The Rise and Fall of Labour's Kim Kardashian

Last election I posted on the younger candidates standing for National and then Labour and my thoughts on them all. I will do a sample this year again when I have time.

I stand by all the comments I made in 2008 as they have been by-and-large grossly accurate.

Please let me go back to what I opined on Nikki Kaye and skip forward to this past week where lap-bloggers The Stranded launched a ridiculous attack on Kaye all in aid of their mate and comrade Ardern. I say ridiculous as you can tell from my comments in 2008 I'm not a huge fan of Kaye's introduction to politics or woolie woofter thinking. The Strandard's attack though was blatantly and deliberately wrong and designed to spread bullshit about Kaye and her campaign team in comments. The dig about her polling is even more nonsensical and desperate from the lap-bloggers.

I answer to The Stranded right here as they started going down this road.

I have seen enough of Kaye in the past three years to conclude that she's a better electorate MP than Ardern ever will be, a better policy wonk than Ardern and far harder working than the Labour Party glamourpuss.

Quite simply Jacinda Ardern has allowed herself to become the Kim Kardashian of the Labour Party.



And this coming in the midst of the Labour Party's entire 2011 strategy to attack John Key in that he's a "smile and wave" candidate who lacks substance.

If Ardern loses to Kaye that would be two electorate defeats. Not a good look for someone who wants to be PM. If Ardern loses Auckland Central and Labour are in opposition I see a Kardashian lack of commitment, divorce and new love within 72 days for the Mt Roskill electorate and Goff's seat in the inevitable by-election. Or would it be David Cunliffe's in New Lynn?

Ardern at present is Labour's future show-pony being paraded in a wonky float. If she's a future leader she needs a safe stable like her contemporary and next wave leader competition Grant Robertson possesses. Robertson has mainstreamed his career now to the point where he's maintained his dignity by avoiding being paraded around as young and gay as opposed to being young and a serious senior Cabinet contender based solely on his ability than his diversity.

Just three months Kardashian's senior, Ardern is wheeled out next to older MP's in particular Phil Goff, to prove the oldies are young, hip and capable of still standing next to a Kardashian figure in a party where the next best female pin-up of youth and vitality is Annette King. No offence to King of course who has had a perfectly respectable career in Labour supporting Roger Douglas and the right at the most important moments without whoring herself in her youth as Ardern is now doing.



Ardern is starring in Labour's videos, cuddling up to winning All Blacks and cheerleading in the streets as only a Kardashian could.







Brand Ardern has become one of a bundle of bimbo cheerleading fluff fueled from her light three year Comms degree from Waikato University. She's allowed herself to be used like this which instantly tells me she's no Helen in terms of brainpower and Brian Edwards and Judy Callingham aren't advising her. A pro like Judy would have screamed "no" then in a motherly fashion booted the arse of any Labour Party people who suggested the reality TV Kardashian strategy for Ardern.

In 2008 the very lightly University qualified Ardern mooched in from London via Waikato off the Party list ahead of equally (un)qualified career politico types like Kate Sutton, Jordan Carter and Tony Milne. I didn't know anything about her last election to do the profile, she was barely mentioned in comments prior to the election. She's then swapped locale with the less glam but more serious and commercial, Auckland born Sutton who has the indignity of being told to stand in the Waikato next to Fresian cows and grass to prove her worth in the hope one day she's treated with even a tenth the special grooming Ardern has been gifted. Sutton can be forgiven for choking sour milk being stuck down in moo-loo land as Ardern appeared in Labour's opening address from Murupara describing what it was like growing up in Morrinsville, Matamata and in fact anywhere not within spitting distance to Auckland. If Ardern was so enamored with the Waikato and she their golden child, she should go back and bloody stand there. Simple fact is rural people think she's using her tenuous links there for her own means of career propulsion. They can smell the shit coming down SH1 and won't like it. In rural NZ there are locals then there are foreigners. If you are born and leave rural NZ even for University or OE you are a foreigner until you've earned your spot back by suffering living back there and contributing to the community. Ardern hasn't done that. She doesn't belong there anymore.

Simon Wilson of niche publication Metro this month took Ardern and Kaye out to dine and AA Gill'ed them as you would two degustation dishes. It was vintage equal opportunity bitch from Wilson who woofed them both up.

I read the masterpiece on a flight as I was seated next to Lockwood Smith in 1E on a recent sortie back from Wellington. Wilson clearly thought equally poorly of both and wrote it as he would have had more fun staying at home with a pair of tweezers removing pubes from his groin while watching a Justin Bieber concert DVD after being whinged at for an hour on the phone by a mother-in-law.

It was a reflective read on just how two young women can bore the mud from the back of the bus they were both attempting to talk off. Even Lockwood, discreetly gazing the print off my right shoulder could barely disguise his boredom as his eyes appeared to wrench shut returning to read of the Euro Greek crisis. After noting Kaye and Ardern promoting themselves I was reminded how bad life might have been had I not lightened the fuck up after finishing school and University with uselessly high grades and ripped up the whole "ten year" serious-girl plan thing. Where we started enjoying being inherently badly behaved and rolling with the career fun that happened since as a direct consequence without the pressure of being little Miss Perfect.

While not knowing her well, I am familiar with key members of Nikki Kaye's campaign team. Unlike the ballocks in The Strandard, they are still there, some working at 4am to get signs up, stickers on postcards, canvassing households and at 10pm talking with Kaye and her campaign manager about tasks needed to be done the next day. They are all young, energetic and driven to help Kaye win the seat. They are bonded by wishing to spew into a bucket every time Ardern opens her patronising mouth. They badly want to beat her and with it smash up the traditional Labour stronghold in Auckland...again. If she takes their advice, Kaye has at her disposal some of the most cunning and devious political-business brains in the country. And of course the Masterful @dpfdpf Penguin.

Kaye has knocked on so many doors in Auckland Central that for Jacinda Ardern to be campaigning how The Strandard comment claims, it would be physically impossible. In other words, Camp Labour are lying.

The Standard and others in Labour are ruining Brand Ardern by embracing this predominantly sexist and demeaning "Battle of the Babes" shit. First they stuck her in a seat against a woman who is ostensibly identical in order to invite the tag. Only Brand Kaye is taken far more seriously now as she's purposefully moved away from appearing as a show bimbo for the wet dreams of her old man Masters. Ardern has been instructed to spunk up and used by the Goff, Parker and Cunliffe trifecta to get them round the tracks and open doors for them.







If Ardern was working for your company she'd be the sales bimbo or in industry lingo "the leg opener" and you'd send Kaye to the serious meetings where you want stuff actually done.




So what if Ardern's a better debater or public speaker as her supporters claim? ACT has in David Seymour a far superior intellect, debater and public speaker than them both. It doesn't mean he will win the seat and be a better electorate MP for Auckland Central.

Being a backbencher and then a Cabinet Minister is about ultimately getting stuff done and delivered and doing the hard yards.

Kaye's achieved that for Auckland Central in her three years and made a large start in her political career because of it. She's been more effective than the Labour predecessor and is a true Auckland MP supported by a Party that has only one demand on her - to win and therefore keep the seat. She's first and foremost a social worker with the demographic and demands of the electorate. That's all hard work.

Ardern on the other hand is still waiting for her next photo opportunity in the low-rating reality TV series that is the fluffy clusterfuck that Labour are making of her career.

On Thursday November 3rd Brand Kaye chose to be at an unglam St Marys College prizegiving over the meaningless vacuous glitz and glam of the NZ Music Awards.

Ardern chose glam and you can see her yet again grinning in the meaningless vacuous Spy section of the Sunday papers in full flight as would Kardashian given the chance to be spotted with D list celebs and shot with Petra bloody Bagust at a taxpayer funded piss-up of a party that is essentially welfare for otherwise internationally completely uncommercial musicians.




Nothing differentiates the 2011 Brand Kaye and Ardern better than this one recent night in Auckland Central and it explains why Kaye actually deserves to win the seat as much as Ardern deserves to lose it.