Cracks widen in Alliance

By AUDREY YOUNG

If in unity there is strength, the Alliance should surely be heading for ruin.

Common wisdom suggests that the Alliance will be electorally shunned for its internal strife, if it is not checked.

The fight over the war in Afghanistan that spilled into the public at the party's annual conference in Auckland a week ago is a by-product of a wider power struggle for control of the Alliance.

The left faction believes the party is being too compliant with Labour. It argues that leader Jim Anderton has become unacceptably arrogant and his war stance, where he ignored the party, was a prime example. They accuse him of abandoning Alliance principles. They want a return to leftist basics and to differentiate from Labour on more issues.

Their often-silent spiritual leaders are president Matt McCarten and Women's Affairs Minister Laila Harre. Opponents call them Matt-ites.

The moderates, led by Anderton, believe the war debate was just a way to publicly condemn him and that if it hadn't been the war, the left would have found something else.

They believe the party will be punished by voters if it gets too stroppy with Labour, and that to differentiate too often is to simply highlight your losses. They want to rid of the left.

Labour has been silently clapping on the sidelines for Anderton.

Anderton dismisses the damage being done to the party, saying it campaigns better than others and it is no worse off now than it was this far out from the last election.

Wishful thinking can sometimes get in the way of facts. The Alliance polled 7.7 in the 1999 election, giving it 10 MPs. A year before the election it was polling 7 per cent ( UMR Insight).

Yesterday the Alliance managed just 3.4 per cent in the NBR-Compaq survey by the same pollsters. If Anderton keeps his Wigram seat, and Act and New Zealand also win a seat, the Alliance would be slashed to four MPs.

Will the Alliance even survive to 2005? Almost certainly, but not as we know it. Neither side is going to give up ownership of the Alliance.

It would normally be the president's role to mediate in serious splits such as this, but McCarten is in too deep. Harre is seen as the eventual successor. No one in the left is taking on Anderton, for now. He holds the trump card with his Wigram seat and the left knows it must lump it.

McCarten is eyeing Auckland Central with a view to warming it up for Harre and for it to replace Wigram in the 2005 election when Anderton is expected to retire.

Anderton's actions suggest he doesn't accept or trust the passive succession theory. He has publicly distanced himself from McCarten's most recent foray into politics, the Auckland mayoral campaign. And he spooked Harre into not seeking the deputy leadership with a promise that she would lose.

Trouble may surface soon on another front. The Democrats, one of two remaining Alliance constituent parties along with Mana Motuhake, meet in Christchurch in a week when talk of leaving the Alliance will be raised.

Democrats have two MPs in the Alliance with few distinct policy gains. Few believe it will leave, but it's another example of party under strain.

The bitter battle has dwarfed tangible policy gains, paid parental leave and Kiwi Bank.

It is clear that Anderton backed New Zealand's military involvement against the overwhelming wishes of his membership. It is a visceral issue.

Imagine if Jeanette Fitzsimons had supported commercial release of GE crops, to get some comparison on the intensity of feeling.

Leftists demanded no less than a complete reversal of the Alliance support for the offer of SAS troops.

Anderton and the MPs made it a confidence issue, and won.

It is not the first time Anderton has threatened the political nuclear weapon to get his way this year.

When Harre sought Alliance council backing for her right to speak to striking journalists, after Anderton had prevented her, he made it a confidence issue.

Anderton argues that he needs to weigh up the views of other New Zealanders, as well as his own members.

Time was on his side, too. He was glad to be associated with the scenes of liberation and jubilation in Kabul this week, not bombed Red Cross buildings and injured civilians.

He won't mind being perceived as having seen off the leftists in his party if it means dragging more Labour supporters his way.

There has been no measure of much-needed conciliation since the conference. MPs begging delegates for their political survival quickly turned to gloating by Anderton.

Little wonder that the biggest reception at the party conference was not for him but for the caterers. Amid the highly factionalised Alliance, they were the only group without natural enemies.

The ha-ha attitude would be more understandable if Anderton had seen off his adversaries. But they remain in key places in the hierarchy and the left holds a majority on the council.

It is a recipe for further conflict, especially when a fundamental difference emerged this week on the council's role. Leading dissident and councillor Dave Macpherson says the caucus is answerable to the council. Anderton says he is not answerable to anyone. That is a direct challenge to the culture of the party.

Alliance MPs have always been viewed as servants of the party and accountable to the council. That was before they got into Government.

Now, some in the parliamentary wing say, the role of the council is just to run the party organisation and that it is failing at that.

The organisation is accused of being distracted by the war and letting the party machine run on half-throttle, not taking advantage, for example, of Anderton's regional development successes.

The foot-soldiers argue that when their views count for nothing, they are demotivated.

The next showdown will be in three weeks when Anderton reports progress on his war-policy review to the council. War in Afghanistan may be drawing to an end but war in the Alliance will fester on.