Your second point about candidate selection is also very interesting. The most watched of the Democratic Senatorial challengers, Elizabeth Warren, certainly used her outsider status to great advantage.

Namely that playing solely to the base and margins cost the Republicans hugely. The membership of the Republicans were enough to ensure Romney had few likely or obvious pathways to the White House. Hopefully Labour will reflect on that here.

Also candidate selection was huge for the Democrats. They had good solid credible candidates who in many of the key senate races, were up against partisan nutjobs. Another good lesson I would have thought.

And finally, clarity of what the Democrat/Obama brand was. Love him or loath him, you knew what Obama stood for, what his values were and what you were voting for. Labour’s brand here is as confused as it has ever been.

“I love Michael D. When I was Min Broadcasting we invited him to NZ. he spoke of how as Min of arts he set in place the music quotas that we imitated that promoted Irish music and great bands. I love this fearless man. and he has had his impact on NZ.”

I disagree with you Patrick

Form should follow function. The Party vote is the single most important thing under MMP. We should structure ourselves to get it. Electorate wins will follow if we do.

In that sense I’m critical that the review didn’t go far enough. Our structure, still fundamentally one for FPP, remains based at the electorate level which makes little sense for issue and party vote campaigning.

I think that the silo effect of LECs embeds these cultural problems into structure, and that breaking down the silos should hopefully help prompt a cultural change. But you’re right in that cultural change should be the end goal, structural change will be a step on that path.

There are a number of issues that the org. review has revealed and the more i think about them, the more often i come to the conclusion they are cultural problems. The seemingly yawning divide between caucus and the membership seems like one salient example.