Is this the standard of political journalism we deserve?

I am tired, and very cranky.

Audrey Young from the Herald has put out a "Cabinet Report Card" and it's hard to scrape together adjectives for just how catastrophically useless it is.

Unfortunately, the following passage doesn't appear until part-way through the article, which might have saved readers from being exposed to several paragraphs of demented, optics-pilled prose about the Prime Minister:

Today’s ratings are out of 10 and reflect a judgment about how effective ministers have been in delivering the Government’s policy, how effective they have been in their public dealings and in leadership roles where relevant. The ratings are not about the merits of policy.

Let's look at that last sentence again.

"The ratings are not about the merits of policy."

That's it, Audrey! That's the problem! At the risk of editorialising, this is precisely why audiences despise and mistrust political media. They have one job – explaining the merits of policy, as implemented by politicians – and they don't do it! Instead they present either hagiographies or acidic tongue-lashings of politicians that are utterly subjective and deliver zero value to readers. The "ratings" are based entirely on Young's (Voyager Political Journalist of the Year 2023) extremely Tory-friendly reading of political tea-leaves and how her computer keyboard (and, possibly, AI assistant) feels at any given point in time. I'd call it valueless, uninformative slush, but for the fact it says so much about political media's priorities. Their fetishisation of the absurd corporate buzzword "delivery" is exactly like praising Courier Post for delivering parcels on time, while failing to mention that the only way they've achieved this miracle is by replacing people's actual packages with bag after bag of steaming dogshit. This kind of article cares not at all for facts; only for feelings, for optics, for the vibe.

Here is how she chooses to talk about Minister for Transport, Simeon Brown.

Has a dry but important set of portfolios and is turning out to be the Government’s most populist minister - road cones, potholes, motorways and speed limits. Has also overseen the repeal of Three Waters and reintroduction of local referenda on Maori wards on councils. Highly combative in the House. Effective communicator outside it.

The repeal of Three Waters, as reported by Young's own newspaper, has caused Council rates for many New Zealanders to skyrocket. The repeal of Maori wards is the worst kind of populism; short-sighted and counter-productive for government-Maori relations, and it was accomplished under urgency, with almost no opportunity for scrutiny. And, according to experts, the abolition of speed limits and measures like traffic calming around schools will literally kill people.

For raising rates, increasing racial tension, and bearing ultimate responsibility for a bunch of preventable deaths, Audrey Young gives Simeon Brown a 9 out of 10. Because he's "populist" and "highly combative" and an "effective communicator."

She's awarding him points for being great at being terrible.

We deserve – and need – so much better from political media.

The last thing I wrote here was an agonised obituary for mainstream media, and what horrors might replace it, but this sort of article is irredeemable. The perpetuation of the lie that politics occurs in some kind of consequence-free void is inexcusable. If this kind of journalism dies, we'll all be better off.

Anyway, I am considerably more tired and crankier having finished writing that, so I thought I'd finish by how it might look if Audrey Young was writing in Italy at some point from 1922 through 1943. Because we deserve a laugh, even if it's a bitter one.

Fascisti report card: the ministers thriving and those just surviving

Benito Mussolini today is not the same Benito Mussolini of last year.

You might think this is just an artifact of the passage of time or biological reality and thus too unimportant to mention, but trite cliches are the only way to get a column to length in time for publication.

So yeah, he's not the same guy.

Delegates to the National Fascist Party conference in South Rome this weekend will see that.

He has the same energy but he is tougher, busier and a little more impatient. One imagines that his genitals have enlarged, but in a tasteful manner, like those on statues from the glorious Imperial past.

He has been battle-hardened by a successful March on Rome and the realities of Government.

He developed a large Coalition agreement with the prickliest operators in politics, the Nationalists, Liberals, and the Catholics of the People's Party. Such leader, very wow.

Mussolini dealt with Giacomo Matteotti and his son-in-law Ciano more swiftly and ruthlessly than his mentor, the “smiling assassinated" Giovanni Gentile.

Mussolini himself, while having accomplished a lot to become Il Duce, has room for improvement.

He talks up his heroic realism but is often defensive or negative.

He has been at his most positive on the numerous international missions he has led to promote spazio vitale, especially in Ethiopia.

But he is not yet as politically dexterous as he needs to be. In press conferences and interviews, he often relies on bluster or sloganeering which makes him sound more robotic than real.

However, the Prime Minister seems confident that his strong relationship with the Reich, and his new venture in Greece, will bring a brighter future for Italy – and for this he rates 8 out of 10.