Tuesday, February 25, 2014

Colin James on ACT and the 2014 election

Worth a read.

 A battered fringe party hoping for rescue 

Don Brash has written a memoir. It should be quite a read, given his trajectory, from Presbyterian left believer who found classical-liberal economic truth doing his doctorate in Australia, to the World Bank, merchant banker, failed National candidate and kiwifruit king, to Reserve Bank governor, National leader and an ACT takeover. 

Brash is an almost unfailingly courteous man who sometimes does discourteous things. Rodney Hide's summary execution as ACT leader by a Brash cabal three years ago was a blinder: a takeover by Nationalists of an allied fringe party. 

That gave Epsom a former National minister who never got the catechism quite right and did no better for votes and arguably worse than Hide would have. National's candidate, a biographer of Brash, was nearer ACT in his instincts than the official ACT candidate.

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