The Herald on Sunday editorial suggests that Labour is looking tired and facing electoral oblivion
it is tempting to wonder whether Prime Minister Helen Clark, sensing approaching electoral oblivion, is engaging in the time-honoured political strategy of getting her retaliation in first.
Facing opinion polls that put Labour as much as 20 points behind National - which could, on the numbers, easily govern alone - Clark launched an extraordinary attack on the New Zealand Herald, accusing it of being "a Tory paper" that had "shown no charity to Labour in the party's 91 years of existence". She singled out for special mention the newspaper's long-serving cartoonist Minhinnick for "flaying" Labour Governments.
The plain fact is that Labour, limbering up for an election at which it seems certain to take a hammering, is looking tired. Steve Maharey has gone, Michael Cullen - who has attracted the nickname Michael Sullen in some quarters - has lost the sparkle in his eye and, apparently, the fire in his belly as well.
Meanwhile Clark, who has never seemed at ease with middle New Zealand, looks more remote and aloof by the month. She has not been helped by the uncharacteristic behaviour of her famously retiring husband, Professor Peter Davis, who, not for the first time, penned a letter to the paper.
