text: Trial By Ordeal: The techniques of the Seventeenth Century Witchfinders-General might be preferable to the process Labour has adopted to uncover the reasons for its woeful performance in the 2014 General Election. It's a pity the Party has not allowed itself to be guided by the National Party's response to its own, even worse, debacle back in 2002.
  WHY DOES LABOUR do this to itself? Yes, they have just
  suffered an unprecedented (post-1922) election defeat, but that’s only because
  the 2014 General Election was itself unprecedented (post-1951).
  And, besides, I’m tempted to say ‘so what?’ In 2002 the
  National Party suffered an even more embarrassing result when Bill English led
  his party to its worst defeat ever. National’s Party Vote plunged from a bad 30.5
  percent in 1999, to an even worse 20.9 percent in 2002. (A whopping percentage point
  slide of 9.6, compared to David Cunliffe’s 2.8.)
  The interesting thing about that debacle, however, is not
  what the National Party did in response, but what it didn’t do.
  For a start, it didn’t change its leader. National understood
  (as Labour apparently does not) that a debacle on the scale of 2002 has many
  more contributing factors than simply a poor performance by the party leader. Defeat
  on such a scale is clear evidence of systemic – as well as personal – failures.
  Which is why the first priority of National’s hard-headed businessmen and farmers
  was to give the party organisation a very solid kick in the bum – not to sack Bill
  English. (He would keep.)
  In the months following its 2002 defeat National thoroughly
  renovated itself: achieving for the Right what Jim Anderton, between 1979 and
  1984, had achieved for the Left. Namely, the transformation of an ageing party
  into a vehicle more appropriately aligned to the economic, social and political
  context in which it operated.
  Crucial to the success of such operations is the
  concentration of decision-making power in the hands of those best equipped to wield
  it. Under MMP, one of the most important functions to streamline is the formation of the Party List.
  National has achieved this by means of an all-powerful board of directors; the
  Greens by giving the job to their party members. For Labour, however, the list
  formation process remains the Party’s Achilles’ heel.
  Bluntly, party list formation in the Labour Party is a colossal
  rort; a travesty of democratic principle on the scale of the “rotten boroughs”
  that once allowed the British aristocracy to control the composition of the
  House of Commons. More horse-trading takes place during this dangerously opaque
  process than at an Irish county fair – with considerably worse outcomes.
  It’s ironic really, because Labour once boasted the most
  ruthless and centralised mechanism for selecting candidates of all the
  political parties. Seventy years ago it was the selector representatives of the
  all-powerful Labour Party Executive who called the shots – and they seldom
  missed. If imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, then National, when
  renovating its structures, post-2002, paid Labour the most fulsome of
  The tide of democratisation which has swept over Labour
  since the departure of Helen Clark (a “Red Tsar” if ever there was one!) rules
  out any return to the days of Peter Fraser’s politburo. The next logical step,
  therefore, is to follow the Green Party’s example by passing over the
  responsibility for drawing up Labour’s List to the whole membership.
  Applying the principle of one-person, one-vote, would necessitate
  another important reform of Labour’s rules: the identification of every member
  of an affiliated trade union wishing to be associated with the Labour Party. This
  would mean that the opinions of trade unionists would be registered
  individually, by secret ballot, not collectively, in public. It would also end
  forever the frankly corrupt practice of trade union general secretaries
  cogitating alone in their Wellington offices, and then voting “on behalf” of
  their unasked and voiceless membership.
  Those New Zealanders who have been puzzled by the glaring
  discrepancy between the votes cast for Labour’s electorate candidates and
  Labour’s share of the Party Vote, have yet to grasp the level of distortion the
  Party’s list selection processes have wrought upon the public’s perception of what
  Labour has become. There are Labour MPs and candidates (Stuart Nash take a bow)
  who are both well-known and well-liked in their electorates. And then there’s
  the Labour Party itself, an institution which, to an increasing number of New
  Zealanders, is neither well-understood nor well-liked.
  If Labour learns anything from its latest drubbing at the
  polls, then it should be this. Electoral success must no longer be left to the
  vagaries of candidate and list selection processes which owe more to
  ideological obsessions and sectoral horse-trading than to the needs of Labour’s
  electoral base. Labour’s great failing is that its representatives, with a
  handful of worthy exceptions (mostly Maori and Pasifika) have gradually ceased
  to resemble the people whose Party Votes it demands.
  The National Party, upon being sternly reprimanded by the voters
  for similar political failings, quietly and efficiently set about making sure
  that their players matched their supporters. The results were spectacular. If
  Labour accomplishes a similar transformation, then it can expect the same.
  This essay was originally published in The Press of Tuesday, 30 September 2014.