In the case of the protests over the EFA it’s true that most of the people making a noise over the issue were right-wingers and the campaign was perceived as having little traction outside the beltway, however as I’ve written previously on this blog I think the EFA is a dangerous piece of legislation and the failure of almost all left wing groups to oppose it is something of a sad indictment.

With the more recent protests over road user charges and violent crime, the situation is even more worrying because while the leadership is coming from the same sorts of right wing elements (National party, Sensible Sentencing Trust et al), these right-wingers have actually succeeded in mobilising a significant layer of working class people who are justifiably angry about things like rising prices and violence in their community (which affect them far more than they do the inhabitants of Remuera or Roseneath).

So in a very real sense it is the utter ineffectiveness of the pro-Labour reformist left that is the real problem here, not the bogeymen like Garth McVicar or Bob McCoskrie who the liberal latte set spend so much time obsessing over.

Coming from the US, where we don’t have anything resemblong a labor party, I would caucus inside.