Now And Then.

Extraordinary Leadership: Jacinda Ardern sails serenely above the fray: resplendent in her all-conquering empathy and internationally feted for her heart-stopping hymns of peace and love. Were an election scheduled, then she and her party would be utterly invincible.

IT’S A RACE NOW between a transcendent Labour Party and a National Party determined to get back in the game. For the moment, at least, the winds of fortune are at Labour’s back. Jacinda Ardern sails serenely above the fray: resplendent in her all-conquering empathy and internationally feted for her heart-stopping hymns of peace and love. Were an election scheduled, then she and her party would be utterly invincible. Unfortunately, for Labour and its leader, the next scheduled general election is still 18 months away.

And that is Labour’s biggest problem. In 18 months the bright, poignant images of late-March 2019 will have faded. Five hundred ordinary suns will have bleached out all but the most solid outlines of the Christchurch Mosque Shootings. Other priorities will intrude – as other priorities always do. Life is a series of special moments imperfectly recalled. And politics is a kind of life.

National’s best hope of getting back in the game is to craft its conduct around the sad but irrefutable truth that powerful emotions cannot be sustained indefinitely. Eventually the electorate’s momentarily numbed hip-pocket nerve will reassert itself. It would be a wonderful thing if “They Are Us” proved to be a more durable slogan than “What’s In It For Me?” National’s election strategists no doubt privately agree – but they’re not counting on it.

What they are counting on, however, is that the Christchurch Mosque Shootings have holed the pocket battleship NZ First below the waterline. In eighteen months it will have long since slipped below the waves. The tried and tested political themes that have lifted the NZ First Party and its leader back into electoral contention: Anti-Maori, Anti-Immigrant, Anti-Muslim; have been rendered electorally toxic.

What else could Winston Peters have been contemplating so deeply in Istanbul? He is much too astute a politician to have missed the brute fact that the Christchurch Shooter, in addition to slaying his Muslim victims, has also killed any chance of NZ First mounting a right-wing populist comeback.

That leaves Labour with only one potential coalition partner – the Greens. And therein lies Jacinda’s other big problem.

Unless there is a pretty firm laying-on-of-hands within the Greens’ caucus – and soon – there is a better-than-even chance that in 18 months’ time the Greens’ own eco-socialist sloop will have joined NZ First at the bottom of the sea.

It is becoming ominously clear that the “strategy” of bifurcating the Green Party’s image between its calm and responsible Ministers Outside Cabinet (James Shaw, Julie Anne Genter, Eugenie Sage) and its “woke” firebrands (Marama Davidson, Golriz Ghahraman) is on the point of sending the whole crew to the bottom.

The Greens would not be the only progressive political organisation to have allowed itself to be steered into the wild waters of Maori sovereignty and revolutionary leftism. Who now remembers that formerly highly-reputable overseas aid organisation, Corso? Or the Unemployed Workers’ Rights Union? When hitch-hikers are encouraged to take over the driving, the destination of the original passengers is apt to change.

A radical environmental party committed to making climate change the nuclear-free moment of this generation is one thing; but a party dedicated to challenging the white supremacist assumptions of New Zealand’s settler state, is another.

In 2002, the Alliance Party cast aside the moderation and pragmatism of its leader, Jim Anderton, and invited the New Zealand electorate to carry its socialist agenda into Parliament. The voters responded by giving the Alliance 1.27 percent of the Party Vote.

Labour can no more afford to remain indifferent to what is happening to its left in 2019 and 2020 that it could in 2002.

The arithmetic of MPP is as brutal as it is simple. If the 2020 General Election is reduced to a straightforward scrap between Labour and National: a battle fought without the distractions of minor parties; then the most likely outcome is a National victory. Labour’s vote, minus 7 percent (NZ First + Greens) will, almost certainly, leave it with a smaller share of the Party Vote than National.

That wouldn’t be the outcome if the general election was held now. Even without the support of NZ First and the Greens, the Labour Party of late-March 2019 would carry all before it.

But, New Zealanders now know how long a fortnight can be in politics.

Eighteen months is agonisingly longer.

This essay was originally published in The Otago Daily Times and The Greymouth Star of Friday, 29 March 2019.

Those Who Do Not Learn The Lessons Of History …

The Past As Prologue: The 2002 demise of the Alliance is a sad and complicated story. But, at its heart is a single, brutal, truth. Labour has no use for a support partner determined to pursue policy objectives at odds with those of the Government it leads. Rather than endure the consequences of such political insubordination, Labour will do all within its power to break the party responsible.

MARAMA DAVIDSON and Golriz Ghahraman would be well advised to take a break and read a little history. Not the history of colonial New Zealand: they seem very well-acquainted with that dismal narrative. No, the history they should familiarise themselves with, is the history of the Alliance in the weeks and months that followed the terrorist attacks of 11 September 2001.

It’s a sad and complicated story. But, at its heart is a single, brutal, truth. Labour has no use for a support partner determined to pursue policy objectives at odds with those of the Government it leads. Rather than endure the consequences of such political insubordination, Labour will do all within its power to break the party responsible.

The issue which broke the Alliance was Afghanistan. Identified as the protectors of Osama Bin Laden and his Al Qaida terrorist network, the Taliban rulers of Afghanistan were given an ultimatum by the United States Government to surrender those responsible for the 9/11 attacks or face the full force of the US and its allies. The Labour Prime Minister, Helen Clark, and her deputy, the Alliance Leader, Jim Anderton, raised no serious objections to President George W. Bush’s proposed course of action.

The left-wing of the Alliance was, however, outraged by what they saw as Anderton’s craven capitulation to US imperialism.

With the left of his party in open revolt, the Alliance leader, Jim Anderton, resolved to seize control of the party’s resources and records, and purge its membership of left-wing dissenters. When his attempted coup was thwarted, Anderton moved swiftly to split the Alliance – drawing loyalists away to form a new political entity: Jim Anderton’s Progressive Party.

As the Alliance tore itself apart, Labour sat back and watched. Clark understood that with the Christchurch seat of Wigram firmly in his grasp, Jim Anderton and his new party were absolved from having to secure 5 percent of the Party Vote.

The Alliance enjoyed no such advantage. It waged a brave fight in the 2002 General Election but, deprived of Anderton and scorned by Labour, it attracted just 1.27 percent of the Party Vote and was bundled out of Parliament. Jim Anderton’s Progressive Party, by contrast, although it won only 1.7 percent of the Party Vote, secured two parliamentary seats. Anderton’s vengeance was complete.

Even today, it is hard to believe that what was, at that time, the most successful left-wing party in the Western World, allowed itself to be split and broken over whether or not the Taliban should be overthrown for harbouring an organisation responsible for planning and facilitating the most devastating terrorist attack in modern history.

Why is any of this relevant to the Greens? Because, in the aftermath of another terrorist attack, this time against the Muslim community of Christchurch, New Zealand, another radical faction, in another small but highly successful progressive party, again appears determined to compromise another Labour Prime Minister’s domestic and international responses to an appalling terrorist outrage.

Davidson and Ghahraman need to ask themselves what the reaction of their parliamentary colleagues is likely to be if it becomes clear that their determination to leverage-off the Christchurch Mosque Shootings to unleash an uncompromising anti-racist campaign encompassing the whole of Pakeha New Zealand, is met with a strong enough push-back to jeopardise the Greens chances of remaining in Parliament after 2020? Will the other members of the Green Caucus meekly accept that two of their number must be permitted follow the dictates of the consciences, regardless of the damage they are inflicting on their party? Or, will they attempt to stop them?

Davidson and Ghahraman should also ask themselves what Labour is likely to do.

The Christchurch Mosque Shootings have left NZ First fatally compromised. Denied the option of playing the Anti-Maori, Anti-Muslim, and Anti-Immigration cards, the party’s chances of surging back over the 5 percent MMP threshold in 2020 are slim-to-non-existent. That leaves only the Greens to partner Labour in the next progressive coalition. Davidson and Ghahraman should, therefore, ask themselves what Labour’s reaction will be if its internal polling shows their New-Zealand-Is-A-Profoundly-Racist-Society campaign is causing the Greens to haemorrhage votes in a fatal fashion?

While they’re at it, they should probably also ask themselves what use National and Act are likely to make of their We-Are-All-Guilty campaign. Do they really think the right of New Zealand politics is going to refuse to take advantage of the anger and disgust generated by what many (perhaps most) voters will characterise as a cheap-and-nasty attempt to capitalise politically on a terrible and unprecedented tragedy? Do they not see that what they are doing, and clearly intend to go on doing, is helping the Right to get back in the game? And, do they really think that Jacinda and her “Praetorian Guard” – Andrew Little and Grant Robertson – are going to just sit back and let that happen?

Helen Clark and Jim Anderton weren’t prepared to allow the left-wing of the Alliance to compromise their political mission. Marama Davidson and Golriz Ghahraman should, therefore, ask themselves whether, in their heart-of-hearts, they truly believe Jacinda Ardern and James Shaw are any different?

This essay was posted simultaneously on The Daily Blog and Bowalley Road on Tuesday, 26 March 2019.

Is Labour Finished?

All Washed Up? Perhaps Labour could be saved if, like the ancient Romans, they were willing to install a dictator to “save the Republic” from its enemies (in the case of Labour’s membership that would be themselves!) someone capable of turning the party into a lean, mean electoral machine. Except, of course, Labour, as presently constituted, is never going to do that.

 

IF IT HAD ONLY HAPPENED ONCE, I could have written it off as a simple overstatement. Politics lends itself to exaggeration, and there was a lot of that associated with the Labour Party’s Review of the 2014 General Election. But, what I’m describing wasn’t the usual bluff and bluster of the instant commentariat. What I was hearing was coming from “civilians” – people without a platform – ordinary folks. And, what they’ve been saying to me, over and over again, in the week or so since the Review was leaked to TV3’s Paddy Gower, is the same statement-cum-question:  “I think Labour’s finished as a major party – what do you think?”

 

Now, this is a not the sort of statement/question that political parties ever want to hear. Because it isn’t just another complaint about this leader, or that policy. No, this is an existential query: and existential queries only get made when the subject has already got at least one foot (and a good portion of leg) in the political grave.

 

I recall people saying very similar things about the Alliance after it split apart over Afghanistan. And they’ve been writing off Act as a zombie party for at least the past six years (quite correctly, in my opinion). Some people were even moved to question National’s future after its Party Vote plummeted to 20.9 percent in the general election of 2002.

 

The difference between National’s response to its electoral nadir and Labour’s reaction to its worst result since 1922, is that the former took its thrashing seriously and Labour isn’t. Long before the Review was complete, Labour insiders were already speculating on whether or not it would be big enough to make a passable door-stop.

 

National looked upon its defeat as a catastrophic market failure. National Incorporated’s share price had crashed, the Bank was ready to call in its overdraft, and the receivers were hovering. Time was of the essence. The Board of Directors had to do something.

 

What did they do? Well, they did what every big business in trouble does. They called in the political equivalent of McKinsey & Co. – consultants in extremis – and ruthlessly refashioned the National Party into a lean, mean electoral machine. National’s review panel didn’t just lop-off the dead wood, they fed it into the wood chipper, mixed it with the blood and bones of several sacred cows, and spread it over their flower beds!

 

This sort of ruthlessness isn’t an option for Labour. National’s whole purpose, from the moment it was founded in May 1936 (less than 12 months after the election of the First Labour Government) is to remove Labour from office whenever voters have been incautious enough to put it into government; and to remain in government for as long as humanly possible whenever Labour’s in opposition. Labour’s purpose is – or should be – very different. It’s supposed to be about ideas, and change, and nationhood. They’re supposed to be socialists, social-democrats, the workers’ party.

 

Except it isn’t. Hasn’t been since the mid-1980s. A workers’ party, that is. Labour’s still a party of ideas – even if they’re not the sort of ideas ordinary working people cotton-on to (that doesn’t seem to matter anymore). And the changes Labour’s promoting? Well they don’t find many takers either. Not that a distinct lack of voter support is likely to persuade the party to do things differently. Because, whatever Labour has lost in the trust and confidence of its electoral base, it’s rank-and-file members have more than made up for in democratic constitutional practice.

 

Democracy is one of those things (like fairness) that National tends to honour more in the breach than the execution. Indeed, it’s the Tories’ iron chain of command that allows them to campaign so effectively.  Labour, on the other hand, is just one big tangle of chains: pull on one and, instantly, a dozen others jerk violently in the opposite direction.

 

Perhaps Labour could be saved if, like the ancient Romans, they were willing to install a dictator to “save the Republic” from its enemies (in the case of Labour’s membership that would be themselves!) someone capable of turning the party into a lean, mean electoral machine.

 

Except, of course, Labour’s never going to do that. Which is why so many people are telling me “Labour’s finished” – and  why, regretfully, I’m agreeing with them.

 

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, 12 June 2015.

Nine Years Ago - Election '02: Green Is The New Red

Full House: With the polls showing Labour plummeting to record lows, the 2011 Election is shaping up to become the 2002 Election - in reverse. Another thing '11 has in common with '02 is the notion that, come election day, Green may become the new Red.

THERE ARE TIMES when individuals choose the moment and the place for spectacular events, and times when the moments and the places choose them. Last Sunday, in Auckland’s Beresford Street, it was very much a case of the latter.

The building known as Hopetoun Alpha began life as a Congregationalist Church. It is a beautiful structure, designed in the classical style and featuring graceful columns and tall arched windows. The interior is full of light and the acoustics are sensational.

The Congregationalists themselves were one of those dissenting Protestant sects that sprang out of the intellectual and political ferment of the 17^th Century. Like the Quakers, they eschew hierarchy and arrive at decisions by consensus. In New Zealand, they were among the first to admit women to a full and equal role in the life of the church, and the Auckland community was particularly active in the struggle for women’s suffrage and the agitation against militarism.

If the Green Party had spent a year in the search they could not have found a better place to launch their 2002 election campaign. Even so, Green campaign-worker Lynne Serpe had to fight off suggestions that the opening be held on Auckland’s fashionable waterfront. Coming from New York, and having worked on the Nader Campaign in 2000, Ms Serpe has an impresario’s eye for exactly the right kind of venue, and something told her that the waterfront was all wrong.

Knowing that the New Zealand Greens weren’t going to be able to equal Ralph Nader’s 30,000 strong rally at the Madison Square Garden, she was looking for a place that had just the right mixture of formality and intimacy, solemnity and gaiety. When she stepped into Hopetoun Alpha she knew the search was over.

I don’t know if it was the democratic spirit of the men and women who had worshipped there for over a hundred years: their witnessing against war and oppression; or their mystical quest for oneness in the body of believers - but by the time Hopetoun Alpha had filled up with Green Party members and supporters the atmosphere within fairly crackled with energy.

I took my seat upstairs in the steep wooden gallery that runs round the sides of the auditorium and studied the 400 strong crowd. There were plenty of representatives of what has become the Green Party stereotype: willowy women with long skirts and braided hair; men with bright waistcoats and bristling beards – but they were in the minority. Most of the audience were perfectly ordinary Kiwis. I noted family groups, and several clutches of university students. A small group of young Maori took their seats, I wondered if this was their first political rally.

It certainly wasn’t mine. Over the past fortnight I had attended three campaign launches. Jim Anderton’s Progressive Coalition’s - somewhere in the suburban wilderness of the North Shore; Laila Harré’s Alliance’s - in the proletarian heartland of Waitakere; and Helen Clark’s Labour Party’s - amidst the swank sophistication of Auckland’s Aotea Centre. Jim’s had been an embarrassingly amateurish affair, Laila’s had an elegiac feel about it, and, once Stella had finished playing, Helen’s was so bland that I nearly fell asleep. But this gathering at Hopetoun Alpha was different. This crowd was generating a force field that was almost palpable.

Jeanette Fitzsimons spoke first. Standing between two massive pillars (I couldn’t get the image of the second card of the Tarot out of my mind – the image of the High Priestess) she began her speech by reminding us “that every great truth is first ridiculed, then violently opposed, then accepted as self-evident.”

“Aha!” I thought, “Gandhi!” Except he said it slightly differently: “First they ignore you. Then they laugh at you. Then they fight you. Then you win.” Of course, he was talking about an independent India, and Jeanette is predicting a GE-Free New Zealand, but the principle remains constant – an idea whose time has come cannot be stopped.

As the rest of the programme unfolded, that sense of ideological certainty grew stronger and stronger - and when Keith Locke, afire with moral outrage at “America’s dirty little war in Afghanistan” declared the Greens to be “the only peace party” the whole place erupted. People began cheering wildly and stamping their feet. High up in the gallery I felt the whole building shake.

“What did you make of that?” a friend of mine asked as we stepped out into a wet and windy Auckland afternoon.

“Isn’t it obvious”, I replied. “Green’s the new Red.”

This essay was originally published in The Dominion Post of Friday, 12 July 2002.

Will History Repeat Itself?

"You'll fit in nicely, Russel, just over here - on the left." Could the New Zealand electorate be about to do to John Key in 2011 what it did to Helen Clark in 2002? Apply an ideological check on otherwise unbridled power?

WILL THE GENERAL ELECTION of 2011 be a repeat of 2002? That contest also began with the governing party coasting along smugly in the stratosphere of popular esteem. It, too, was burdened with a bitterly divided coalition partner which had ceased to exist as an effective political force. Its principal political opposition, under a new leader, also seemed incapable of putting a foot right and was plumbing new depths of unpopularity.

If the polls were accurate, said the pundits, the election looked set to deliver the impossible: a governing party with more than half the popular vote, ready to govern alone.

In the end, the political scientists who warned that, under a system of proportional representation, it was next to impossible for a single political party to secure more than half the popular vote, were proved right.

Over a period of six weeks, Helen Clark’s Labour Government shed 14 percentage points. It may have begun the campaign in the low-50s, but the final election tally was just 41 percent. That was a creditable increase of 3 percentage points on its 1999 share of the Party Vote, but still well short of half the votes cast.

There were many reasons for Labour’s rapid shedding of support in 2002 (not the least of which was the utterly unforeseen “Corngate” scandal). The most plausible explanation, however, is that the New Zealand electorate was unwilling to see one political party wielding “unbridled power”.

That unwillingness put a large number of voters in the market for a party ready to act as a political brake on Helen Clark and her Labour Government.

Enter Peter Dunne and his pledge to bring a much-needed measure of “common sense” to the business of government. Overnight, Mr Dunne’s United Future NZ Party was catapulted from margin-of-error territory to a balance-of-power wielding 6.7 percent of the Party Vote.

BUT WHICH PARTY, if any, is in a position to act as a brake on John Key’s National Party in 2011?

If it was to follow the 2002 precedent exactly, the electorate would saddle Mr Key with a coalition partner as far to the left of National as Mr Dunne was to the right of Labour.

The only party which fits that description is the Greens.

This rather startling prospect is clearly one that has already passed through the minds of the Green’s own strategists. It would certainly explain the Party’s steady, three-year shuffle towards the political centre, and the decision of its conference to leave the door to some sort of accommodation with the National Party just ever-so-slightly ajar.

It is certainly a prospect that would appeal to the Kiwi sense of fair play (not to mention our rather quirky sense of humour).

The Labour Party is obviously not ready to govern again and a painful kick up the bum from the voters would probably do it the world of good. By the same token, the Act Party and its pale neoliberal rider should not, under any circumstances, be allowed within spitting distance of the levers of power. The Maori and Mana parties can, reasonably safely, be allowed to slug it out in the Maori seats (where, if God has a sense of humour, the voters will return en masse to Labour). Mr Dunne would, of course, love to be the soufflé that rose twice, but even the voters of Ohariu aren’t that generous.

No, if a brake is to be applied to National’s plans to sell-off state assets and gut welfare, the Greens are the only party that can do it.

And just imagine the Right’s consternation on election night. Even with the support of Act, United Future and what remains of the Maori Party, Mr Key simply doesn’t have the votes to govern. But, with the 15 votes of the Greens, a stable, centrist government beckons.

While a solid majority of New Zealanders chuckle wickedly behind their hands, Mr Key reluctantly picks up the phone.

“Russel, maaate, let’s talk.”

This essay was originally published in The Dominion Post, The Timaru Herald, The Taranaki Daily News, The Otago Daily Times and The Greymouth Star of Friday, 5 August 2011.