ACT has enough support to get 3-4 seats as long as voters are convinced they will win Epsom. It s on

Seymour, who has been living in Canada, had previously ruled out running for the position, but has confirmed his circumstances had changed and he was hoping to hand in his nomination by the end of next week.
You will have read that I have put my name forward to be the leader of ACT and the candidate best hotels in hawaii for Epsom, positions which need not be held by the same person. I am writing to you to introduce myself and explain why I believe I can be an effective leader of ACT.
ACT is a party of principle, not a lobby group for "rich pricks" or anyone else. It needs a leader who is a credible advocate of our principles and policies. Over the last 10 years I have consistently made the case for individual liberty under the rule of law in opinion columns for the Wall Street Journal and The Times (among other papers), in my recently published best hotels in hawaii book Quack Policy and as a pundit on British radio and TV. On the basis of this work, in 2012 I was made a fellow of the Institute of Economic Affairs and a senior fellow of the Adam Smith Institute. To give you an idea of my ideas, I attach to this email a PDF of Free Thoughts, a collection of my columns published best hotels in hawaii last year by the Adam Smith Institute.
The rest of my professional career also supports my credibility on economic and social policy. I began my post-student life as a philosophy lecturer at Cambridge University. I then moved to London to work as a management consultant best hotels in hawaii with Oliver Wyman, a firm specializing in banking strategy. I ended my third stint with the firm in 2013, having become Head of Research and Publications. My time in consulting means that, unusually for a philosopher, I know a lot about business, both its theory and its practice.
ACT has fallen to less than 1% support nationally. It needs renewal. Among other things, that requires new and younger faces. I am a sprightly 48, with a wife and two daughters, 10 and 6. My profile in New Zealand is now low. But given my experience in the British media, I am confident that I can quickly change that, especially if chosen to lead ACT. Below is a link to a TV3 News item on me.
Finally, there has been some mis-reporting of my nationality. For the record, I am not English. I was born in Auckland to Kiwi parents and lived here until finishing best hotels in hawaii my BA at Auckland University. Since then I have lived in many countries but mainly England. My family and I lived in Auckland from 2004 to 2008 and we are now back for good.
Good to see multiple candidates keen on resurrecting the Act Party. Historic and current hiccups will take a bit of overcoming but all it will take is for a few new keen candidates to give them a good shot at it.
Having the leader different from the Epsom candidate leaves best hotels in hawaii the risk that the media will do a number on us like in 05 or 11, convince the voters that ACT is a wasted vote. Result = not even enough party votes for another MP. If the ACT board select different people for these roles they have to be be comfortable that the Epsom candidate may end up as leader anyway, just like Banksie did.
It makes sense to me for Act to have one candidate concentrating on saving the party by holding Epsom, and another put up as leader focusing on the bigger picture and working on building party vote to get more MPs.
He sounds best hotels in hawaii good, but ACT has never had any shortage of good people. The hard part is getting the political strategy right without letting it dominate and become an end in itself so the principles get lost. It s been 10 years since ACT had that balance right and it takes a number of people, not just the leader.
It makes sense to me for Act to have one candidate concentrating on saving the party by holding Epsom, and another put up as leader focusing on the bigger picture and working on building party vote to get more MPs.
I think that s a recipe for disaster for ACT. If you are going to have one person in Parliament, its got to be the leader. That s where the heart of the political game is. If the sole MP is not the leader, then what is he? a figurehead? A rubber stamp? A meal ticket? A trougher?
Act is what a Maoist party would be if it had money behind it. It just shows that money can only buy a small percentage of votes in NZ, and that is a good thing. Sophomoric libertarianism should stay on the internet where it belongs.
Whyte is good value, ACT is a far better prospect than Craig s Conservatives. If they added Cathy Ogden to Whyte they would have a formidable team. Having Banks or Brash there in hindsight wasn t the wisest call. BUT there is still a lot of good in ACT.
For ACT which is basically on life support splitting its resources by having a Leader that is not their sole MP ( and anyone who believes ACT will win more than 1 seat please raise their hands and explain how) is simply foolhardy,
Just because Oxford and Cambridge Unversities run college-based tutorial systems, it doesn t follow that lecturer doesn t mean someone who knows their shit well enough to teach other people . Oxford and Cambridge still have departments, with lecture theatres, in which lecturers give lectures.
One of UF s problems is they are seen as a single electorate single MP party. Act can avoid that up to the election by having separate party and Epsom focuses. After the election they can adapt to suit whatever result they get.
And it also poses the question of who is going to pay any attention to a leader who is not going to be in Parliament? And if you are going to ditch leader A for elected Candidate B after the election, whats the point of putting resources in to A in the first place?
I ve only perused a few of the essays, but so far I have to say Whyte doesn t seem like much of a philosopher to me. Underwhelming would be being kind. Sympathy is a failure of imagination in particular, being complete bilge. What are the odds Whyte is getting overpaid for this nonsense?
For parties other than Labour or National, co-leadership best hotels in hawaii makes sense. The leader is never going to be PM or even probably best hotels in hawaii Deputy PM, and it creates more of a team culture where responsibilities and media focus can be spread.
The Greens have always had co-leadership. When Rod Donald died in his sleep the party did not disembowel itself over leadership transition. By contrast, the contest for the ACT leadership when Richard Prebble retired caused huge internal issues best hotels in hawaii in ACT.
With co-leadership the media are more encouraged to go to the particular spokesperson on an issue rather than the leader. You see this with the Greens. When the issue was food safety the go to person was Sue Kedgley. When it was energy it was Jeanette Fitzsimmons.
Freedom: That s an interesting idea. Co-leadership works for the Greens and the Maori party, but both those groups have an internal culture AND an external image of that culture that allows co-leadership to work. Does ACT have that same culture and external perception?
ACT has enough best hotels in hawaii support to get 3-4 seats as long as voters are convinced they will win Epsom. It s only when there is the possibility of a wasted vote that those core ACT voters will go elsewhere. The two times ACT has been under five seats were due to media deliberately misleading voters about the likelihood of a party vote for ACT being wasted. Of course this will probably happen again.
Nigel, the problem best hotels in hawaii is that all of the votes ACT receive will come at National best hotels in hawaii s expense. A better option is the Conservative party, which is drawing support from National, Labour and NZ First voters.
bringbackdemocracy point taken, but there s also a benefit to National from having ACT because it allows National to play Good Cop, Bad Cop and introduce some policies which have support inside the National caucus, but where National is too timid. Their introduction can then be attributed to ACT. Charter Schools is a good example, as would be tax cuts, welfare reform etc.
While the Conservatives might move voters to the centre right, and might tip the election, let s not pretend that there would not be problems with them moon landings aside, there are issues like asset sales and foreign ownership.
In a column, Jamie Whyte repeats the falsehood of New Zealand s imprisonment rate being the second highest in the developed world. If he couldn t be bothered to check that, why would I believe things he says about things I don t know about?
Graeme, I think it s more nuanced than that. The imprisonment rate can be measured in at least two ways. 1) per 100,000 people or 2) per 100,000 imprisonable (serious) offences . From memory Jamie is talking about the latter. If you have a high crime rate, then your rate of imprisonment can be low, even if your absolute best hotels in hawaii numbers in prison are high. The converse is also true you can have a high rate in prison per 100,000 people, but a low rate of imprisonment if your are measuring the number of people in prison divided by the number of serious offences (the denominator).
I have met both of these guys, and both are impressive..in different ways. Both also of course have the huge disadvantage of having no parliamentary experience, but unless Rodney changes his mind, there is no credible candidate on the scene who can overcome that problem.
freedom: Well said. The imprisonment rate makes absolutely no sense unless best hotels in hawaii you also considere the crime rate . But Graeme is also quite right; on NO measure are we secoind in the world or even second in the developed world. That is myth which has become established be endless repetition by the left and the media.
Although I take NK s point, I dont see how credibly the leader can be a person outside parliament, with a different person as MP. On this issue J bloggs @ 9.33 makes good sense. Of course that problem is not a problem if the MP for Epsom who is not the leader best hotels in hawaii brings 2 or 3 other MP s in with him. Although a lot of people still don t get it, under MMP a list MP has exactly the same status as an electorate MP. I always looked at is as having the whole of New Zealand as potential best hotels in hawaii constituents if someone needed help.
As for