 Welcome back to breakfast. It's a challenging time for the political left after sinking to one of its worst election results. Labour is looking to reconnect with supporters and re-establish its credentials as the workers' champion. Party Leader David Shearer spoke to us earlier this morning. Let's have a listen. We're getting behind people who work and who want to work. And that includes people who are working on the ports and the people that are working really hard being self-employed and contractors. That's what Labour has always stood for, is for people who work, prepared to work hard, play by the rules. And that's what we have to do. We have to get back out of those provinces and connect with those people. Well, for his reaction, we're joined by author, historian and commentator, Chris Trotter. Good morning, Chris. You have been pretty vocal on this issue of where Labour is going. Can it do what David Shearer says there? Can it have both? Can it be a party that represents those port workers and the sole business operator as well? Is that possible? Well, it's done it in the past. It requires a measure of political skill. And frankly, I've been getting to wonder whether Mr Shearer has the skills necessary, because with the whole ports issue blowing up, there's a risk in what we've just heard of people who are involved in that dispute and people who identify with those involved in that dispute, saying, wait a minute, did I just hear the Leader of the Labour Party saying he's for contractors? I mean, he's backing Tony Gibson's position on the port workers. And if so, what the hell kind of Labour leader are we dealing with here? Well, though, the interesting thing is that David Shearer said to me this morning that he doesn't want to take sides. And that seems a bit odd in the history of the Labour Party. That's perilously close to the infamous quote from Walter Nash, who said in 1951, the greatest stout of all in terms of the wargs. The Labour Party is neither for the waterside, nor against them. Now, to say you're not taking sides, I mean, there's an old union ballot which simply asks the key question in these kind of disputes, which side are you on? But maybe politically that's not a bad strategy for him, because he does need to get those middle-class voters. And I think we've seen that the port workers haven't always had public support on their side here. No, they haven't. It's a very interesting thing. There were two informal polls conducted yesterday which came up with very contradictory results. And I think that's indicative of a kind of churning in terms of people's feelings about issues like strikes. I think because you've got a lot of unemployment, you've got a lot of uncertainty, I think the natural antipathy to workers on strike, which is pretty deeply embedded in New Zealand, it starts to loosen a bit and I think this is a very interesting dispute. And one which Labour really, and I've criticised Mr Shearer for not getting across this very early on, he really needed to put a stake in the ground on this in terms of Labour's core values. It's all very well to talk about winning back the middle classes, but they got 27% last time. I mean, they should worry about holding onto their core vote before they start. Well, you talk about the Waitakere man. So where are they now? What are they thinking about Labour, do you think, at the moment? Well, I think Waitakere man devised the world very crudely into winners and losers. And Waitakere man, Waitakere woman does not want to be associated with the losers. But what I think Labour has to actually say, and I think this would get an awful lot of response from people like the self-employed or the independent contractor. You know, there was a time when if you played by the rules, as Mr Shearer put it, you could be a winner. But the difficulties now in actually succeeding, the way the thing has been set up. They're changing the rules? Yeah, it makes it very difficult to be a winner. And if Labour wants to be anything, it wants to be a party that says we can all win. And that includes Port workers as well as, you know, the people in the vans repairing your hands. But as you say, it requires a fair bit of political dexterity to achieve that. Yeah, and of course, Mr Shearer comes to the leadership as a clean skin, as they say in the spy novels, and has a woeful, in my view, lack of understanding about the party's history, about its moral core. So he's not at his core a union-type leader. No, he hasn't. I mean, he was inspired by David Longie's rhetoric way back in the early 80s. He was out of the country for a lot of rogenomics. But he has got a great record. Backstory, yes. And some of you commented this the other day, why doesn't he make more of that? He's got an incredible story. I don't know. A guy who has stared down gun barrels in Somalia should be able to stare down Mayor Brown and Tony Gibson at POAL, really. You know, you want someone who, first of all, reassures you that they know what their party is about. Mr Key leaves us in no doubt. Mr Shearer has got us one. To be fair, he's going out to talk to people, so he's got a bit of... How much time has he got? He's forming this. Well, he hasn't got a lot of time, because, frankly, Labour has other options. I mean, you know, there was a leadership contest. And Mr Shearer won it, I think, because he appeared to be a guy who had a great backstory. A clean skin, someone who could bring a fresh face to politics, and he had something of that key anti-politician feel about him. Every men-type thing. Now, that's fine, but then you've got to do the politics. You know, you can't take politics out of politics. There we go. The pressure is now on. Thank you very much. Chris Todd, I much appreciate it.