Matt McCarten has become David Cunliffe’s chief of staff. Many of our wisest and smartest commentators, who have never been wrong about anything before, apart from that time they reckoned David Shearer was the right leader for Labour, are claiming the move signals a shift by Labour to the left.

Are they right? Well how could so many clever people be wrong?

Here are some things we can look forward to from Labour, now that McCarten is involved.

• Your child will be forced to read Marx, and to sing The Red Flag at school every morning.
• Everything is going to be nationalised. You are going to be nationalised. Your labour will now be utilised for the glory of the Great Socialist Utopia, Aotearoa. By the way, have you any farm work experience? And are you good in cold, dark, confined, dirty spaces?
• Our national rugby team will be renamed the All Reds.
• You will be forced to join a union, on pain of death. No, sorry, the Taxpayers’ Union doesn’t count.
• All of your property will be seized and distributed among Labour’s activist shock troops. They will drink all of your fine wine and aged whisky, steal your collection of Burt Bacharach CDs, and burn down your house.
• You will suddenly be very poor. So will all of your friends and work colleagues. You will discover for yourself the true horror of actually having to talk to poor people. Before this all happened they were in someone else’s world, on someone else’s street. Now the poor are all around you.
• New Zealand will become a one-party state. Unfortunately for you, that party won’t be ACT. It’s unfortunate, because you have always fancied your sister.
• None of the above things will happen. Nothing much will change.