Winston Peters’ Choices Will Be Determined By The Electorate’s

Kingmaker Redux: Once again, opinion polls suggest that New Zealand's political future will be decided by the calculations of Winston Peters and the NZ First Party. Such an outcome would confirm that the overall trajectory of New Zealand politics remains rightward, not leftward.

 

OPINION POLLS can be very confusing. Less than a fortnight out from the General Election support for the National Party could be as low as 45 percent or as high as 54 percent – depending on which polling agency’s results you follow. There is, however, a way of simplifying this political confusion. By aggregating the support of those parties generally supportive of the status-quo, and those seeking change, it is actually pretty easy to work out whether the mood of the nation is one of conservative caution or forthright experimentation.

 

I well remember making this calculation in the run-up to the 1999 General Election and reaching the inescapable conclusion that the combined support of the Labour, Alliance and Green parties pointed consistently to a narrow majority of New Zealanders being in search of something new. The election result reflected the final weeks’ polling data with the left-wing Opposition parties together receiving 51.6 percent of the Party Vote.

 

Rather apprehensively, I repeated the exercise for this year’s election. Relying on the results of the opinion poll which came closest to predicting the result of the 2011 General Election, it is clear that the mood of the nation in 2014 is very different from 1999. Taken together, the votes of those parties clearly in favour of maintaining the economic and social status quo or of shifting it even further to the right (National, Act, United Future, Conservatives) amount to an impressive 53.1 percent. If the support for the more equivocal “conservative” parties (NZ First and the Maori Party) is added, that number increases to 60.3 percent.

 

If New Zealanders are in the market for economic and social change in 2014 it’s clear that a pretty solid majority do not want very much of it – and none at all if it’s radical change.

 

So, what will Winston do? Because, if the opinion polls are to be believed, it will once again be Winston Peters and his NZ First Party which plays the role of Kingmaker following 20 September.

 

The best chance we have of answering that question is, first, to analyse what Mr Peters says he will do; and then take a look at what he has done in the past.

 

What Mr Peters says he will do has not changed in seven elections. He will wait until the votes have been cast so he and his party can get a firm grip on what New Zealanders want. In other words, he will perform the same exercise that I have described above – but without the “assistance” of opinion polls. He will then make the best judgement he can about the overall mood of his fellow New Zealanders – and dispose of his support accordingly.

 

One of my most vivid memories as a political commentator is of Election Night 1996. I was part of TV3’s commentary panel and, as the vote count neared its conclusion, it was clear that the next prime minister of New Zealand would be chosen by Winston Peters.

 

My fellow commentators did the political math (Labour + NZ First + Alliance = 51.6 percent of the Party Vote) and confidently predicted that Helen Clark would be the next prime minister. (Time magazine even put her face on their cover!) To my eyes, however, the performance of the Left – the agents of change – seemed woeful. In 1993 Labour and the Alliance had polled 52.9 percent of the popular vote between them. Three years later that number had fallen to just 38.3 percent of the Party Vote. The combined 1996 Party Vote of National, + Act + United NZ = 40.85 percent. And when the sub-MMP threshold 4.3 percent of the Party Vote won by the Christian Coalition was thrown into the equation, the support for the status-quo rose to 45.15 percent. It seemed obvious to me that NZ First’s 13.35 percent of the Party Vote was much more likely to end up with the parties of the Right than the Left – and I said so.

 

The crucial addition sum on Election Night 2014 will be Labour + Greens + Internet Mana. If it is greater than National + Conservative + Maori Party + United Future + Act, then I predict Mr Peters and NZ First will offer Confidence and Supply to Labour’s David Cunliffe and seat themselves on the cross-benches. If the reverse is true, then I suspect the negotiations between Mr Peters and John Key, though strenuous and lengthy, will result in the formation of a National-NZ First Government.

 

I make this prediction because I do not believe that in 2014 Mr Peters includes NZ First in the small-c conservative camp. Attributing the best possible intentions to the electorate’s choices, he will either attempt to moderate the excessive enthusiasm of Labour’s coalition partners; or to restrain, judiciously, the worst impulses of National’s.

 

This essay was originally published in The Press of Tuesday, 9 September 2014.

Three’s Company: Labour-Greens-NZ First may just be the coalition New Zealanders are looking for.

Conservatively Radical: The leaders of the Labour-Greens-NZ First combo have just 11 days to campaign for a Government possessing the collective wisdom to distinguish necessary from unnecessary change, and the political courage to make it happen.

 

WITH LESS THAN A FORTNIGHT to go until Election Day, the broad outlines of the voters’ choice are becoming clear. Labour has refined its position to one of anticipating a tripartite arrangement with the Greens and NZ First. The National Party, unmoved by recent polls, is hoping the voters allow them to begin their third term with the same support partners as their first and second: Act, United Future and the Maori Party. John Key cannot, however, discount the possibility of having to enlarge his support combination by including Colin Craig’s Conservative Party.

 

Both of these configurations reflect the central political reality of this election campaign: that New Zealanders have become considerably more cautious and (small-c) conservative than they have been for many decades. If, for whatever reason, voters desert National in sufficient numbers to allow Labour, the Greens and NZ First to make a centre-left government, it is clear that it will be a coalition shorn of radical policy.

 

David Cunliffe is sending three important messages to the electorate. 1) That he considers NZ First indispensable to effecting a change of government. 2) By very publicly ruling out any kind of accommodation with either Internet-Mana or the Maori Party he is signalling that he understands “Middle New Zealand’s” current distaste for radical ideas. 3) He is inviting them to interpret his reaching-out to NZ First as proof of his moderate bona fides.

 

John Key faces a very different set of problems. On the right of New Zealand politics there is a growing impatience with what it scorns as “Labour-Lite” policies. In this context, Nicky Hager’s revelations concerning Judith Collins will have come as a Godsend to the Prime Minister. They have allowed him to temporarily spike the guns of Ms Collin’s and her Far-Right faction of the National Party caucus and reassured nervous National supporters that the Government is not about to embark on any Tea Party-like excursions into ideological extremism.

 

The downside of Hager’s disruption of the election campaign is the bleeding away of votes it has occasioned to National’s right-wing rivals.  Both NZ First and the Conservatives have benefited from these defections (the former more considerably than the latter) and this raises the very real possibility that Key, in order to remain in office, will be forced to make the sort of political concessions that could seriously destabilise his government.

 

If he opts for NZ First, he will be obliged to anchor his government very firmly in the harbour of Mr Peter’s caring, paternalistic and overtly interventionist “one nation” conservatism. This will outrage his own neoliberal colleagues, strengthen the hand of Collins’s supporters, alienate Act and empower those Conservative MPs (we are assuming here that the Conservative Party crosses the 5 percent MMP threshold) excluded from Key’s political solar system.

 

On the other hand, if he throws in his lot with Colin Craig’s Conservatives he will have hitched his wagon to a new and untested band of political eccentrics and Tea Party-type “ultras” with the capacity to drag his hitherto unthreatening and predictable centre-right government into the ideological badlands. In the finely balanced Parliament both sides are expecting post-20 September, the Conservatives could very easily prove to be much more trouble than they’re worth. And, if they were seduced into making common-cause with the equally eccentric Ms Collins, the Conservatives could conceivably end up threatening the Prime Minister himself. Craig’s messiah complex is unmistakeable – and there can be only one!

 

Clearly, the potential for instability and ideological confusion is considerably greater on the right of New Zealand politics than it is on the left. Once Internet-Mana are excluded from the constellation of acceptable Opposition stars, what the electorate is presented with in a Labour-Greens-NZ First combination is a coalition government erected on two extremely solid foundation-stones: economic nationalism and environmentalism.

 

Popular antipathy to land sales to foreigners (almost certainly intensified by Act leader Jamie Whyte’s ill-considered intervention over the weekend) is reflected in the manifestoes of all three parties. Combine Labour, Green and NZ First pledges to put the heft of the state behind a major effort to improve the productivity of New Zealand Incorporated with the growing public concern about the health of New Zealand’s waterways because of “dirty dairying”, and the populist potential of the Labour-Green-NZ First policy agenda is readily apparent. All three parties will find themselves free to manoeuvre on extensive common ground.

 

David Cunliffe, Russel Norman, Metiria Turei and Winston Peters have just 11 days to convince a confused and jittery electorate that although a Labour-Greens-Internet-Mana combination may have represented an unmistakeable and unwarranted lurch to the Left, a Labour-Greens-NZ First combo could turn out to be something much more palatable.

 

All three parties must campaign hard for a Government possessing the collective wisdom to distinguish necessary from unnecessary change, and the political courage to make it happen.

 

This essay was posted on Bowalley Road  and The Daily Blog blogsites on Monday, 8 September 2014.

The Responsibilities Of Power

This Land Is My Land: Yes, but if we want to keep it out of foreign hands then New Zealand will have to abandon its 30-year adherence to the doctrines of free trade and unrestricted foreign direct investment. And that will cost us more than many of us may be willing to pay.

 

SO, LABOUR’S going to block the sale of Lochinver Station. The political party which proudly attached New Zealand’s signature to the People’s Republic’s first free trade agreement with a western nation is now proposing to slap the Chinese government in the face. Forgive me, but in the absence of a wholesale repudiation by Labour of its longstanding commitment to free trade, I just don’t see this happening.

 

At the heart of the free trade doctrine lie two fundamental and related provisions: Most Favoured Nation status and National Treatment. In a nutshell, these two provisions are about non-discrimination; about governments promising not to play favourites and undertaking to treat foreigners no better or worse than they treat their own people.

 

These provisions are fundamental to free trade policies for the very simple reason that free trade is impractical without them. Without a foreign government’s undertaking that your country’s exports will be treated no better or worse than those of the “most favoured nation” with which it currently does business, what possible incentive would your own country have to open up its markets to the products of foreigners? And why would anyone attempt to establish a business in a foreign land if it was immediately lumbered with obligations and restrictions from which local businesses are exempt?

 

David Cunliffe, David Parker and Phil Goff (especially Phil Goff) understand the vital importance of reciprocity in international trade relations. The idea that they will intervene to nullify Shanghai Pengxin’s perfectly legal purchase of Lochinver Station – thereby signalling to China and rest of the world that Labour is abandoning its longstanding commitment to the core provisions of international free trade is, frankly, laughable.

 

Why, then, have they given such an undertaking?

 

The answer, of course, is because all the indications point to the conclusion that New Zealanders are adamantly opposed to the idea of their country’s farms being sold to foreigners. With an election looming, and a potential coalition partner, NZ First, promising to ban foreigners from swallowing up New Zealand’s green and pleasant land, Labour’s strategists clearly believe they have no choice except to say: “Me too!”

 

Now there is nothing intrinsically wrong with a political party opting to embrace a more protectionist stance on trade issues. New Zealand’s was, for many years, a highly protected economy with import quotas and high tariffs to protect local industries. The rest of the world accepted this because, for the most part, the rest of the world subscribed to very similar notions of economic management.

 

But, times have changed.

 

Officially, the rest of the world no longer believes in protectionism. The IMF and the World Bank, not to mention the World Trade Organisation, take a very dim view of countries which persist with (let alone re-erect!) barriers to the free movement of goods and services around the world. The fact that many larger and more powerful countries (the USA, the EU, Japan, Russia, South Korea) still maintain substantial barriers to trade, especially in agricultural products, may be a sore point with the New Zealand government, but it is not one it can do much about. From the mid-1980s, successive New Zealand governments (beginning with the fourth Labour Government) have progressively stripped away all the impediments to free trade. As a very small country, determined to achieve unrestricted access to the world’s markets for its predominantly agricultural exports, we could hardly do less.

 

All of which makes it extremely unlikely that a Labour-led Government would do anything so foolish and provocative as to over-rule an Overseas Investment Office-approved sale of Lochinver Station to Shanghai Pengxin. Not unless they actually wanted to see New Zealand’s exports held up for weeks on the Chinese docks!

 

It is critical to the future prosperity of New Zealand that its political leadership, even at the risk of incurring the electorate’s wrath, remain steadfast in its adherence to the principles of open markets and open borders. And if that means rehearsing the arguments in favour of free trade, as well as pointing out the likely consequences of denying the benefits of Most Favoured Nation status and National Treatment to a trading partner as vital to this country’s economic interests as the People’s Republic of China – then so be it.

 

It is easy to secure the approbation of the masses by telling them what they want to hear. Much harder is the task of convincing one’s fellow citizens that the cost of the changes they are demanding is well beyond what most of them would be willing to pay.

 

Small parties without prospect of ever being in a position to formulate the core policies of the state are free to promise voters the diplomatically and economically impossible. The leaders of parties large enough to make a difference have a duty to accept the responsibilities of power.

 

This essay was originally published in The Press of Tuesday, 12 August 2014.

F**king John Key: How Kim Dotcom And Internet-Mana Transformed The Right Into Their Best Recruiters.

Finding The Right Words: To an electorate grown weary of the bland rhetoric of parties content to play politics-by-numbers, Kim Dotcom's invitation to "bring down the government" has a novel and, for a great many younger New Zealanders, irresistible appeal.

ARE YOU READY FOR A REVOLUTION? When was the last time anybody asked a crowd of young New Zealanders that question? Seriously? When was the last time a political party, with a reasonable chance of putting at least five people into Parliament, had five candidates for whom the idea of participating in a revolution wasn’t utterly abhorrent?

 

Honestly? The last time such a thing happened was nearly 100 years ago, when Peter Fraser openly admitted that, were he in Russia, he would be a Bolshevik; and when Labour’s first parliamentary leader, Harry Holland, in his maiden speech, informed the New Zealand Parliament that:

 

“We of the Labour Party come to endeavour to effect a change of classes at the fountain of power. We come proclaiming boldly and fearlessly the Socialist objective of the Labour movement throughout New Zealand; and we make no secret of the fact that we seek to rebuild society on a basis in which work and not wealth will be the measure of a man’s worth.

 

“We do not seek to make a class war. You cannot make that which is already in existence. We recognise that the antagonisms which divide society into classes are economically foundationed,  and we are going, if we can, to end the class war by ending the causes of class warfare.”

 

Both Peter Fraser and Harry Holland were former members of the militant trade union organisation known as the “Red Feds” (The New Zealand Federation of Labour) and were well versed in the ways of inspiring their mostly young audiences. Being good Edwardians, they would have shied away from the public use of Anglo-Saxon expletives but, as good Socialists, they would not have hesitated to state in 3,000 impassioned words what a boisterous crowd of Canterbury students this week condensed into just three. Confronted with this government’s and this prime minister’s record, the essence of Peter Fraser’s and Harry Holland’s message would also have been: “Fuck John Key!”

 

The young advisers to the Internet-Mana Party, at whose urging the in/famous FJK clip was posted on YouTube (21,665 hits and counting) knew what they were doing. Quite apart from accurately anticipating the reaction of their peers, they also hazarded a shrewd guess as to how the “offensive” clip would be received by the political and media guardians of the status-quo.

 

And they have not been disappointed. Almost to a person, the conservative commentariat has condemned Internet-Mana in the most extravagant terms. PR maven and political commentator, Matthew Hooton, tweeted that the clip contained images reminiscent of a Munich beer-hall circa 1920, thereby setting in motion a Kim-Dotcom-as-Adolf-Hitler meme that within hours would infect huge chunks of the mainstream media. Curiously, very few media commentators appeared to consider how gratefully such criticism might be received by a movement whose primary objective is to be seen as the antithesis of everything old and well-behaved and conventional and boring.

 

The over-riding goal of Internet-Mana is to be branded as dangerous and transgressive. The Powers-That-Be have co-operated splendidly.

 

Then again, they may have had no choice. The internal polling of the major political parties may well be detecting the invisible effects of what the visible manifestations of Internet-Mana’s efforts are signalling. The packed halls and enthusiastic chanting of the hundreds of young people who have turned out for the party’s public meetings may simply be the tip of a vast iceberg of political re/engagement on the part of those who usually keep well away from the electoral fray. The pool of voters may be expanding; bringing into play for the first time since 2005 the marginalised, the disillusioned, and – most alarmingly for the forces of the Right – the angry and aggrieved. The sort of people who need very little excuse to begin chanting – “Fuck John Key!”

 

This is the stuff of nightmares for the Right. Rising participation in the electoral process has always spelled doom for conservative administrations. John Key’s best-case scenario has always been one of mass political somnambulance: in which hundreds of thousands of voters, convinced by the pollsters and their journalistic interpreters that the election was already won, would march, zombielike, into the polling-booths and make the media’s prophecies come true. Kim Dotcom’s unparalleled ability to disturb and disrupt has put this fantastical scenario to the sword. Even worse (from John Key’s perspective) the political spell he has cast cannot now be recalled.

 

Even were all the rumours of dark secrets soon to be revealed proved correct, the effect of their release would likely be very different from that anticipated by their purveyors. The Establishment, in its hysterical reaction to the FJK clip, has already demonstrated a willingness to do almost anything to upend Internet-Mana’s campaign. Even the most scurrilous revelations will now be received by the insurgent party’s target audience as yet further proof of the extraordinary lengths to which the Powers-That-Be will go to bring Dotcom down.

 

The optimum strategy to derail Dotcom was always to completely ignore him. But even that option is now denied his enemies. In his Auckland Town Hall meeting of the 15 September Dotcom has laid a trap which the National Government cannot escape. If it attempts to persuade the news media to stay away from the meeting and/or wilfully misrepresent its significance, Dotcom’s case will be made against Key with a force equal to or greater than any evidence he may, with Glenn Greenwald’s internationally visible assistance, produce.

 

Like Brer Fox and his Tar Baby, Kim Dotcom has, in Internet-Mana, created an object which the Prime Minister and his allies simply could not resist. In his version of the story, however, there will be no Briar Patch into which the Prime Minister can, like Brer Rabbit in “Uncle Remus’s” famous tale, be conveniently thrown and thus escape his fate. If all goes according to Dotcom’s plan, the refrain upon which this story ends will not be “Born and bred in the Briar Patch, Brer Fox! Born and bred in the Briar Patch!” but “Fuck-John-Key! Fuck-John-Key! Fuck-John-Key!”

 

This essay was originally posted on The Daily Blog of Friday, 8 August 2014.

No Cookies! But Maybe The Balance Of Power: Why Kelvin Davis And The Labour Right Are So Scared Of Internet-Mana.

On Message And On Fire: The Labour Right are terrified that having established a parliamentary bridgehead the Internet-Mana Party will play the role of the broader Left’s staunch chorus, with Hone Harawira, Annette Sykes, Laila Harre and John Minto passing withering judgement upon the antics of a back-sliding Labour Caucus.

 

THE CRUDE POLITICAL GAMBIT of Kelvin Davis and his supporters in Te Tai Tokerau has fallen flat. His plans to knock Internet-Mana out of the electoral race have been revealed and the Maori voters of the North will punish him severely. Not only for his confrontational and abusive rhetoric, but also for the rank ingratitude and disloyalty he has displayed toward Labour. The rest of the country can only shake their heads in wonder at the strategic stupidity of the man.

 

Davis is, after all, the candidate to whom the Labour Party’s Ranking Committee gifted a very favourable position on the Party List. His role in Te Tai Tokerau was not to go all out to take the seat from Hone Harawira, but to maximise Labour’s Party Vote. It is staggering that Davis and his allies have been unable (or unwilling) to grasp the simple fact that the welfare of the people of the North will be most effectively secured by a victory in the forthcoming election for the parties of the Left – of which Internet-Mana is rapidly becoming a critical component.

 

The scuttlebutt in left-wing circles is that Davis has been “rarked up” by Labour’s ABC Faction, who not only need their leader, David Cunliffe, to fail on 20 September, but who are also determined to deny Internet-Mana a parliamentary bridgehead. Their plans to haul Labour back to the “centre” (the Right’s code word for an ideological position acceptable to Business New Zealand, Federated Farmers and the mainstream news media) will suffer a serious setback if Hone Harawira, Annette Sykes, Laila Harre and John Minto get to play the role of the Left’s staunch chorus – passing withering judgement upon the antics of a back-sliding Labour Caucus.

 

In this effort, the Labour Right is marching in lock-step with the National Party’s and the right-wing news media’s political objectives. The more intelligent among them understand that, over a three year term, an Internet-Mana presence in the House has the potential to haul back “Overton’s Window” from its present location well to the right of the political spectrum and reposition it much closer to the left. The overwhelming priority across the entire New Zealand Right is, therefore, to strangle this potential left-wing Hercules in his cradle. Wittingly or unwittingly, Davis has allowed himself to become a pawn in its game. How else to explain his willingness to be associated with David Farrar and Cameron Slater, the twin serpents sent to dispatch the Left’s infant hero?

 

The ABC Faction’s tactical priority is to smear David Cunliffe as Internet-Mana’s secret enabler: the politician who’s promising publicly to have nothing to do with Kim Dotcom’s creation while all the time secretly plotting to give Maori Affairs to Hone, Social Welfare to Laila Harre, and Foreign Affairs to John Minto. They are well aware of how badly the idea of any kind of Labour “deal” with Internet-Mana is playing with young, reasonably-skilled but indifferently-paid women workers whose extremely limited grasp of politics is almost exclusively informed by what Patrick Gower, Tove O’Brien and Corin Dann tells them on the six o’clock news.

 

In the past, these young women: retail workers, hairdressers, receptionists and office personnel of all kinds; have provided Labour with the numbers necessary to evict National Governments. Without them, securing victory becomes extremely problematic. Helen Clark lost what British snobs would call the “Chav Vote” to the dashing John Key in 2008 and poor old Phil Goff never seriously tempted them in 2011. David Cunliffe just might win them back in 2014, but not with Kim Dotcom looming behind him like a pantomime demon.

 

It is this need to distance himself from Dotcom and his allies that explains Cunliffe’s refusal to call out Davis for the dangerous political distraction he has become. Indeed, in a funny sort of way, Davis’s extreme animus towards Harawira and Dotcom has played into the Labour Leader’s hands. It has enabled him to reiterate in even more unequivocal language that Labour will have no truck with Kim Dotcom; that there will be no electorate deals done with Internet-Mana; and that no Internet-Mana MPs will be invited to serve in any coalition Cabinet over which Cunliffe presides. In Andy Williams’ immortal words to the importunate Cookie Bear: “Not now. Not ever. Never. No cookies! ”

 

Such is the general ignorance which still surrounds the MMP electoral system, however, that many of those reassured by Cunliffe’s rejection of the Internet-Mana Party may be shocked to discover on Election Night that they have somehow managed to win seats in Parliament. What’s more, as the sworn enemies of John Key’s government, if the numbers are there for David Cunliffe to become Prime Minister with Internet-Mana’s support they will happily make him so. This will undoubtedly provoke an outcry from those who interpreted Cunliffe’s “Internet-Mana will have no place in a Labour-led Government” as meaning “We will not accept the votes of Internet-Mana’s MPs in assembling the support needed to form a government.”

 

If that turns out to be the case, then New Zealanders are in for a crash-course in constitutional realities. They will discover that if Internet-Mana have the numbers to make David Cunliffe the Prime Minister, they will almost certainly also have the numbers to prevent John Key from resuming office. Whether some of the voters like it or not; whether National likes it or not; whether the mainstream news media likes it or not; and whether Kelvin Davis likes it or not; if the rules of MMP return the Internet-Mana Party in sufficient numbers to break the National Government and install a Labour-Green coalition – then that’s exactly what it will do.

 

This essay was originally posted on The Daily Blog of 6 August 2014.

Cost-Benefit Analyses

Getting The Visuals Right: John Key's decision to lend the National Party's support to the so-called "Anti-Smacking Bill" not only reassured his more moderate supporters that he was not beholden to the Far Right, but also allowed him to share the stage with Helen Clark on the six o'clock news. Here, it seemed to say, is a leader in waiting.

 

IT WAS A BOLD STRATEGIC DECISION which has since repaid the courage required to make it several times over. In the run-up to the 2008 General Election John Key could so easily have cemented-in the extreme Right to his electoral coalition by opposing the so-called “Anti-Smacking Bill”, but he did not. To the utter consternation and dismay of Family First’s, Bob McKroskie, and many other social conservatives, the Leader of the National Party Opposition did precisely the opposite.

 

Instead of fighting the measure, John Key offered Helen Clark the support of himself and his socially liberal National Party colleagues – thereby guaranteeing the passage of Sue Bradford’s Private Members Bill by a decisive majority. At a stroke all the bitter memories from 2005 and Don Brash’s secret alliance with the Exclusive Brethren Church were wiped away. Middle-class liberals could now vote for John Key’s National Party with a clear conscience.

 

Key’s decision also secured him some invaluable “visuals”. Voters watching the six o’clock news saw the Prime Minister and the Leader of the Opposition striding in lock-step towards a pair of lecterns, from which, as equals, they delivered the good news about the proposed changes to Section 59 of the Crimes Act.

 

It was a major propaganda triumph for Key because until that moment the voters had not been sure that the new leader of the National Party was for real. Talk is cheap. But to cut adrift a potentially huge number of angry voters was potentially very costly.

 

For the first time New Zealanders had seen the former currency trader’s ruthless decision-making technique in action.

 

There was no disputing the fact that the forces of social conservatism were expecting National’s new leader to throw them a bone. But what would be the political benefit of doing so? The Far Right was desperate to be rid of Helen Clark’s government and the surest way of doing that was by giving National its Party Vote. That meant that its support was already safely banked in National’s account.

 

But what about the votes of those who saw themselves as occupying the centre of the political spectrum? If he threw the Far Right a bone how would they react? Centrists were nowhere near as hostile to Helen Clark as the social-conservatives. Should they become convinced that behind this new fellow’s pleasant smile and friendly wave there lurked a dangerous extremist they might conclude that it wasn’t time for a change after all.

 

In the end Key’s cost-benefit calculation was a simple one. The Centre was much more important to National’s election chances than the Far Right. Bob McKroskie and his ilk would just have to live with it.

 

And last Monday evening Key did it again.

 

This time the cost-benefit calculation involved the electoral utility of Colin Craig’s Conservative Party.

 

Were National to withdraw its candidate from East Coast Bays in expectation of Mr Craig taking the seat, then socially conservative voters would be reassured that thanks to MMP’s “coat-tail” provisions every vote cast for the Conservative Party would count. The resulting surge in their Party Vote would, post-election, assist National in mustering the numbers needed to govern. Wouldn’t that be a considerable benefit?

 

But at what cost? Among those crucially important centrist voters, the prospect of Colin Craig coming anywhere close to Government was deeply worrying. Not the least of their concerns was his policy of deciding highly complex and deeply emotive issues by referendum. How long would it be before capital punishment and abortion were placed on the ballot-paper? If John Key threw Colin Craig a bone of such dangerous dimensions, then they might just decide to hold their nose and cast their votes for David Cunliffe or Russel Norman.

 

It was 2008 all over again. Where was the benefit in taking on a swag of passengers from the starboard side of the good ship National, if the cost was to see an even larger number hurriedly disembarking to port?

 

Sorry Colin.

 

This essay was originally published in The Dominion Post, The Waikato Times, The Taranaki Daily News, The Timaru Herald, The Otago Daily Times and The Greymouth Star of Friday, 1 August 2014.

The 40 Percent Solution.

Challenging The Conventional Wisdom: The Labour Right believes the party can only succeed by conforming to the prevailing political and socioeconomic orthodoxy; the Labour Left understands that the whole point of the party is to challenge and change it.

PHIL QUIN writes a mean political column. His long-standing connections to the right of the New Zealand Labour Party are extensive and strong. When he writes about politics, especially electoral politics, it is from personal experience and with considerable authority. His contribution to the Dialogue Page in this morning’s (30/7/14) NZ Herald is a case in point.

 

Under the heading “Inept Labour needs to aim higher” Quin argues strongly that “Labour’s strategists are misguided in their conviction that fewer than 30 percent of the vote is sufficient to form a viable government.” Ranging himself alongside fellow dissidents, Shane Jones and Josie Pagani, he urges Labour to “lift its sights to become a 40 percent party, capable of winning a broad spectrum of voters from all parts of the country.”

 

For a history graduate from Vic’ this is a pretty disappointing analysis. Between 1990 and 2011 Labour has managed to be a “40 percent party” only twice (2002 and 2005) and on both occasions Labour’s success owed more to the condition of the National Party than it did to its own.

 

In 2002 the National Opposition was in more-or-less total disarray and slumped to its lowest ever result of 20.9 percent of the Party Vote. Just three years later, however, National’s new leader, Don Brash, stood at the head of a no-holds-barred, far-right crusade to re-ignite the neoliberal bonfire of everything Labour voters hold dear. Unsurprisingly, its core supporters flocked to the polling-booths in pure self-defence.

 

Even with these “advantages” Labour only just made it over the 40 percent line, winning 41.2 percent in 2002 and 41.1 percent in 2005. The average level of support for Labour since 1990 is, however, much lower. In the eight general elections since that year it has won, on average, just 35 percent of the popular vote.

 

In other words, Rogernomics long ago put paid to the “40 percent party”. Labour ceased to be “a credible party capable of winning a broad spectrum of support from all parts of the country” the moment its parliamentary leadership succumbed to (in Phil’s own words) “corporate interests and right-wing politicians”. The very same people whose “fierce determination to defend the prevailing political and socioeconomic orthodoxy that shapes New Zealand’s capitalist system and delivers its beneficiaries ever-expanding wealth, power and privilege” split the party, put an end to FPP, and opened up the political space to Labour’s left for all manner of radical challengers.

 

An historian ought to know this sort of thing. Just as he ought to realise that Labour itself, by steadfastly advancing what were regarded, in the 1930s and 40s, as extremely radical policies, constructed a new social and economic order which the National Party, in order to be elected, was required to preserve intact. Labour’s social-democratic state had become “the prevailing political and socioeconomic orthodoxy”. To remain electorally competitive National had to accept the role of the “other” social-democratic party.

 

Roger Douglas’s singular achievement was to effect a transformation of the social and economic order every bit as radical as Mickey Savage’s and Peter Fraser’s – but in the opposite ideological direction. Neoliberalism was now the new orthodoxy which the leaders of both major parties, under threat of severe economic sanctions from the international financial markets, were obliged to preserve intact. So strong was the grip of the neoliberal “Washington Consensus” that even when Helen Clark was in command of a “40 percent party” she did not dare to challenge it.

 

And it is right about here in the discussion that Phil’s argument for Labour to become a “40 percent party” begins to fall apart. What he is actually saying is that, just as National in the 1950s, 60s and 70s was forced to become the “other” social-democratic party, Labour in the twenty-first century must accept the role of the “other” neoliberal party.

 

What’s more, a closer examination of the Labour Right’s constant exhortations to Labour to embrace “the centre” reveal them to be cruelly disingenuous. What Phil and his comrades are really urging Labour to do is pitch its primary appeal to those New Zealanders who are still holding their own (or even prospering) under the prevailing neoliberal regime. The people whose precarious position of privilege vis-a-vis the working poor and beneficiaries renders them unashamedly reluctant to redistribute even a little of the wealth they have “worked so hard for”. Beneath a superficial “concern” for the disadvantaged, these voters conceal a visceral contempt for the poor. They are terrified of being forced to share their resources with the “undeserving” and will have absolutely no truck with any political party which suggests that, as citizens, they have a moral obligation to put an end to inequality and poverty.

 

It was to placate these citizens that David Shearer waxed eloquent about “the beneficiary on the roof”, and why even David Cunliffe forbears from speaking out too forcefully about the lives of the poor and what Labour proposes to do to improve them.

 

Unfortunately for Phil and his ilk, Labour’s rank-and-file have no desire to become a “40 percent party” if, as part of the process, they are required to give up all hope of ever again becoming an organisation brave enough to challenge and transform the existing economic and social order.

 

The Labour Right regards this stubborn refusal to abandon principle in the name of power as evidence of utter fuckwittedness. So much so that he concludes his column with a frank call for heads to roll down at Party HQ.

 

“If Labour fails to break well into the 30s, the party president and general secretary should resign and party council members should convene urgently to consider their own positions.”

 

Back in the old Soviet Union this would have been called a purge.

 

And don’t for a moment think that Phil has forgotten the party leader.

 

“As for David Cunliffe, he should resign with grace and alacrity as soon as it becomes apparent he is unable to form a government, which might be far earlier on the evening of September 20 than any Labour voter would wish to contemplate.”

 

Clearly, the Labour Right, utterly inadequate to the task of slaying the party’s dominant left-wing faction itself, is resorting instead to demanding its collective suicide. What Phil refuses to contemplate, however, is that the Labour Left, having concluded that the long and difficult journey towards social justice might proceed more efficiently without the constant nay-saying of those unshakably committed to the “prevailing political and socioeconomic orthodoxy”, might decide to engage in a little blood-letting of their own.

 

The proposition that Labour would be much improved by losing the 40 percent of its membership who no longer believe that radical change is either possible or desirable may yet be tested.

 

This essay was originally posted on The Daily Blog of Wednesday, 30 July 2014.

Cramped And Conventional: Labour's Alternative Budget Fails To Impress.

Labour Apologist? David Parker's Fiscal Plan is cautious in conception, orthodox in construction and singularly lacking in political inspiration. It's as if Parker felt the need to apologise for being a member of the Labour Party by constantly reassuring his readers that when it comes to controlling expenditure his plan is as fiscally responsible as the Finance Minister’s.

CONGRATULATIONS to the Labour Party for releasing an Alternative Budget well ahead of the General Election. Allowing the voters to quite literally get the measure of Labour’s economic ambitions is an entirely praiseworthy gesture which will, hopefully, be emulated by all the other parliamentary parties.

 

The document itself is less deserving of praise. What David Parker has produced is a Fiscal Plan that is cautious in conception, orthodox in construction and singularly lacking in political inspiration. If the document can be said to reveal any sort of vision at all it is of the most cramped and conventional kind – as if Parker felt the need to apologise for being a member of the Labour Party by constantly reassuring his readers that when it comes to controlling expenditure his plan is as fiscally responsible as the Finance Minister’s.

 

Responding to Labour’s Alternative Budget, BusinessNZ Chief Executive, Phil O’Reilly, noted that its costings and commitment to frugal spending would likely be welcomed by the business community. But Parker’s centrepiece – an increase in the top personal tax rate and trust rate to 36 percent – was unlikely to aid competitiveness and would penalise those who tended to invest most.

 

“Higher income and trust tax along with a new capital gains tax are not good signals for anyone wanting to invest in New Zealand’s growth.” Said O’Reilly.

 

But this rote rejection of higher taxes on the wealthy is of much less importance that the generally positive noises that preceded it. Clearly, Parker’s Budget is one that offers very little with which New Zealand capitalism could take serious issue. Indeed, the risible addition of 3 cents to the top tax-rate almost certainly occasioned a massive sigh of relief on the part of New Zealand’s top 2 percent of income earners.

 

On the afternoon he announced his candidacy for Labour’s leadership, David Cunliffe’s response to the inevitable question: ‘Do you believe in higher taxes?’ had been an unequivocal “You betcha!” Ever since, New Zealand’s wealthiest citizens have almost certainly been anticipating an aggressively redistributive fiscal strategy from the Cunliffe-led Labour Party. The announced top rate of 36 percent – 9 percentage points lower than Australia’s – must have them shaking their heads in disbelief. Their party was not so sparing of New Zealand’s poorest citizens.

 

Parker’s refusal to give effect to the confiscatory fiscal impulses of Labour’s membership is emblematic of everything that has gone awry with Cunliffe’s leadership. Elected on the promise of restoring the Labour Party to its core, democratic socialist, values (and being rewarded with a 37 percent poll rating by an electorate hungry for political substance) Cunliffe has failed utterly to build on the ideological momentum of his historic victory.

 

It is now clear than in the months following his win Cunliffe spent most of his time attempting to pacify his caucus colleagues. Rather than using the inevitability of constructing a left-wing coalition government to bring obstructive Cabinet aspirants to heel, the new leader attempted to construct some form of policy consensus. Parker’s Alternative Budget is proof of just how successful his caucus colleagues have been in forcing Cunliffe to abandon his democratic socialist promises.

 

The brutal fact of the matter is that Labour will go into the 2014 election with an economic policy package considerably to the right of its 2011 manifesto. In trying to unite his caucus “team”, Cunliffe has abandoned the very principles that had caused the Labour Left to embrace him as their champion. If Parker’s warmed-over “Third Way” social-democracy (with neoliberal characteristics) fails to inspire the voters, and Cunliffe leads Labour to defeat, it is likely the membership will punish their erstwhile champion’s apostasy with much more severity than the ABC faction’s admirable consistency.

 

Parker is at pains to paint his deeply conservative economic policies as a progressive “Economic Upgrade”. It is, he tells us in his introduction, “an ambitious set of goals” which, sadly, have required some “tough choices”. Among these, presumably, is the tough choice to compulsorily acquire a portion of a worker’s meagre wages and place it at the disposal of private investment companies until that worker turns 65. Or should that be 67? Tough, too, must have been the choice to build the 100,000 highly subsidised private dwellings the middle-class wants, rather than the 100,000 affordable state houses the working-class so desperately needs.

 

In the dreary tone of a latter-day version of the British Labour Party’s infamous Depression-era  Chancellor of the Exchequer, Phillip Snowden, Parker informs us that “not all the policies we would like to do can be funded”. The priority, as always, must be “getting the government’s books in order” and “getting the economy growing” after six years of National Party rule. Hardly the sort of message to get the masses flocking to the polling booths!

 

Cramped and Conventional: Philip Snowden (1864-1937) was Britain's Chancellor of the Exchequer at the onset of the Great Depression. Unable to think outside the box of laissez-faire capitalist orthodoxy, this Labour politician oversaw a programme of retrenchment and austerity which succeeded only in making the economic crisis worse.

 

What’s missing from this Alternative Budget is any hint of a political movement determined to change the overall direction of national policy. There is no plan to bring the ideas and aspirations of working-class people back to the centre of the political stage. No pledge to repair the damage inflicted upon the poorest and most marginalised New Zealanders by successive governments (including the last Labour Government).

 

There is not even an attempt to make good on the promise at the heart of Labour’s 2011 election campaign: the pledge to “Save Our Assets”. For Labour’s parsimonious finance spokesperson, the notion of “buying back the farm” clearly comes a poor second to “getting the government’s books in order”.

 

And yet there exist vast capital reserves that a bold and radical Labour-led Government could devote to housing the people and putting the unemployed to work. ACC does not need to be a fully-funded scheme. Were it to return to the pay-as-you-go scheme it was originally intended to be, then the $20 billion taken from levy-payers to transform ACC into an insurance company fit for privatisation would steadily become available for the improvement of New Zealand society.

 

It is the manifest lack of imagination, the stunted ambition, the absence of excitement and inspiration that makes Labour’s Alternative Budget so disappointing. The wealthy and the powerful will praise it – remarking on Labour’s surprisingly responsible approach to economic management. But for those who look to Labour for the opportunities that helped their parents and grandparents enjoy a more abundant life, Mr Parker’s Fiscal Plan risks being seen as just another reason to stay at home on 20 September.

 

This essay was originally posted on The Daily Blog of Thursday, 26 June 2014.

"Give Them Hell, David!"

Trust The People: Labour Leader, David Cunliffe, needs to grasp the difficult truth that the news media has written him off and is refusing to carry his messages fairly. He must now find the courage to go around them, addressing himself directly to that one incorruptible source of democratic power – the people themselves.

HARRY WAS A GONER. Nothing could save him. All the polls said so – the pundits too. He may have risen to the job by accident, they opined, but his dismissal would be deliberate. Harry was going to lose. You could bet on it. Everybody agreed.

 

Except Harry S. Truman, the thirty-third President of the United States. At the 1948 Democratic Party Convention Truman rounded on what he called the “do-nothing [Republican Party controlled] Congress”. Not only would he defeat his opponents, avowed the plucky little Missourian, but he’d “make these Republicans like it”.

 

Truman decided to take the Democratic Party’s progressive platform to the American voters directly – by train – on what would become his famous, 35,000 kilometre, “Whistle-Stop Tour”. The train would roll into a small American town, Truman would deliver a rousing speech, and then, after a few words with local reporters, the train would move on to its next stop.

 

During one of these tub-thumping speeches a man in the crowd cried out: “Give ‘em hell, Harry!” To which Truman replied. “I don’t give them hell, I just tell them the truth – and they think it’s hell!”

 

The 1948 presidential election was notable not simply for the vigour of Truman’s campaigning but for the fact that practically all the opinion polls pointed to a decisive Republican victory. So convinced were the “experts”, that one newspaper, The Chicago Daily Tribune, actually called the election for Truman’s rival, Thomas Dewey, on its front page.

 

In one of the most famous photographs of American political history, the real victor, Truman, triumphantly holds the Tribune aloft. It’s “Dewey Defeats Truman” headline reversed by the only poll that ever truly matters.

 



Bad Call: The Chicago Daily Tribune speaks too soon. President Harry S Truman celebrates winning the only poll that matters. 

 

Only after the election did the pollsters realise that their sampling methodology was connecting them exclusively to Americans wealthy enough to own a telephone. Overwhelmingly, they had been questioning Republican voters.

 

Harry Truman’s come-from-behind 1948 victory offers an important strategic lesson to the beleaguered leader of the New Zealand Labour Party. At the heart of the lesson is one very simple precept: trust the people.

 

And how is trust established? By meeting the people face-to-face. By letting the magic of the stump – the raw energy that arcs between speaker and audience – do its work. By grasping the difficult truth that if the news media has written you off and is refusing to carry your messages fairly, then you must find the courage to go around them, addressing yourself directly to that one incorruptible source of democratic power – the voters themselves.

 

Of course the “experts” will sigh and tell David Cunliffe that this is 2014 – not 1948 – and that times have changed. And, of course, ‘times’ have. But the fundamentals of politics have not.

 

Strategically, Mr Cunliffe has locked himself into a political process which, at the end of every week, is leaving him weaker, not stronger. Political journalists have already stamped the word “Loser” on his forehead and are treating him accordingly. As a communications strategy, relying on the news media to transmit Labour’s policy ideas to the voters has failed. It’s time for a new one.

 

If Mr Cunliffe was to take a leaf out of Harry Truman’s playbook he would organise and publicise a nationwide “whistle-stop” tour. Starting out softly in the halls of small-town New Zealand and building slowly to a resounding crescendo in the major centres’ town halls.

 

And, because this is 2014, every meeting, small and large, should be broadcast live on the Internet (brickbats, bouquets and hecklers included) and uploaded to YouTube the following day.

 

Can’t be done? Actually, it can. In July last year I watched young Martyn Bradbury and his anti-GCSB team fill the Mt Albert War Memorial Hall with 500 people. And then, three weeks later, pack the Auckland Town Hall with more than three times that number. On both occasions the meetings were broadcast live, to thousands more, on the Internet.

  

It Can be Done: Anti-GCSB Amendment Bill organisers fill the Auckland Town Hall, 19 August 2013.

 

Mr Cunliffe boasts that his Labour Party has doubled its membership in the space of a year. Let him prove it by making sure every one of the “whistle-stops” on his nationwide tour is Standing Room Only.

 

And what message should Mr Cunliffe deliver to these audiences? The same message he delivered to the audiences that elected him Labour Leader last year. The message that lifted Labour to 37 percent in the polls.

 

Or, as business columnist, Fran O’Sullivan, advised Cunliffe:

 

“Put aside the ‘Gotcha’ politics that both you and John Key have been indulging in. Instead, get out and sell Labour's defining policies – something which you are exceptionally skilled at when you take a disciplined approach.”

 

Stand and deliver Mr Cunliffe. Take Labour’s “defining policies” directly to the people who need them most. Tell the truth, David – and make National like it. Give 'em hell!

 

A version of this essay was originally published in The Press of Tuesday, 24 June 2014.

Favourable Reference: Why John Key's Worst Enemy Is The Left's Best Friend.

My Enemy's Enemy: The Right's hysterical response to Kim Dotcom's involvement in the Internet-Mana Party suggests two things. 1) They believe he has been "turned". 2) They will do anything to destroy him. This should be enough to persuade the Left that the man and his money are there to be engaged, if not to their own advantage, then, at the very least, to their enemies’ disadvantage.

 

“IF HITLER INVADED HELL I would make at least a favourable reference to the devil in the House of Commons.” Winston Churchill’s famous quip, directed at the hard-line anti-communist MPs of his own Conservative Party, followed Nazi Germany’s invasion of the Soviet Union in June 1941.

 

Churchill recognised immediately the urgent strategic need for Britain to range itself unequivocally alongside Stalin. If the Soviets could hold off Hitler’s blitzkrieg until the Russian winter, then his Nazi regime would face an intensifying war on two fronts – Germany’s worst strategic nightmare. The invasion wasn’t quite as good news as the USA entering the war (that would follow in December) but it was close.

 

Inevitably, however, there were rumblings from the extreme Tory Right. A number of Churchill’s critics had been involved in the British intervention of 1919-21, during which British troops and British spies (including one Sidney Reilly) did their best to bring down the Bolshevik government of V.I. Lenin.

 

If the hard-liners had their way, Britain would have made peace with Hitler and backed his assault on the communist enemy. Churchill’s brilliant quip was an imaginative repackaging of the old adage “My enemy’s enemy is my friend”. Not only was it intended to silence the mutterings of the Tory ultras, but also to remind the British people that one thing, and only one thing, mattered: the complete and utter destruction of Hitler and the Nazi regime.

 

I’m drawing on this timely (last Friday was D-Day) anecdote because it illustrates the importance of strategic clarity – a quality severely lacking in the left-wing critics of Kim Dotcom, the Internet-Mana Party alliance, and their media supporters.

 

The Right’s unrelenting assault on Kim Dotcom should have alerted the whole of the Left to the possibility that the man and his money could be engaged, if not to their own advantage, then, at the very least, to their enemies’ disadvantage. Those who took the trouble to observe Dotcom’s performance during the anti-GCSB protests of 2013 witnessed a thoughtful and extremely shrewd individual whose devil-may-care lifestyle had been shattered by the US-sponsored Police raid on his home in January 2012. In the terminology of the intelligence agencies, here was a man who, if he hadn’t already been “turned” by his experiences, was very obviously ready for “turning”.

 

The Right recognised this possibility far sooner than the Left – which is why their blackguarding of the man became so vicious and unrelenting. Thwarted in their attempts to get him out of the country quickly and quietly, and severely embarrassed by his exposure of the GCSB’s illegal involvement in his surveillance, it was vital that Kim Dotcom be transformed into a hate figure from whom all decent New Zealanders should run a mile.

 

For those on the Left with a keen historical sense, the demonization of Dotcom should have raised a whole forest of warning flags. Individuals and institutions are only demonized in this fashion after they’ve been identified as clear and present dangers to the Right’s political hegemony.

 

The National Party and its media surrogates went after Kim Dotcom in exactly the same way that the US Right went after left-wing artists, intellectuals and trade unionists in the late-1940s and early-1950s. Their antipathy towards the large-living German IT entrepreneur was not based upon the fact that he had a criminal record (they knew that when they granted him permanent residency) but because their botched attempt to have him extradited to the US had transformed him (and his fortune) into a folk hero – and potential ally of the Left.

 

The Internet Party was proof that the potentiality of an alliance with the Left was on the cusp of becoming a reality. Accordingly, the Right set about strangling the infant political organisation in its cradle. But, in doing so they could not hide the fact that Dotcom’s American and New Zealand persecutors were still hard at work. Clearly, he remained under close surveillance in his Coatesville mansion, and, equally clearly, international law enforcement agencies were still assembling and releasing whatever they could lay their hands on that would contribute to the blackening of Dotcom’s character, the destruction of his credibility, or both.

 

He was accused of having Nazi sympathies (why else would he possess a signed copy of Mein Kampf?) and the details of his wife’s, Mona’s, past as a Filipino glamour girl, were posted on the Internet. The Right complained loudly about the way he treated his former business associates and employees – even as they pumped these same individuals for incriminating information concerning Dotcom’s colourful past.

 

And still the amiable giant – like a Germanic version of Jonah Lomu – rolled over the top of his enemies; moving steadily across the field from Right to Left.

 

It was at this point that Hone Harawira, demonstrating all the strategic and tactical fighting skills of his Ngapuhi ancestors, reached out to Dotcom with an offer that neither party could refuse. Availing themselves of the same sections of the Electoral Act that validated the Alliance’s participation in the 1996, 1999 and 2002 General Elections, Dotcom and Harawira brought their parties together in a way that significantly boosted their chances of becoming critical players in the post-20 September period of political bargaining.

 

Just how gravely this development was viewed by the National Government is demonstrated by what happened next. Firstly, and most predictably, a cacophony of party political and media condemnation was unleashed against all of those participating in the newly-formed Internet-Mana Party.

 

Secondly, the country was suddenly invaded by high-powered legal teams representing the US movie-making and recording industries. They’d come to prevent the “disbursement” of Dotcom’s considerable assets. Not only would this materially hamper Dotcom’s ability to mount an effective defence, but it would also prevent him from donating large sums to his favourite political parties. They arrived too late to prevent the latter (Dotcom had already donated upwards of $3 million to the Internet Party). Whether or not they secure the former lies in the hands of the New Zealand courts.

 

That Holywood’s finest were here at all, quipped the cynics, suggested that, even in Los Angeles, one good turn (The Hobbit) continues to deserve another.

 

For the moment, the third indication of how gravely the emergence of an unprecedentedly well-resourced electoral force dedicated to the utter destruction of John Key’s government is being viewed by both its electoral and ideological enemies remains hidden in the darkest recesses of the Right’s domain. All that can be heard at present are whispers. Rumours of something huge and terrible waiting in the wings. Something that the IT entrepreneur’s enemies have uncovered, the revelation of which will destroy the Dotcom phenomenon once and for all. Allies and associates are being warned to distance themselves from “The German” lest they be sucked down with him in a scandal of career-destroying power.

 

Pinning down these rumours is extremely difficult, The best guess as to their content, for the moment, is that Dotcom’s enemies have “discovered” a cache of incriminating files that he had “hidden” on the so-called “Deep Web”. If this turns out to be the case, the Left would do well to remember that the only agencies with the resources to plumb the depths of the Deep Web are the very same law enforcement agencies involved in Dotcom’s arrest and arraignment. Nor should it be forgotten that there is a world of difference between “discovering” evidence and planting it.

 

That rumours of this sort are being circulated – not least for the purposes of silencing all actual and potential supporters of Dotcom – indicates how very seriously his intervention in the 2014 election is being taken by the New Zealand Right. It also suggests that the latter are now convinced that Dotcom has indeed been “turned” by his experiences with the US and New Zealand “national security” regimes, and that his alliance with the New Zealand Left is genuine.

 

If that is so, and since armed police, aided (illegally) by the GCSB and acting on behalf of the FBI with the approval of the New Zealand Government, have already invaded his Coatesville mansion, shouldn’t the Left make at least a favourable reference to Kim Dotcom in the battle for control of the House of Representatives?

 

This essay was originally posted on The Daily Blog on Monday, 9 June 2014.

Keep Calm And Carry On: Why The Left Should Ignore The Next Round Of Poll Results.

Good Advice: The Left should think of the next round of polls as the Right’s all-or-nothing artillery barrage – something to panic them into a headlong retreat. But, as the shells loaded with appalling results burst over the heads, they should simply tighten their helmet-straps and hold tight. The Internet-Mana Party has not yet begun to fight.

BRACE YOURSELVES, COMRADES, for some horrendous poll results. The next round of surveys from Colmar Brunton, Reid Research, DigiPoll, Ipsos and Roy Morgan will almost certainly register a major slump in the Centre Left’s support and a concomitant rise in National’s numbers – quite possibly to 55 percent-plus. Labour and the Greens will both take nasty hits and the Internet-Mana Party (IMP) will be very lucky to make it above 1 percent. Apart from John Key, the only other person likely to be smiling is Winston Peters.

 

The polls will be bad because the framing of Kim Dotcom’s latest intervention in New Zealand politics has been so near-universally and overwhelmingly negative. From the Right (and Sue Bradford) has come the steady drumbeat that Hone Harawira and the Mana Party have done a “dirty deal” with Kim Dotcom and, in the process, “sold out their principles” for cash.

 

Amplifying this message, TV3’s political editor, Patrick Gower, has characterised the IMP strategy as “a rort” (a term which normally denotes morally questionable if not downright illegal manipulation) even though what the Mana and Internet parties are proposing is well within the rules and has been a feature of every election campaign since MMP came into force in 1996. Gower’s destructive message has, however, been repeated, ad nauseum, by an endless succession of editorial writers, talkback hosts, columnists and bloggers.

 

The presence of former Alliance Party politicians and staffers in the IMP – most notably the Internet Party’s choice for leader, Laila Harré – has only reinforced the public’s perception that Dotcom has unleashed upon New Zealand a fiercely left-wing coalition that may yet play a decisive role in determining whether or not John Key continues to be New Zealand’s prime minister.

 

Labour and the Greens, simply by sharing the left of the ideological spectrum with the IMP, will be judged guilty by association with the controversial German entrepreneur. Accordingly, a broad swathe of moderate and centrist voters, when contacted by the pollsters, will register their knee-jerk objections to Dotcom, Harawira, Harré and the IMP by rededicating themselves unhesitatingly to John Key and the National Party. Or, if that is too big a leap, by making positive noises about Winston Peters and NZ First.

 

The ill-considered outbursts from a number of right-wing Labour MPs over Queen’s Birthday weekend reflected conservative Labour’s instinctive reaction to this sudden and controversial eruption of a new, well-resourced political force to its left. Precisely because they are conservatives, their gut reaction told them that the voting public’s first response to the circumstances of the IMP’s birth would be to punish the entire Left indiscriminately. Their broadcast statements, tweets, and Facebook postings were crude (and ultimately self-defeating) attempts to persuade centrist voters that they should spare Labour from their righteous wrath.

 

It’s a pity these Labour MPs were so unwilling to hold their nerve and work their way through the emerging situation calmly and logically. Had they done so, their fears would have subsided as swiftly as they had flared.

 

The Right has been taking free shots against the IMP and its putative allies on the Left because they know this is the last chance they will get to land unanswered blows before Dotcom’s millions begin to take effect. (And rest assured, they will take effect.)

 

The Right’s principal movers and shakers know – even if their media minions do not – just how much difference a huge campaign war-chest can make to an election’s outcome. They caught a glimpse of what IMP is capable of in the razzmatazz of Harré’s introduction. They have also heard the rumours about whole floors of brilliant IT-geeks all beavering away; unheard of political applications; unprecedented polling capability. It’s why they’re hoping against hope that the beating currently being administered to the IMP during this period of “Phoney War” will be sufficiently savage to obviate any chance of its recovery. And a big part of that hope is that the more conservative elements of the Left will help them out by getting in a few kicks of their own.

 

Hopefully, the more courageous elements within the Labour and Green camps will prevent this from happening. The best thing they can do as the Right strikes out blindly at the IMP is to strongly and confidently articulate their own party’s core messages to the electorate.

 

They should think of the next round of polls as the Right’s all-or-nothing artillery barrage – something to panic them into a headlong retreat. But, as the shells loaded with appalling results burst over the heads, they should simply tighten their helmet-straps and hold tight.

 

Behind them the IMP is marshalling its troops, stockpiling ammunition and gasoline, and unloading its tanks from their transporters. The Left has only to keep calm, carry on, and remember that blitzkrieg is a German word.

 

This essay was originally posted on The Daily Blog of Wednesday, 4 June 2014.