Truth Or Dare: Why David Cunliffe Needs To Come Clean With The Labour Left.

The Member For Cheshire: But is David Cunliffe grinning from ear-to-ear at the 2012 Ellerslie conference because Labour’s membership has just seized control of their party, or is it because he knows that his pathway to Labour's leadership had just been cleared?

 

WERE YOU TELLING THE TRUTH, DAVID? When you told your party that the age of neoliberalism was over? That you, alone among all your colleagues, had grasped the meaning of the global financial crisis, and only you could lead Labour to an election victory that would restore New Zealand to itself?

 

Because they believed you, David. They believed you and they fought for you.

 

I remember the collective thrill that reverberated through the party conference at Ellerslie when Len Richards told the delegates that it was time to “take our party back!” That’s when the cameras homed in on you, David, seated there in the midst of your New Lynn delegation (not lined up at the microphone to oppose the democratisation of the party like so many of your caucus “colleagues”). And you were smiling, David. You looked elated.

 

But, were you smiling because Labour’s membership had finally seized control of their party, or was it because you knew that the pathway to the leadership was now clear?

 

That’s what your enemies said, David. They said you looked like a cat who’s got the cream. And, my, how they rounded on you: accusing you of fomenting a coup against David Shearer. Do you recall the poisonous outbursts of Chris Hipkins? Your demotion to the back benches? The vicious harassment of your allies Charles Chauvel and Leanne Dalziel?

 

The ‘Anyone But Cunliffe’ faction tried to break you.

 

But they failed, didn’t they, David? Because, throughout it all, the rank-and-file of the party and the affiliated trade unions remained loyal. And, when Shearer finally threw in the towel, they knew what to do. Over the strenuous efforts of a majority of the caucus, they elected you Leader of the Labour Party. The moral and political lethargy of their MPs had driven the membership close to despair – and you were their Great Red Hope.

 

So what happened, David?

 

One of the polls taken at the conclusion of the leadership contest put Labour on 37 percent – placing it within striking distance of 41.2 percent, Labour’s best ever election result under MMP, and just a couple of percentage points away from Labour’s winning Party Vote of 38.7 percent in 1999. You had momentum, David. New Zealanders liked your message. Labour’s social-democratic values were threatening to come back into fashion.

 

And then everything went quiet. The 2013 conference, which should have been a rapturous coronation, was a curiously strangled affair. Your more radical supporters were “persuaded” to pull their punches on important left-wing issues like the Trans-Pacific Partnership and the age of eligibility for NZ Superannuation. The uncompromising language of 2012’s Draft Party Platform was watered-down to the point of blandness. Doubters were reassured that Cunliffe was still Cunliffe. That it was a matter of priorities. That, for the moment, “party unity” was paramount.

 

“Party Unity” – is that what this is all about? Party Unity. Of the sort we saw demonstrated last week by the likes of Kelvin Davis, Phil Goff, Chris Hipkins and Trevor Mallard? Forgive me, David, but that didn’t strike me as evidence of a unified party. That looked to me like the ABC Faction flexing its muscles. And you, David. How did you respond to their rank insubordination and strategic stupidity? Did you slap them down? Did you bring them into line?  Like hell you did! You caved. Cravenly and very publicly, David – you caved.

 

It’s time for you to wise up, David. The voters who thrilled to your election as Labour’s leader won’t take much more of this. Nor will Labour’s left-wing membership. If they had wanted a continuation of the political lethargy and ideological flabbiness that’s characterised their party’s parliamentary leadership since Helen Clark’s departure, then the rank-and-file and the unions would have given their votes to somebody else.

 

That the Labour Left spurned your opponents was due in no small part to their interpretation of your “The Dolphin and the Dole Queue” speech. They simply assumed that you were readying the country for a Labour-Green coalition, and that this combination would generate a mix of policies well to the left of the caucus’s conservative positions. You can imagine the alarm-bells that started ringing when Labour firmly rejected Russel Norman’s suggestion of a joint Labour-Green campaign effort. Even more alarming was your own use of Winston Peters’ spurious justification for giving nothing away until after the votes have been counted.

 

In God’s name, man! What do you think Labour is? A minor party! Peters’ uses his “wait until the voters have had their say” line to give himself maximum flexibility when it comes to choosing coalition partners, and to prevent the desertion of his supporters (who are drawn from both the Left and the Right) by stating a clear preference for one over the other before polling day. Are you really telling the world that Labour is now so bereft of ideological confidence and coherence that it must resort to Winston’s opportunistic tactics? Is that how bad things have got? That you need to trick people into voting Labour?

 

Because if that is the situation, then let me tell you where Labour is headed. It is headed in the direction of entering a Grand Coalition with National. No, don’t shake your head in derision, in many ways the MMP system lends itself to this solution (and in MMP’s birthplace, Germany, there have been a least two Grand Coalition governments since 1947).

 

Just work your way through it logically.

 

If the Labour caucus is unwilling to concede ground on policy matters to the Greens; if this is the reason so many of them would prefer to work with the ideologically undemanding Mr Peters; and, if caucus’s antipathy to the prospect of having to deal with Hone Harawira, Laila Harré, Annette Sykes and John Minto is (at least) ten times greater than its hostility towards the Greens; then what will happen if the only government (other than a Grand Coalition) that can be formed when the votes have been counted is a Labour/Green/Internet-Mana Party coalition?

 

Can you guarantee both your party and your electoral base that the Labour caucus won’t split apart rather than accept the policy consequences of such a radical coalition? Can you tell us that the ABCs wouldn’t do what Labour’s Peter Tapsell did in the cliff-hanger election of 1993 – provide National the margin it needed to govern? If National was shrewd enough to offer Labour the premiership in return for their joining a “Government of National Unity” against “corruption and extremism”, can you promise us you’d turn it down, David. That you’d tell National, Act, Peter Dunne and the ABC’s to go to Hell?

 

Because I’m pretty sure I’m not the only person wondering why David Cunliffe is suddenly so coy when it comes to the parties and the policies he and his colleagues are willing to embrace. Why they cannot seem to see the obvious electoral advantages of running a strategy of co-operation and accommodation with the Greens and the IMP. Why it is that everybody – apart from the Labour caucus – can see that, from a derisory 30 percent in the polls, Labour cannot get to the Beehive on its own: that it must have allies.

 

You are where you are, David, because your party believed that you would seek for those allies on the Left – not the Right. And now they’re looking for some much needed reassurance.

 

So, David, tell them again: why do you want to be Labour’s leader?

 

This essay was originally posted on The Daily Blog of Monday, 2 June 2014.

New Zealander Of The Year

Still Number One: Five years after his election as New Zealand's 38th Prime Minister, John Key is still New Zealanders’ first choice as leader and his party consistently polls ten clear points ahead of its nearest rival. This would be a remarkable feat under the old first-past-the-post electoral system, it is nothing short of astonishing under a system of proportional representation. Love him or loathe him, John Key remains the indisputable master of New Zealand's political domain.

 

IT IS FITTING that my New Zealander of the Year should be a politician. Not only is politics this columnist’s bread and butter but, like ‘em or loathe ‘em, politicians are the people who affect us most directly. They write the rules of our daily lives. They hold the ring in which we struggle to make a living. In the twenty-first century just about everything we encounter, except the weather, is the product of social organisation. And wherever you find social organisation, there also you will find politics - and politicians.

 

My first thought for New Zealander/Politician of the Year was the new Leader of the Opposition, David Cunliffe.

 

Mr Cunliffe had, after all, begun the year as a disgraced and despised (at least by a majority of his caucus colleagues) back-bencher, and is ending it as his party’s leader. That sort of come-back is, if not unprecedented, then, at least, highly unusual. A great many talented politicians simply would not have bothered to stick around after being treated as shabbily as Labour’s caucus treated Mr Cunliffe.

 

Charles Chauvel, for example, walked away from his political career after being told by the supporters of Mr Cunliffe’s predecessor that his steadfast support for the Member for New Lynn would cost him a seat at any Cabinet Table presided over by David Shearer.

 

In Mr Chauvel’s case, Labour’s (and New Zealand’s) loss was the United Nation’s gain. There can be little doubt that Mr Cunliffe’s highly marketable skills would have been snapped-up just as quickly had he, too, decided that the game of politics was no longer worth the candle.

 

The morale of his supporters certainly flagged following the outrageous treatment meted out to him following the 2012 Labour Party Conference at Ellerslie. Not since the darkest days of Rogernomics in the late-1980s had Labour Party members witnessed such a venomous display of factional back-biting. But the member for New Lynn’s faith in his political destiny never wavered. Throughout it all, Mr Cunliffe conducted himself like one who has seen already the faces of Dame Fortune’s cards - and knows he cannot lose.

 

Runner-Up: David Cunliffe staged a remarkable comeback in 2013, but in his first 100 days as Labour leader failed to capture the electorate's imagination as completely as John Key did between December 2006 and February 2007 .

 

And so it proved. Quite out of the blue Mr Shearer folded his cards, gathered-up what was left of his stake, and left the table. From that point on Mr Cunliffe’s victory was assured. Only the most rank skulduggery could have robbed him of the victor’s crown - and when it came to digging skulls his opponents simply did not know where to sink their spades.

 

But, winning the leadership of the Labour Party is a long way from winning the confidence of the country. To do that one must not only have a story to tell the country, it must also be a story the country is wanting to hear.

 

Now, you might object that Mr Cunliffe has barely been 100 days at the helm of the Labour Party, and that a great many more days than that are required to open the ears of the electors. My answer to that objection would, however, be a blunt as it is bleak: 100 days was all the time Mr Cunliffe had.

 

One year out from an election most voters have already made up their minds. To have any chance at all of changing those minds a new leader has to hit the ground running with a message he knows the electorate is longing to hear.

 

And that brings me to the man who, I believe, must once again step forward to claim the title of New Zealander of the Year.

 

John Key became Leader of the Opposition in November 2006, and by 6 February 2007 he had the country’s full attention. His visit to McGehan Close, a poor street in Labour’s Auckland heartland, marked him out as a National Party politician of a very different sort - a man quite unlike his flinty-faced predecessor, Dr Don Brash. His invitation to take one of the street’s residents - a young girl named Aroha - to the 2007 Waitangi Day celebrations (an invitation she eagerly accepted) only added extra icing to the cake.

 

Seven years on, Mr Key remains New Zealanders’ overwhelming choice as “Preferred Prime Minister”, and his party continues to poll in the high 40s. This would be a remarkable feat under the old first-past-the-post electoral system, it is nothing short of astonishing under a system of proportional representation.

 

Nothing that has happened in 2013: not the GCSB controversy; not the partial privatisation of state assets; not Kim Dotcom; and certainly not David Cunliffe; have been able to make even a sizeable dent in Mr Key’s apparently impregnable political armour.

 

For holding our attention - and our affection - for yet another year, I cannot forebear from naming John Key, New Zealander of the Year.

 

This essay was originally published in The Press of Tuesday, 31 December 2013.

A Red Wedding?

An Important Reconnection: The Labour Party rank-and-file have elected themselves a leader determined to reacquaint the Party not only with the broader labour movement, but also with the progressive yearnings of a battered New Zealand electorate.

IT WAS ONE of the most shocking episodes in television history. Those who had not read George R.R. Martin’s Game of Thrones watched with rising horror as a large percentage of the television series’ most sympathetic characters were brutally butchered before their disbelieving eyes. Not for nothing was House Frey’s massacre of Robb and Catelyn Stark, Robb’s pregnant wife, and 3,500 of House Stark’s loyal bannermen dubbed “The Red Wedding”.

 

Nor was Martin forced to rely solely upon his (excessively?) bloodthirsty imagination when writing this memorable scene. History furnishes many grim precedents for the all-encompassing massacre of political rivals.

 

Nearly 1,600 years ago the Anglo-Saxon chieftains Hengist and Horsa invited Vortigen and his Romano-British supporters to a great feast to celebrate the pact of peace which their two warring armies had just concluded. But, unbeknown to their guests, the Saxons had concealed daggers in the soles of their boots, and at the cry “nima der sexa!” – “bring out the knives” – Hengist’s and Horsa’s men fell upon their 300 weaponless guests and slew them.

 

This terrible betrayal of the ancient laws of hospitality was remembered as “The Night of the Long Knives” – a name which, 1,500 years later, was joined to the equally bloody purge of Adolf Hitler’s political rivals on the night of 30 June 1934.

 

Inevitably, there will be some who reach for the “Red Wedding” or “Night of the Long Knives” metaphors to describe the (readily predictable) demotion of a handful of the newly-elected Labour Leader, David Cunliffe’s, bitterest caucus opponents.

 

In the five days since his decisive first-ballot win on Sunday, four of Mr Cunliffe’s most formidable adversaries: Trevor Mallard, Chris Hipkins, Darien Fenton, and his principal rival for the leadership, Grant Robertson, have lost their jobs.

 

Not so many casualties really – and none of them the least bit surprising. Into each change of leadership a little blood must fall.

 

The real Red Wedding occasioned by Mr Cunliffe’s triumph has been the restatement of the marriage vows binding Labour’s parliamentary contingent to the wider party organisation. The two had been growing apart for years – to the point where following last year’s annual conference a divorce seemed imminent. What rescued the partnership? The party’s rule changes.

 

In the past, the newly-elected MP’s primary political focus had been the relationship he or she enjoyed (or endured) with his or her caucus colleagues. These were, after all, the people who could push an ambitious MP up the greasy poll of politics – or keep him down. But now, thanks to the new rules, Labour MPs not only need to remain on good terms with their caucus colleagues, but they also need to further the policy objectives of the party’s rank-and-file and address the needs of its affiliated trade union members.

 

This reaffirmation of the bonds between the party and its MPs may yet prompt a larger and much more important reconnection.

 

For most of its history New Zealand has been defined by the achievements of two great progressive political parties: the Liberals and Labour. The century-long quest for security and equality which they began so enthralled the New Zealand electorate that not even the Liberals’ or Labour’s political opponents dared to step outside, or challenge, the overarching social consensus they had fashioned.

 

Certainly, only Labour enjoyed the popular trust and confidence required to establish a regime whose steady elaboration would not only shatter that consensus but open up a vast gulf between the labour movement and New Zealanders’ progressive instincts.

 

What’s more, the fourth Labour Government’s embrace of neoliberal economics freed the Right of New Zealand politics from the constraints of a consensus which had drawn its teeth and blunted its claws.

 

One of the principal enablers of Labour’s treachery was the parliamentary caucus’s essential autonomy from the party and, by extension, the people the party was founded to represent. With no need to heed the will of the party, the personally and politically ambitious were able to go on exploiting Labour’s key institutional weakness.

 

Not any more. The Labour Party’s recent constitutional reforms allow the rank-and-file membership to put a collar on caucus-centred ambition. And now they’ve elected themselves a leader determined to reacquaint the Party not only with the broader labour movement, but also with the progressive yearnings of a battered New Zealand electorate.

 

A very “red” wedding indeed.

 

This essay was originally published in The Waikato Times, The Taranaki Daily News, The Timaru Herald, The Otago Daily Times and The Greymouth Star of Friday, 20 September 2013.

House Rules?

The Unacceptable Face Of Labour? The right-wing members of Labour’s Caucus who have set their faces against a turn to the left will not be swayed by the wishes of the party’s rank-and-file, or the votes of its trade union affiliates. They will vote with only one intent: to prevent David Cunliffe becoming Labour’s leader.

 

IF IT’S ANYONE BUT CUNLIFFE what will happen to the Labour Party? It’s a question many Labour members will be asking themselves as the hours between wondering and knowing dwindle.

 

What began with a dizzying head-rush of hope and enthusiasm is ending in doubt and worry.

 

At the heart of the membership’s concern is the likely behaviour of the Labour caucus. Many will be wondering why, when the new rules were being drafted, so much influence (40 percent) was reposed in Labour’s parliamentary delegation. Especially when the British Labour Party gives its MPs only one third of the say in who becomes leader.

 

As the contest has progressed, the simple mathematics of the voting system has driven home the alarming fact that each MP, in their own right, wields a vote worth 1.2 percent. Just 34 individuals, out of a party membership of around 8,000 ordinary members, will account for 40 percent of the outcome.

 

In the first flush of their democratic revolution, the rank-and-file of the Labour Party rather naively anticipated “their” MPs being guided by a mixture of the party’s will and the sentiment of the much larger group of New Zealanders who, while not holding membership cards, nevertheless vote for the Labour Party in election after election.

 

These are, after all, the people who put the Labour MPs where they are. Why wouldn’t Labour’s caucus pay heed to their wishes?

 

It’s a very good question. But, then, another very good question was: “Why didn’t the Labour caucus heed the wishes of the party membership in 2011? Why were they willing to squander 20 precious months on a man who, while possessing many impressive qualities, was demonstrably unsuited to the role of Labour leader?

 

The answer, of course, is because, for a variety of reasons, a majority of the Labour caucus was unwilling to see David Cunliffe assume the leadership of the Labour Party.

 

Mr Cunliffe’s enemies have gone to extraordinary lengths to persuade the news media that their adamant opposition is grounded in the man’s personal shortcomings. This is not the case. The vicious attacks launched against Mr Cunliffe by his ostensible “colleagues” are driven by the oldest of political motives.

 

These include the narrow political interests of those who have identified Mr Cunliffe as either a threat to their present position within the Labour caucus, or as a barrier to their further personal advancement. Indeed, the more obvious it becomes that Mr Cunliffe really is the choice of the party rank-and-file, and of Labour voters generally, the bigger threat and barrier he looms.

 

There is also a broader apprehension among Mr Cunliffe’s enemies that he (and the party organisation) will require the Opposition to adopt a more unequivocally social-democratic ideological stance. But, such a position has already been condemned by Mr Cunliffe’s critics as “naïve and stupid”. This is because a surprisingly large number of Labour’s Caucus no longer believe in social democracy (let alone the “democratic socialism” enshrined in their party’s constitution). To them, Labour is simply the party which replaces National. They want no part of a labour movement that sees itself as a direct and progressive challenge to the ambitions of the Right.

 

The right-wing members of Labour’s Caucus who think this way will not be swayed by the wishes of the party’s rank-and-file, or the votes of its trade union affiliates. They will vote with only one intent: to prevent David Cunliffe becoming Labour’s leader.

 

And, if enough of them think like this – they’ll succeed.

 

Should that be the outcome, the scale of disappointment and disillusionment within the Labour Party’s ranks will be unprecedented. Many will do their best to accept another Cunliffe defeat with a brave and loyal face. Others will simply turn away in disgust. A few will defect to the Greens – or even Mana.

 

But, for most, it will be taken as proof that participating in politics is no different from participating in casino gambling: the House always wins.

 

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, 13 September 2013.

Labour's Spring Of Hope

A Changed Trajectory: The days of MPs lobbying only their colleagues for the votes needed to become Labour's leader are over. Now they must face Labour's wider membership and convince them that they have the right - or should that be the "left" - stuff to lead the party. (Photo: John Miller)

 

SOCRATES, THEY SAY, was condemned to death for “corrupting the minds of the youth of Athens”. The fate of Ancient Greece’s most famous philosopher stands as a warning to all teachers: think very carefully about the ideas you instil in the next generation. Socrates paid a high price for the selfish and cynical political leaders his former students grew into.

 

Do the teachers of Labour’s three leadership contenders deserve the fate of Socrates? Have they instilled in David Cunliffe, Grant Robertson and Shane Jones the sort of cynicism and sophistry that distinguished Socrates’ most infamous student, the silver-tongued but treacherous Alcibiades?

 

Not if their speeches are any guide. All three of Labour’s leadership contenders have courted their party’s membership with reaffirmations of its founding principles and promises to advance its policies significantly to the left of their current settings. (Although, Mr Jones’ campaign promises have been somewhat less comprehensive and emphatic than his rivals’.)

 

The cause of this sudden resurgence in left-wing rhetoric is undoubtedly Labour’s new system for electing its leader.

 

For the whole of the party’s history, right up until November 2012, the normal institutional trajectory of Labour’s MPs has taken them further and further away from the party membership. The party activist became a parliamentarian. The back-bench MP won promotion to the front-bench (or Cabinet). The “rising star”, backed by his or her caucus colleagues, became the party leader and then, if he or she was any good, Prime Minister.

 

Only at the very beginning of their careers were Labour politicians dependent on the support of the party’s rank-and-file. Once in Parliament the focus of their attentions shifted irreversibly to their caucus colleagues – and the wider electorate.

 

Satisfying this latter group often came at the expense of the rank-and-file’s fondest aspirations. Opinion polling and focus groups easily trumped the outpourings of Labour’s Policy Council – to the point where the parliamentary party largely gave up trying to lead public opinion and began, instead, to follow its every contradictory twist and turn.

 

Except, of course, in the case of the Fourth Labour Government. In implementing “Rogernomics”, Labour MPs committed themselves to neoliberal polices that were favoured by neither the Labour Party nor the wider electorate. When the party rank-and-file objected, the Rogernomes proudly proclaimed that they would rather be voted out of office than abandon their government’s economic course.

 

Those who could not accept this split from Labour to form the NewLabour Party and, eventually, the Alliance. The members who remained were obliged to cede more and more control over the party’s overall policy direction to the Leader’s Office and caucus. It rankled, but for the 15 years Helen Clark led the Labour Party there was very little the rank-and-file could do about it.

 

Following Clark’s departure, however, the pressure for a wholesale democratisation of the party grew steadily, until, at Labour’s 2012 annual conference, it became irresistible.

 

The changes to Labour’s rules have exactly reversed the institutional trajectory of its parliamentarians. To have any prospect of capturing the party leadership, the most ambitious members of caucus are now required to secure the support of not only their fellow MPs, but of the broader party membership. In practical terms, this requires them to demonstrate an ability to lead, and not simply follow, public opinion.

 

To lead, organise and mobilise public opinion is precisely the reason why political parties were formed in the first place. The organisation’s whole purpose is to persuade voters that their interests are best served by supporting its mix of policies.

 

In 2013, after nearly 40 years of marginalisation, Labour’s members are, once again, exercising real influence over their country's political future. The significance of the rule-change is best gauged by the fact that had it been in place in 1984 Rogernomics couldn’t have happened.

 

Or, maybe not.

 

The conventional wisdom of political scientists is that Messrs Cunliffe, Robertson and Jones are currently engaged in a purely rhetorical exercise. That the moment Labour’s new leader is installed, he and his caucus colleagues will immediately exchange the campaign trail’s radical leftism for a mealy-mouthed and unadventurous centrism. And that, should Labour win the election, it will be as much a government of big business, by big business, for big business, as National.

 

The Death Of Socrates: Ancient Greece's greatest philosopher was condemned by the people of Athens for denigrating their democratic institutions and inculcating sophistry and cynicism among the city's future leaders. Even today, there are political scientists who warn their students that Labour's democratised system should not be taken seriously. That the eventual winner, having campaigned from the left, will instantly manoeuvre to the centre and then govern from the right. Where's that hemlock!

 

Socrates was required to swallow poison for inculcating such cynicism in Athens’ future leaders. The corruption of hope being the only truly unforgiveable political crime.

 

This essay was originally published in The Waikato Times, The Taranaki Daily News, The Timaru Herald, The Otago Daily Times and The Greymouth Star of Friday, 6 September 2013.

Irresistible Forces Meet Immovable Objects

Something's Gotta Give: Labour's leadership contest has become an exercise in political tectonics: the slow build-up and sudden release of massive and competing political energies.

 

NEW ZEALAND’s MAIN POLITICAL FAULT LINE doesn’t run between National and Labour, it separates the Nominal Left from the Real Left. Only very occasionally does this struggle within the Left produce a genuine rift between the major parties. Most of the time, and on most of the important issues, Government and Opposition maintain a bipartisan consensus. Were this not the case, it is doubtful whether our democratic institutions could survive the resulting earthquakes.

 

But even the strongest consensus will be weakened by events large enough to undermine the public’s faith in its core assumptions. The Great Depression, for example, or, more recently, the Global Financial Crisis (GFC), gave rise to widespread fears that the economic system, upon which we all depend, had been fatally compromised.

 

Inchoate and confused though they may be (just think of the “Tea Party” and “Occupy” movements in the USA) the popular demand that “something must be done” renders the consensus-based politics of more settled times untenable.

 

This is precisely what’s been happening in New Zealand since the onset of the GFC in 2008-09.

 

Between 1999–2008 the Labour-led Government of Helen Clark and her National Party Opposition were able to preserve a pretty broad consensus on the big economic and social issues. The market-led policies introduced by the Fourth Labour Government during the 1980s and entrenched by National in the 1990s remained firmly in place. Labour made no effort to restore Jenny Shipley’s swingeing benefit cuts.

 

Labour’s loss of the 2008 General Election and the departure of Helen Clark put an end to all that. Among the party’s rank-and-file and its trade union affiliates there was a growing clamour for Labour to acknowledge that the market-based policies of the past 25 years had failed and that it was time to return to the labour movement’s core principles for answers to the burgeoning economic and social crises of the Twenty-First Century’s second decade.

 

Within Labour’s caucus, however, there was a profound unwillingness to step outside the quarter-century consensus it had forged with National. So long as that consensus endured it was possible for Labour MPs to go on believing that modern politics, stripped of all its distracting rhetoric, was still mostly about the orderly rotation of political elites.

 

For politicians like Phil Goff and David Shearer, the job of a Labour leader was simply to assemble a credible alternative government: a group of competent, professional politicians ready to take over the efficient running of the country when the incumbents, exhausted by the demands of office, were no longer able to muster the required level of electoral support.

 

Theirs was a purely nominal leftism: rhetorical, formulaic and reliant on a faded symbolism which very few professional Labour politicians any longer took seriously. Like Helen Clark before them, Messer’s Goff and Shearer and their nominal leftist colleagues were alarmed by the party’s insistence on infusing Labour’s message with genuine left-wing ideas. The last time the party had done that was under the leadership of Norman Kirk – and that had not ended well.

 

People often wonder why David Cunliffe is so disliked by so many of his colleagues. The answer lies in Mr Cunliffe’s realisation that the GFC and its aftermath requires a comprehensive rethink of Labour’s entire approach to contemporary politics.

 

It’s a position that obliges Labour MPs to become genuine leftists. It’s why Mr Cunliffe’s colleagues have gone to such lengths to prevent him becoming the Leader of the Labour Party. It also explains the rank-and-file’s steely determination to change the rules governing the Leader’s election.

 

Labour’s “primary” election is, therefore, much more than a contest between three Labour MPs for leadership of the party. This is political tectonics: the slow build-up and sudden release of massive and competing political energies. Either Mr Cunliffe and the irresistible forces of Labour’s Real Left will be lifted up to victory and radical change. Or, he and his followers will be driven down deep by the Nominal Left’s immovable objects.

 

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, 30 August 2013.

The Happy Warrior And The Consummate Courtier

Happy Warrior: At his campaign launch on Monday, 26 August, David Cunliffe gave a powerful display of the sort of political evangelism that has made him the first choice of the Labour Party's rank and file.

 

THE TWO MAIN CONTENDERS for the Labour leadership may display radically different political styles, but both pursue substantially similar political goals. David Cunliffe goes after his foes with a boisterous, swashbuckling glee. Grant Robertson is a much more cautious and conciliatory politician. When the chips are down, however, neither Cunliffe nor Robertson are afraid to do battle with the Powers That Be.

 

Their contrasting styles are clearly evident in the two controversial interventions that helped to define their respective political careers. In Robertson’s case it was his 2005 intervention to secure the removal of interest payments from student loans. In Cunliffe’s case, the 2008 dismissal of the Hawke’s Bay District Health Board.

 

The General Election of 2005 was one of the closest fought in New Zealand’s political history. As the weeks wound down to polling day, the advantage shifted, relentlessly, from Helen Clark’s Labour Government to National and its hard-line neoliberal leader, Dr Don Brash. Labour needed a circuit-breaker: a policy to generate a solid surge of support from right to left; something to slow the Opposition’s momentum.

 

It was Robertson, the former student president, who came up with the idea of suspending interest payments on student loans while the recipients were still engaged in tertiary study. As a former president of the New Zealand University Students Association, he understood that his proposed policy not only gave every tertiary student in the country a strong financial incentive for voting Labour, but, by diminishing the need for parental subsidy, it also gave their Mums and Dads a similarly compelling reason for sticking with the Government.

 

Robertson understood from bitter personal experience the burdens of genteel middle-class poverty. His father’s imprisonment for embezzlement had left deep scars on the young Grant Robertson and his family. He knew what it costs some parents to keep their children’s aspirational goals in sight.

 

To secure his proposed policy change, however, Robertson had to go into battle with Dr Michael Cullen and Treasury – both of whom were strongly opposed to the pressure it would place on the Government’s accounts. But, Robertson had the Prime Minister’s ear. He understood how alarmed she’d become at the prospect of a Brash-led National Government.

 

Ultimately, Robertson, the consummate courtier, prevailed. Cullen relented. Treasury was (for once!) over-ruled. Interest payments were suspended. And Labour was returned to office.

 

The Consummate Courtier: The Only other credible claimant for Labour's crown is the party's Deputy Leader, Grant Robertson.

 

But, if Robertson is the consummate courtier, then Cunliffe is Labour’s happy warrior. Raised in an Anglican manse where the traditions of Christian Socialism ran strong, he has never shied away from the challenge laid down in John Bunyan’s classic protestant hymn “To Be A Pilgrim”.

 

Who so beset him round

With dismal stories

Do but themselves confound

His strength the more is

 

This sort of Labour politician does not hesitate to do battle with the allegorical “lions”, “giants”, “Hobgoblins” and “foul fiends” that regularly assail his party on the road to the Holy City.

 

Then fancies fly away

He’ll fear not what men say

He’ll labour night and day

To be a pilgrim.

 

Newly appointed to the health portfolio in 2008, Mr Cunliffe was called upon to lance the pustulent boil that the Hawkes Bay District Health Board had, in the eyes of the Labour Government, become. Within weeks the entire Board had been sacked and a Commissioner installed. A subsequent official inquiry produced a damning report.

 

Speaking in the Urgent Parliamentary Debate occasioned by the Report’s release on 18 March 2008, Mr Cunliffe declared, with typical swashbuckling eloquence: “This report has lifted the lid on a nasty little nest of self-perpetuating, provincial elites”.

 

The Hawkes Bay “county” set were incoherent with rage. No one could remember when anyone, let alone some grubby little Labour Party oik, had spoken to them in such insulting language.

 

To those whose job it is to observe the hurly-burly of parliamentary debate, however, Cunliffe’s words marked him out as a politician with something different to offer. Something that Labour’s battered constituency has not been given for the best part of thirty years.

 

Cunliffe offers Labour’s core vote a voice. Not the voice of a party whose purpose it is to pacify or cajole the Powers That Be, but a voice that is willing to accuse and condemn them. A voice to hold the “nasty little nests of self-perpetuating elites” accountable for what they have made of New Zealand, and what they have done to her people.

 

It is the only voice that can rouse the Labour vote from its disillusionment and despair. The Happy Warrior’s call to begin again the task of building Jerusalem in New Zealand’s green and pleasant land.

 

Of course, a happy warrior, such as Cunliffe, will need a consummate courtier, such as Grant Robertson. If only to reassure the elites that though they may be mightily shaken, they will not be fatally stirred.

 

This essay was originally published in The Press of Tuesday, 27 August 2013.