New Zealand Listener

Calling Team Aotearoa

If only the great Ghosts of Politics Past could tap living leaders on the shoulder before they make charlies of themselves. Britain’s former prime minister Harold Macmillan would have loomed behind Simon Bridges with four pithy words before he so joyfully announced the National Party’s “bonfire of regulations”.

“Events, dear boy, events,” Macmillan once replied, when asked what could blow successful governments off course. The events that stand to blow our Government off course are not niggly rules constraining hairdressers and scaffolders or even the whole infuriating canon of “PC gone mad!”

Coronavirus and the impending global financial slump might,

You’re reading a preview, subscribe to read more.

More from New Zealand Listener

New Zealand Listener2 min read
Wild At Heart
Irish author and critic Sinéad Gleeson’s 2019 collection of essays, Constellations, was an unflinching and generous look at trauma, illness, pain, faith, pregnancy and motherhood, with thunderbolt flashes of art criticism and political commentary. He
New Zealand Listener3 min read
Tv Films
Warmed-over beefcake Three, 8.30pm In the rambling second of Channing Tatum’s three malestripper flicks, the first one’s MVP Matthew McConaughey is missing. It’s also a pointless, plot-free film that the previous movie somehow avoided becoming. (2015
New Zealand Listener1 min read
Charm Comes Before A Fall
THE FALL GUY Directed by David Leitch The Fall Guy is quite silly, largely incoherent and not really worthy of the talents of its stars, Emily Blunt and Ryan Gosling. But with Aaron Taylor-Johnson –the rumoured James Bond-to-be –in support, the movi

Related Books & Audiobooks