They Want It Darker: Peters knows exactly what is going on in the minds of the dark, rock-solid mass of National Party voters – there was a time when he stood in the shadows with them. Aware that Laura Norder was getting ready to let loose one of her full-throated screams, Peters moved swiftly to save Labour from itself. Andrew Little will just have to wait.
THANK GOD FOR WINSTON PETERS! The decision of the NZ First
Party to torpedo the Labour Party justice minister’s proposal to scrap the
“Three Strikes” legislation came in the very nick of time. Andrew Little may be
a good man, and Sir Peter Gluckman a powerful advocate for evidence-based
decision-making, but neither of them would appear to possess Peters’ gut
instinct for what is – and is not – possible politically.
The leader of NZ First is looking at the dark and rock-solid
mass of National Party support ranged against the Labour-NZF-Green government,
and he is drawing some pretty gloomy conclusions.
The first and most obvious of these is that the Nats smell
blood. At both the parliamentary and grass-roots level of the National
“movement” (for want of a better description) the frequently voiced opinion whatever else this government may do it is most
unlikely to win a second term is rapidly solidifying into a right-wing
conviction.
The second is that Jacinda’s “stardust” only works on the
“woke”. If you’re young and following the right people on Twitter and
Instagram; if you’re middle-class and well-credentialed; if you’re a working
couple living in your own home and raising a young family; well then, Jacinda’s
bloody marvellous. In the grim ghettoes of deprivation and despair, however,
Labour’s promises of kindness and transformation have yet to evoke a measurable
political response.
Peters knows exactly what that means in electoral terms.
Labour is failing to grow its vote out of anything other than the support bases
of its own partners. The non-voting poor and marginalised – who should be their
target – have yet to hear anything from Jacinda and her team compelling enough
to distract them from the grim business of day-to-day survival.
For a few magical moments in 2017, Metiria Turei caused a
number of them to lift up their heads – just in time to witness her brutal
political destruction. But who’s giving hope to beneficiaries and the
working-poor in 2018? Certainly not Carmel Sepuloni!
The third – and the gloomiest – conclusion Peters is likely
to have drawn is that this is not an era of political sunshine. He is old
enough to remember the early 1960s when, for a few brief years, both here in
New Zealand and around the Western World, there was a public willingness to
embrace social policies founded in compassion, bolstered by science and
delivered by political parties temporarily freed from the encumbering baggage
of traditional conservatism.
Full-employment and steadily rising living-standards had
emptied communities of the fears and anxieties to which, throughout history,
they had been prey. The sunshine of empathy shone into places usually cast in
the shade of envy and prejudice. To an electorally significant number of
citizens the world seemed to be getting better and better and they were willing
to vote for politicians who promised to make it better still. Social-democracy
and progressive liberalism made common cause against all manner of social evils:
prisons built to punish not rehabilitate; birching and flogging; the death
penalty.
Peters is also old enough to remember the Third Labour
Government and how its sunniest ministers – the most outstanding of which was
the Justice Minister, Dr Martyn Findlay – attempted to press ahead with ever
more liberal and progressive reforms. He’d remember, too, the souring of the
New Zealand electorate in the wake of the hugely inflationary oil-shocks and
Kirk’s tragic death.
Peters will recall how fear and anxiety returned to the
nation’s communities as unemployment rose and living-standards began to fall. Watching
all this, that much younger Winston Peters observed how easily National’s
leader, Rob Muldoon, turned it all to his advantage. How traditional
conservatism – momentarily outshone – once again cast its pall over the
electorate. How Dr Martyn Findlay and his liberal reforms were unceremoniously
cast aside - along with the rest of the Labour Government.
Peters knows exactly what is going on in the minds of that
dark, rock-solid mass of National Party voters – there was a time when he stood
in the shadows with them. Aware that Laura Norder was getting ready to let
loose one of her full-throated screams, Peters moved swiftly to save Labour
from itself. Andrew Little will just have to wait.
A version of this
essay was originally posted on The Daily Blog of Tuesday, 12 June 2018.
