Who’s Got The Mojo?

Frank Assessments: Listening to Christopher Luxon sledging New Zealand, the voters could be forgiven for thinking that, given the choice, the Leader of the Opposition would rather be the leader of Act.

PERHAPS THE MOST SURPRISING THING about Christopher Luxon’s unguarded and thoroughly negative appraisal of New Zealand has been the reaction. One week ago (12/6/23) forgetting that he was still wearing a “hot mike”, the Leader of the Opposition vouchsafed to a Helensville cocky that: “We have become very negative, wet, whiny, inward-looking country. And we have lost the plot. And we have to get our mojo back.”

Far from being inundated with the angry protests of an insulted electorate, Luxon’s people reported receiving strongly expressed concurrence from across the nation. Though by no means unanimous, the view that New Zealand has lost its mojo clearly has many supporters.

That these nay-sayers will be predominantly rural and provincial voters is a pretty safe bet. Country folk have a long-standing and decidedly jaundiced view of those inhabiting the Big Smoke. The idea that virtue increases in inverse proportion to the distance travelled from the vice-filled cities has a long pedigree in New Zealand.

The other stronghold of nay-saying is to be found in the glass towers and leafy suburbs of the big cities themselves. The idea of their taxes being lavished on the wet and whiny poor is a constant source of vexation to the wealthy. Political “tough love” should be the order of the day. Give the improvident and work-shy no choice but to harden-up and knuckle-down.

Luxon’s unguarded observations indicate a strong measure of agreement with these sentiments, even if they are hardly overflowing with empathy and the milk of human kindness. More a case of the willingness to be kind being inextricably bound up with the willingness to be cruel first. A political credo that is less “applied Christianity”, and more institutionalised political sadism.

That there’s a lot of it about became disturbingly clear during the Covid pandemic. From the very beginning of the public health crisis there were voices raised (almost all of them associated closely with the “Big End” of town) against heavy-handed state intervention and in favour of letting nature run its course. The economic consequences of empathy and social solidarity, they said, were too costly to be seriously considered. The ghosts of Darwin and Malthus haunted the op-ed pages. Terms like “herd immunity”, apart from their regrettable associations with cattle, recalled “the survival of the fittest” – and other upper-class explanations for why the poor should be allowed to go to hell.

When Jacinda Ardern’s lockdowns and Grant Robertson’s wage subsidies delivered, at least initially, extremely positive outcomes for the population – catapulting Ardern to rock-star status internationally – the rhetoric changed. Luxon’s mentor, John Key, talked about New Zealand having been reduced to “smug hermit kingdom” status. It’s an expression that bears close comparison with Luxon’s more recent “inward-looking” snipe. At the time Key coined the phrase, however, it was all of a piece with the vicious criticism routinely directed at New Zealand and its prime minister by that mouthpiece of nasty British Toryism – The Daily Telegraph.

There remains, however, something irremediably mealy-mouthed about National’s sledging of the New Zealand people – especially when considered alongside the no-holds-barred neoliberal policy-wrangling now on display from Act. When it comes to delivering his party’s package without so much as a modesty-preserving fig-leaf, David Seymour is truly a full-Monty man.

Perusing Act’s policy agenda, and translating its bold claims into the practical misery that massive shifts of wealth in favour of the rich, paid for out of ruthless spending-cuts, always bring to the poor, it very quickly becomes clear what is generally understood when the Right resorts to language like “wet” and “whiny” and “inward-looking”, and what they mean when they claim that their country has “lost the plot”.

At work here is a view of government that contains at its core the conviction that democracy is – and always has been – a mistake. A system of government which allows a feckless majority to award itself a living out of the surpluses piled-up by a hard-working minority, is regarded by many on the right as economically and sociologically insane. So mad is it that the minority is entirely justified in employing any and every means at its disposal to prevent itself being dominated and exploited by the majority. Setting one part of the majority against another by seizing every opportunity for creating discord is the tried and tested strategy for preventing said majority from cohering into a political/electoral force which the minority cannot defeat. Divide et impera, divide and conquer, is as old as Imperial Rome.

The key dividing line in the forthcoming election looks set to fall between those who are angry and those who are scared. On the right of New Zealand politics this divides the angry voters, keen to embrace Act’s uncompromising policy agenda, from the frightened voters, desperate for National to make them feel safe and secure again. Act’s job is the easier of the two. In electoral terms, feeding people’s anger has always paid higher dividends than fuelling people’s fears. National will struggle to compose a manifesto capable of allaying voters’ fears without appearing to endorse the Labour Government’s own efforts to calm and reassure the electorate. Such an outcome would only anger National Party voters – driving still more of them into the arms of Act. 

Quite the conundrum.

It does, however, offer a convincing explanation for Luxon’s rather bitter assessment of his fellow New Zealanders – and why so many of them have given it the thumbs-up. National’s leader clearly feels uncomfortable at having to pander to a fearful country. He doesn’t want to lead a negative people, a wet people, a whiny people, or an inward-looking people. Least of all does he want to be the prime minister of a needy people in search of a government committed to kissing everything better. What’s more, he is very far from being the only person on the right of New Zealand politics who feels this way.

The plot which Luxon believes New Zealand has lost, is the plot originally devised and executed by Roger Douglas and Ruth Richardson. The plot based upon the proposition that most people are simply incapable of discerning what is good for them, and that real leadership consists of telling people what is good for them, and then giving it to them good and hard. Unfortunately, leadership of that sort requires an awful lot of mojo and, for the moment, Act has cornered the mojo market.

Listening to Christopher Luxon, that Helensville cocky could be forgiven for thinking that, given the choice, the Leader of the Opposition would rather be the leader of Act.

This essay was originally posted on the Interest.co.nz website on Monday, 19 June 2023.