Sweet Moderation? What Christopher Luxon Could Learn From The Germans.

Stuck In The Middle With You: As Christopher Luxon feels the hot breath of Act’s and NZ First’s extremists on the back of his neck and, as he reckons with the damage their policies are already inflicting upon a country he’s described as “fragile”, is there not some merit in reaching out to a Labour leader who is undoubtedly as fearful of his own “allies” as Luxon is of his coalition “partners”?

NEW ZEALAND POLITICS is remarkably easy-going: dangerously so, one might even say. With the notable exception of John Key’s flat ruling-out of the NZ First Party in 2008, all parties capable of clearing MMP’s five-percent threshold, or winning one or more electorate seats, tend to find themselves ruled-in to the government formation game. (While it is true Labour’s Chris Hipkins ruled out NZ First as a coalition partner in 2023, that was only after NZ First had ruled out Labour.) ‘Never say never’, would appear to be the operating principle when it comes to forging coalition governments in New Zealand.

The contrast between New Zealand’s and Germany’s approach to forming coalition governments could hardly be starker. Doubtless on account of their Twentieth Century political nightmares, the major, and even some of the minor German political parties are prepared to collectively rule out of coalition contention any political party deemed morally unacceptable as a partner in power.

On several occasions in the past 20 years, the German Social Democrats (SPD) and Die Grünen (the Greens) could have governed Germany from the left if they had been willing to forge a three-way coalition with Die Linke (The Left Party). That they did not do so was on account of the fact that, in addition to a breakaway group of left-wing SPD members led by the former Finance Minister, Oskar Lafontaine, Die Linke also included the Party for Democratic Socialism, successor to East Germany’s Sozialistische Einheitspartei Deutschlands (Socialist Unity Party).

For a local comparison, think Jim Anderton and his NewLabour Party merging with New Zealand’s own Moscow-aligned Socialist Unity Party!

The presence of former members of the brutally totalitarian SED in Die Linke was unacceptable to the SDP and Die Grünen. Accordingly, and well before voters cast their ballots, Germans were warned that Die Linke would form no part of any future German government – Left or Right. Obviously, the voters were still free to vote for Die Linke, but they would do so knowing that they were making a left-wing coalition government less – not more – likely. (Die Linke now polls below the five-percent threshold of Germany’s MMP system.)

On the other side of the political divide, the conservative Christian Democratic Union of Germany (CDU) and its allies, have made it clear that they are not prepared to enter any governing coalition in which the Far-Right, ethno-nationalist, Alternative für Deutschland (AfD) is being considered as an acceptable participant. With the parties of the Left all giving the same undertaking, the Nazi-adjacent “Alternative for Germany” has found itself excluded altogether from polite German politics.

Whether the AfD’s total exclusion from Germany’s coalition politics will hold, now that it is registering between 16 and 25 percent support in the opinion polls (becoming Germany’s second party after the CDU) remains to be seen.

What makes this exclusion of the political extremes electorally viable is the willingness of what used to be the two major German political parties, the CDU and the SPD, to come together and form a “Grand Coalition” of the Centre-Right and the Centre-Left. Such coalitions more-or-less completely undercut the bargaining power of the smaller parties and made it impossible for the tail to wag the dog. Once again, it is Germany’s tragic history, most particularly the unwillingness of the major parties of the Weimar Republic (1919-1933) to deploy such system-protecting blocking coalitions against the Nazis, that explains the Grand Coalitions of post-war Germany.

All of which is by way of setting the scene for a reconsideration of the question: Is a “Grand Coalition”  a realistic option for New Zealand?

The whole idea has been dismissed, almost out-of-hand, in the past. Political observers point to the fact that New Zealand continues to be dominated by two major parties, National and Labour, and that these “majors” both have ideologically compatible “minors” with which to coalesce. According to this conventional wisdom, a Grand Coalition would likely prove extremely damaging electorally. Principally, to the party deemed to be the weaker partner, but also, potentially, to the stronger party – especially if it appeared to be making too many concessions to its traditional enemies.

But, is it still the case that Act and NZ First, for National; and the Greens and Te Pāti Māori, for Labour; remain ideologically compatible with their ‘natural’ coalition partners? Or, has the socially and politically destabilising impacts of Covid-19, and all its attendant malignancies, altered fundamentally the political cultures of the minor parties – and not in a good way? With the extreme policy demands of the Far-Left and the Far-Right destabilising the centre-ground, it is going to require political leadership of an increasingly high order to prevent New Zealand’s electoral politics from resolving itself into two snarling blocs of fanatics, hostile not only to one another, but also to the whole idea of bipartisanship and parliamentary compromise.

Already we are seeing the electoral scene being set for what might be called “retaliatory deconstruction”. The National-Act-NZ First Coalition has led the way by repealing the legislative achievements of its Labour-Green predecessor on a scale unprecedented since the ill-fated Muldoon Government of 1975-84.

It is sobering to recall the extent to which Muldoon’s electoral success was dependent on the baying extremists of “Rob’s Mob” – that uncompromising core of ideologically disoriented New Zealanders lured away from Labour by Muldoon’s populist promises to undo all the radical reforms that Labour’s “arty-farty, namby-pamby, left-wing liberals and academics” had foisted upon the “ordinary blokes” of a beleaguered working-class.

To reclaim the Treasury Benches, it seems inevitable that Labour-Greens-Te Pāti Māori will have to promise their voters a 100-day burst of retaliatory deconstruction every bit as thorough and destabilising as that overseen by Christopher Luxon. Political polarisation will intensify to the point where “normal” government becomes impossible, and democracy is reduced to a triennial search-and-destroy mission.

In his exit-interview with TVNZ’s Jack Tame, the former co-leader of the Greens, James Shaw, acknowledged the many reactionary measures – now implemented – that might have been avoided had Luxon had the courage to reach out to him for support. Shaw recounted to Tame the positive response he had received from 15 of the 16 Green activists he had been canvassing alongside in Dunedin when he asked them whether or not the Greens should reach out to National. Their support was not given on account of what could be achieved by such an alliance, but what it could prevent.

As Luxon feels the hot breath of Act’s and NZ First’s extremists on the back of his neck and, as he reckons with the damage their policies are already inflicting upon a country he describes as “fragile”, is there not some merit in considering the German example, and reaching out to a Labour leader who is undoubtedly as fearful of his own “allies” as Luxon is of his coalition “partners”?

In the words of Billy Bragg’s poignant anthem:

Sweet moderation

Heart of this nation

Desert us not, we are

Between the wars

This essay was originally posted on the Interest.co.nz website on Monday, 29 April 2024.