascribes this to the personal unpopularity of current leader Rodney Hidden, rather than to a party manifesto that appears to have been written by rabid ADD badgers towards the end of a week-long datura bender.

Don is not deterred by (1) his current non-membership of the party he is proposing to lead, nor by (2) concerns about offending ACT's other five non-Rodney members of Parliament with the admission that none of them are fit to organise a dollies' tea-party let alone a political force, nor by (3) the unfortunate optics of a canoe-jumping carpet-bagger parachuting in from nowhere with only a sense of entitlement to compensate for his track record of failure. All that matters, as he correctly points out, is his corporate backing:

His pitch is likely to include a promise that funders will turn the tap back on if he is leader.

This presents a challenge for the busy little elves who constitute the right bloggosphere in New Zild and whose job it is to write copy for the newspapers explaining how whatever happens is good for a John Key-led government. They will have to present Brush's buy-out as unification rather than internal turmoil and a sign of abject desperation, corporate ownership as a form of broad public support, and a septagenarian leader as party rejuvenation. And having convinced politicians and journalists, they will still have to convince the electorate at large that Brash is their Man. But they know what side of the toilet paper is be-shat and already they are beavering away to spin strawmen into gold and mixed metaphors into ummm something else.

Already we can read that Brash's leadership of the National Party was "brief but successful" if you overlook the picayune business of a lost election.

We can expect further explanations of how Brash's lack of any involvement in the Hard Work aspect of creating the ACT party, like his lack of involvement in the National Party before his 2005 leadership,** is evidence that he is 'above politics'.

Riddled is agin the whole thing because what would we do then with the 'Rodney's Hidden' label?

--------------------------------------

* UNCONNECTED: Rodney has spoken of abolishing the ICGGIAW, as part of general governmental belt-tightening activities, as a fair trade for the dissolution of social-welfare programs, i.e. rich and poor, Left and Right alike are carrying their share of the Recession. But TOTALLY NOT A FACTOR.

** Prior to that, Brash was Governor of the Reserve Bank from 1988 to 2002. To borrow J. K. Galbraith's description of Hjalmar Schacht (head of the Reichsbank in the 1920s and 1930s):
"a man whose reputation for financial wizardry was supported by an exceptionally austere appearance and a notably frozen mind".
AK NEWS UPDATE!!! Rodney Walks The Plank!!!