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October 21, 2025

My gardener shares his views.

BY GORDON T – OPINION

The gardener called in the other day, just grunted at me and grabbed a beer from the fridge. As he hadn’t even done a token shift in the gardens, I presumed he had something on his mind and it didn’t take him long to open up. “I’m worried about Labour’s chances in the next election,” he announced before noticing my empty hands and asking, “Would you like one of your beers?” I nodded and he fetched me a beer before carrying on.

The gardener is a blue singlet worker, committed to the socialist cause. But this matter was obviously important to him so I decided to let him guide the conversation. It didn’t take him long to explain, stating “Labour’s problem is that they need a racial party to back them and the current one is a cot case. They will lose the election for Labour”. I couldn’t help but interject so responded with, “Don’t you think ignorance, their previous term’s stuff ups, a lack of any policy and Chris Hipkins are enough to lose an election?” The gardener didn’t appear to listen and simply carried on “No, they need a decent racial party to partner with so I think we should form one!”

I wasn’t sure how I was suddenly included in this but suggested, “Surely you are not thinking of forming another Maori Party?” I just got one of those looks and the gardener explained “No, what we are going to form is a ‘Native Briton Party’ with members who are Celtic, Picts, Saxons or whatever. There will be heaps of us with such lineage and we need representation. I thought we could call it Feile arsa agus sona.”

Now I am quite familiar with many things ancient, including languages, so was able to give a sensible answer “A bit of a mouthful if you ask me. If you translate that it means, ‘Ancient and Happy Party’. Sounds like a Saturday night at the Mercury Bay Club. Why not something simpler, such as Pairti an Phobail; People Party? Or you could try the Pictish version of Pobel Parti?”

The gardener nodded furiously, “I like that one, snappy and understandable. You can see why I wanted you as Deputy Leader”. I quickly pointed out I was not involved as a member of any sort but he ignored that and carried on. “We need to agree upon a song; something to make us sound dignified and cultural whenever we finish a speech. Something most people won’t understand would be great”. Well there could only be one candidate for the party song in my mind, so I spelt it out very simply for him “Hen Wlad Fy Nhadau!” He looked at me with a quizzical gaze, so I quickly explained “Land of My Fathers”.

A wide grin appeared on his face. “The one they sing at Rugby games in Wales! Brilliant, brings tears to everybody’s eyes.” He immediately followed on with, “And I’ve got the appearance thing sorted out; a bit of blue woad seemed to do the trick for Braveheart when he went into battle so we could use that. Could do the kilt thing too. It would help with disobedience actions as you just need to lift it up when addressing the speaker.”

I told him that he would need to have a think about a dance, preferably a challenge of some sort. The sort of dance you could do at the drop of the hat when you wanted to annoy the Speaker. That caused a few worry lines on the brow, so we opened another beer each, while we considered options. Finally, the gardener put down his beer and said, “The only thing I can come up with is Morris Dancing”. I resisted the urge to laugh, instead commenting that I didn’t think bell tingling and handkerchief waving in the public gallery was going to be an effective political weapon.

I could see he was getting quite enthusiastic, so I thought I better bring some practicality into things and asked, “What about policy? What does the party stand for?” The gardener responded.“ I don’t see how policy is important for parties based on race. Doesn’t seem to be for the current one. But if we need an election winning policy, we could go with doing away with the excise tax on Scotch Whiskey.”

He was starting to tap his foot and looking quite pleased with himself so I couldn’t resist commenting “Is this worth doing if there are no Briton only seats for you to stand for?” His face fell and he looked quite distraught, so I got up and patted him on the back. “You need to remember we only have one type of racial party in this country and your move won’t help with that”. He frowned and stood up; “You are probably right” he said, “Best I get back to the garden then.”