Looking For Labour’s Vital Signs.

Flatlining: With no evidence of a genuine policy disruptor at work in Labour’s ranks, New Zealand’s wealthiest citizens can sleep easy.

PRESIDENT JOE BIDEN has walked a picket-line. Presidential candidate Kamala Harris has threatened “price-gauging” grocery retailers with price control. The Democratic Party’s 2024 platform situates it well to the left of Sir Keir Starmer’s British Labour Party, which is still “righting” itself after lurching leftwards under Jeremy Corbyn. Australia’s Anthony Albanese is the first Labor Party leader since Paul Keating to show signs of completing a full three-year parliamentary term without being rolled. New Zealand’s Labour Party, by contrast, shows virtually no signs of internal dissent, excitement, or even life.

And it should be showing all those vital signs. What other centre-left party, in any part of the developed world, would sit idly by after its leader – then the country’s prime minister – decided, without Cabinet sanction, and while he was out of the country, to scupper the tax policies of his Revenue and Finance Ministers, and who then went on to halve his party’s support at the next election? None with a political pulse.

Then again, what sort of leader, having delivered his party’s second-lowest share of the popular vote in 80 years, would think it in any way appropriate to remain in the top job? Sadly, such refusals to take personal responsibility for catastrophic failure are far from uncommon in electoral politics. Much rarer, however, are party caucuses so lacking in spine that they allow such failures to cling on to power.

Certainly, when David Cunliffe led Labour to its worst election result in 80 years: attracting a Party Vote of just 25.13 percent; his caucus was utterly unwilling to countenance him remaining Leader of the Opposition. Interestingly, one of Cunliffe’s most vociferous 2014 critics was Chris Hipkins – the same man who, nine years later, would deliver Labour a Party Vote of 26.91 percent. Clearly, that additional 1.78 percentage points made a huge difference!

Those who have followed Labour’s political evolution post-Rogernomics will no doubt attribute this inconsistency to the debilitating factional in-fighting that nearly consumed the party as it struggled to chart a way forward following Helen Clark’s departure in 2008. It was Cunliffe’s election as Party Leader in 2013, over the strong objections of a majority of his parliamentary colleagues, that brought these faction fights to their final, bitter, denouement in the aftermath of the 2014 debacle.

The faction that should have won, and was widely expected to win, in the aftermath of 2014 was the caucus clique led by Grant Robertson, Chris Hipkins and Jacinda Ardern. These were the “Clarkists”, all of whom had served as ministerial and/or prime-ministerial advisers in Clark’s government. They were determined to keep the party in its place, as Clark had done for 15 unyielding years.

A Labour Party liberated from caucus control could not be trusted to maintain the neoliberal order. On the contrary, it was likely to attack it. But, making an enemy of the neoliberal order, or even appearing to, is not a good idea – as Helen Clark and Michael Cullen, then in coalition with Jim Anderton’s left-wing Alliance, discovered in the “Winter of Discontent” that followed the Left’s 1999 victory.

Robertson came agonisingly close to replacing Cunliffe in 2014, losing to Andrew Little by a fraction of 1 percent. One can only speculate as to how successful, or unsuccessful, a Robertson-led Labour Party might have been in the election of 2017. Or, how any government he went on to lead might have performed when compared to those led by Jacinda Ardern. Would his handling of Covid-19 have been better? Worse? Essentially the same? The random contingencies of History can drive a person mad.

The questions that pose themselves in 2024 are mostly inspired by the political tenacity of the Clarkist faction, or, at least, of Chris “Chippy” Hipkins, its sole remaining representative now that Ardern and Robertson have departed the stage. While there are unmistakable stirrings among Labour’s rank-and-file – as there always are following the party’s loss of the Treasury Benches – there is little sign, as yet, of a Kiwi version of Jeremy Corbyn, Bernie Sanders, Alexandria Ocasio Cortez, or even of Kamala Harris.

About the only political declarations Hipkins’ caucus colleagues have been prepared to make since the 2023 election, apart from the usual boiler-plate media releases, are those in which they vehemently deny even the slightest interest in replacing him. The nearest New Zealand Labour can boast to a political “disrupter” is the principal victim of Hipkins’ “Captain’s Call” on taxation reform, David Parker.

Parker has been addressing Labour gatherings around the country on the urgent need to re-design New Zealand’s fiscal architecture if Labour is to make any credible promises regarding health, education, superannuation, housing, welfare, and any of the other many calls upon the public purse. There are those in the news media, as there always are, who would happily represent such behaviour to Hipkins as a direct attack upon his leadership. For the moment, however, Hipkins is, quite rightly, affecting an easy indifference to Parker’s efforts. He recognises a Quixotic gesture when he sees one.

For the past seven years the Labour Party apparatus has been making it harder and harder for another Cunliffe to challenge the near-absolute power of the Leader and her/his factotums in the Labour Leader’s Office. Working alongside a party hierarchy carefully stacked with loyal apparatchiks – many of them readying themselves for life as an MP – the Labour leader can threaten any MP who fails to maintain caucus discipline (i.e. who demonstrates insufficient loyalty) with quiet deselection and/or a hopelessly low position on the Party List.

The party’s ability to assert itself, as it did with Cunliffe and Little, is weaker today than it has ever been. The collective grip of the Leader, his closest caucus allies, the people in his office, senior party office-holders, and all those ambitious parliamentary staffers in possession of embarrassing information about their bosses, will likely keep “Chippy” in place until he decides its time to go.

About the only thing that could upset this cosy oligarchic arrangement is a palace coup. And the problem with palace coups is that they are best remembered for changing faces – not policies.

With no realistic prospect of a Kiwi policy disruptor like Corbyn, Sanders, AOC, or even Kamala Harris, taking control of the Labour Party, New Zealand’s wealthiest citizens can continue to sleep easy.

This essay was originally posted on the Interest.co.nz website on Monday, 9 September 2024.

The Hollow Party.

We are the hollow men/We are the stuffed men/Leaning together/
Headpiece filled with Straw. Alas! – The Hollow Men, T.S. Eliot 1925

LABOUR’S GREAT GOOD FORTUNE, as New Zealand emerged from the worst of the neoliberal revolution, was to possess Helen Clark. It was Clark who engineered the installation of Mike Moore to “save the furniture” as Labour’s popularity plummeted in 1990. And, it was Clark who made sure that, when Moore failed (albeit narrowly) to win the 1993 general election, she would be the one to replace him. Labour thus acquired a highly intelligent, politically savvy leader, steeped in the Labour tradition, but also fully acclimatised to the new ideological climate. She would remain Labour’s leader for the next 15 years – beating Harry Holland’s daunting tenure by one year!

Clark’s worth to Labour is confirmed by the fact that for 9 of those 15 years she was New Zealand’s prime minister. But, it must also be acknowledged that Clark cost Labour dearly. Her political skills were more than equal to seeing-off anyone who harboured thoughts of replacing her, and she was not the sort of person to groom a popular replacement. As a consequence, when she and her government were defeated by John Key in 2008, the best successor she could bequeath to the Labour Party was the worthy, but uninspiring, Phil Goff.

What followed were nine years of bitter political in-fighting and ideological drift. Labour went through five leaders, the last of which, Jacinda Ardern, improved upon Clark’s losing Party Vote by a derisory 2.9 percentage points, and had to be elevated to the prime-ministership by the NZ First leader, Winston Peters.

Ardern, while no intellectual, was a superb communicator who seemed to pass through history without touching the sides. Her initial response to the global Covid-19 Pandemic laid claim to the hearts and minds of so many New Zealanders that in 2020 Labour attracted sufficient support to govern alone. But, as the Coronavirus continued to evolve, and Labour’s efforts to control it proved insufficient, Ardern and her cabinet began to lose their lustre. The voters turned away.

Aware that the political magic had deserted her, Ardern passed the mantle of leadership to Chris Hipkins. Perhaps aware of just how much love Labour had already lost, Ardern’s most obvious successor, Grant Robertson, had declined to accept her crown. What happened over the next 10 months spoke eloquently of just how hollow, intellectually and morally, the Labour Party had become.

Part of Clark’s aptitude for electoral politics was her understanding of just how far the New Zealand electorate was prepared to tolerate a government stepping away from the politics of “Middle New Zealand”. In spite of the fact that her core personal beliefs were more closely aligned with the Labour Left than the Labour Right, she instinctively kept her distance. Only when there was overwhelming support for the Left’s position – as was the case with the Nuclear Free policy and the US-led invasion of Iraq – would she align herself with the more radical elements of her party.

Understandably, Clark’s reticence gave rise to considerable frustration within the Labour Left which, following her retirement from parliamentary politics, found release when Labour’s Policy Council adopted a large number of policies which Clark and her right-hand woman, Heather Simpson, had for many years sidelined. So it was that, in 2011, Goff, the former Rogernome, was asked to sell the most left-wing Labour manifesto in years.

Labour’s poor showing in 2011 (the worst since 1928) convinced the three young Labour politicians (all of them former Beehive staffers) who had entered Parliament in 2008 – Grant Robertson, Chris Hipkins and Jacinda Ardern – that the Labour MPs and activists responsible for promoting policies that threatened the neoliberal status-quo would have to be weeded-out of Labour’s ranks. Promoting women’s rights, Māori rights and gay rights was fine, advocating state ownership, higher taxes and stronger unions was not.

In Labour’s caucus, the Robertson-Hipkins-Ardern Troika fought its way to supremacy. In the Labour Party organisation, however, it was not always in control. The Left’s success in giving the party’s affiliated unions, and its ordinary rank-and-file members, a major role in electing Labour’s leader earned it the Troika’s unflagging enmity. It is of no small importance that when Grant Robertson offered himself as a candidate for the Labour leadership, which he did twice – first against David Cunliffe in 2013, and then again, against Andrew Little, in 2014 – he was defeated. Had the party rules required Ardern to be elected by the whole party in 2017, rather than by caucus alone (permitted due to the imminence of the general election) would she have won?

In the six years that the Troika dominated Labour (and New Zealand) the work that began with ensuring David Shearer – rather than David Cunliffe – became leader when Goff stepped down from the leadership in 2011, was completed. With Chris Hipkins doing much of the heavy lifting, Labour MPs associated with policies promoted by the Left found themselves politically outmanoeuvred and isolated – to the point where a number simply abandoned Parliament for more rewarding and less stressful careers elsewhere. The party organisation’s independence was similarly eroded, with MPs and their hangers-on exercising an increasingly unhealthy degree of influence over its key functions: policy-making, candidate selection and Party List-ranking.

The long-planned and impressively seamless transition from Ardern to Hipkins in January 2023 showed just how comprehensive the Troika’s victory over the party had been. No one dared stand against “Chippie”, who now attempted to execute a series of policy U-turns in the name of returning to Labour’s “bread and butter”.

Without focus group approval, no policy – not even one promoted by the Finance and Revenue ministers working together – could count on the Leader’s support. Progressive initiatives in justice and corrections were jettisoned overnight for no better reason than the polls had pronounced them unpopular. About the only policies that remained sacrosanct were those related to the aims and objectives of identity politics. These had to remain in place – if only to reassure Labour MPs that they were still on the side of the angels. Unfortunately for Labour’s re-election chances, these were the precisely the policies that a majority of the voters hated most.

When Cunliffe secured just 25.13 percent of the Party Vote in 2014, Hipkins – some say with tears in his eyes – begged his leader to recognise the uncompromising judgement of the electorate and step down. Nine years later, having led his party to a crushing defeat, and after securing just 26.91 percent of the Party Vote, Hipkins thought it best, all round, that he remain in place. Not one member of Labour’s caucus objected. After all, it was nobody’s fault, the changing fortunes of politics, as the theme song of “Only Fools & Horses” puts it, “is like the changing of the seasons and the tides of the sea”.

If ever Labour needed a leader with an instinctive feel for how much Middle New Zealand will bear. Someone steeped in her party’s values and traditions, with the intellect and courage to argue for them positively and persuasively. A politician who understands that the essence of her craft is to be active, not passive; and who grasps that the duty of a leader is to heal, not harm. Then, surely, Labour – and New Zealand – needs that person now.

Maybe Helen could have another go?

This essay was originally posted on The Democracy Project website on Monday, 29 January 2024.

Politics Barren Of Principle.

Meet The New Boss: We are living in a political culture unmoored to anything more edifying than the petty priorities of personal ambition.

LABOUR’S VICTORY over Dr Gaurav Sharma will be complete, final, and soon. In roughly twenty-four hours (23/8/22) he will be expelled from Labour’s caucus and relocated to the farthest-back of the back-benches. His expulsion from the Labour Party proper will follow just as soon as the members of its ruling council can be gathered together on Zoom.

While some pundits are speculating that the waka-jumping legislation might be used to eject Sharma altogether from the House of Representatives, the Labour leadership seems to have already decided there is no need to go that far. Sharma’s crusade has, to date, been on behalf of himself. He is seeking a redress of wrongs, real or imagined, about which most voters simply do not care. Jacinda and her colleagues will be quite content to leave Dr Sharma pissing into the wind.

Which is a pity. Because the political culture of the New Zealand parliamentary complex could do with a radical shake-up. Not only on account of the bullying behaviour which pervades both Labour and National, but because it is a political culture unmoored to anything more edifying than the petty priorities of personal ambition. The picture presented to the public is of a politics almost entirely barren of principle. Accordingly, voter cynicism, not to say disgust, grows ever stronger – to the detriment of our entire democratic system.

But not, it must be said, to the detriment of the over-arching ideological infrastructure of neoliberalism. In both major parties there is a common horror of unorthodox economic ideas, which manifests itself in the rigorous suppression of anything resembling the promotion of an alternative economic regime.

One would have to return to the late-1980s and early-1990s to encounter a genuine clash of economic ideas within either Labour or National. That these factional struggles preceded the splits that gave rise to the NewLabour Party (later the Alliance) and NZ First is, of course, the chief explanation for the determination in both major parties to enforce an all-encompassing economic orthodoxy at every organisational level.

This horror of disagreement and debate is, however, born of something more than mere “voters don’t vote for disunity” pragmatism. In the Labour Party, particularly, there is a deeply entrenched conviction that the promotion of policies unsanctioned by the leadership should never be taken at face value. The assumption is always that alternative ideas are nothing but a front for those angling to provide alternative leadership. The proposition that economic policy can hardly avoid engendering strong principled objections is rejected out-of-hand. Advocacy of unsanctioned economic policies is condemned as an attempt to cast caucus colleagues in an unfavourable moral light – i.e. an ego-driven assault on the integrity of the “team”.

Nowhere was this attitude towards dissent more obviously on display than during the period when David Cunliffe was leader of the Labour Party (2013-14). The personal animus directed towards Cunliffe was so intense that it fundamentally undermined his attempt to steer Labour to victory via a more leftward course. Rejecting neoliberal economic theory was presented by Cunliffe’s caucus rivals as tantamount to rejecting common-sense – something only an excessively ambitious and/or slightly unhinged person would do. Cunliffe’s fate became a cautionary tale. Factions based on principle, rather than personality, were bound to founder.

Cunliffe’s election as leader by Labour’s rank-and-file, followed by the wafer-thin defeat of the current Labour leadership faction by Andrew Little, may also explain the Ardern Labour Government’s apparent disdain for one-person-one-vote democracy. If the faction of common sense could be defeated by ill-informed and/or ill-intentioned party members, then, clearly, there was something wrong with the whole democratic idea. Far better to leave the matter of choosing a party leader to the people who know the potential candidates best. In other words: personality must always be allowed to trump principle.

The National Party’s woes in the fraught business of selecting candidates may also be traced back to the decisive victory of neoliberalism over paternalistic conservatism in the run-up to the 1990 general election. As with Labour, the assumption at both the summit of the National caucus and the National Party organisation soon became that only oddballs and trouble-makers questioned the moral and practical efficacy of neoliberal economic policies.

Steven Joyce’s corporatisation of the National Party in the aftermath of its worst ever electoral defeat in 2002 effectively disconnected all the levers of democratic accountability that mattered. The qualifications for entry into National’s caucus were narrowed to evidence of unwavering support for the economic status-quo, coupled with an impressive CV – ideally in the fields of commerce and law. The not altogether welcome outcomes of National’s recruitment processes serve as a warning of what can happen when adherence to principle becomes a matter of conformity, not character.

The only matters in which a measure of disagreement within caucuses was deemed acceptable were those that did not impinge directly on economic policy. If the public’s growing suspicion that the major parties had become ideologically interchangeable were to be allayed, some dramatic public demonstrations of political diversity were needed.

Marriage Equality, Euthanasia, Legalising Cannabis, Decriminalising Abortion. On these “conscience issues”, the full glory of principled political behaviour could be put on display. With the Whips removed, the public could glimpse, if only for a moment, what a legislature freed from the dead hand of ideological orthodoxy might look like.

Such visions had to be momentary, however, for the very simple reason that allowing factions to form within parties, or, worse still, encouraging genuine ideological differences to develop between parties, would only result in such factions being replicated in the general population. And a general population engaged in genuine debate between factions and/or parties capable of making a real difference to the direction of economic and social policy would place the whole, over-arching ideological infrastructure of neoliberalism in the gravest peril.

Also imperilled would be the profoundly elitist and democratically deficient culture of “governance” and administration that has grown up to keep the neoliberal state apparatus ticking-over. Popular engagement in the running of public institutions terrifies the professionals and managers who have, over the course of the past four decades, come to see themselves as the sole repositories of competence outside the private sector.

Genuine discussion and debate are not encouraged in a public sector now entirely beholden to the cult of expertise. Increasingly, at the levels of both local and central government, the people’s elected representatives find themselves being gently “nudged” in directions deemed “appropriate” by the experts. Genuine discussion and debate, by making it plain to ordinary folk that there is more than just one way of looking at an issue, strikes at the very heart of these “experts’” unmandated authority.

Said ordinary folk can only hope that the sudden rise in “expert” commentary on the perils of misinformation and disinformation is not the first sign that the neoliberal nomenklatura is preparing to strike back against the risible political pretensions of the “deplorables”.

Dr Sharma’s alleged “mad”/”bad” behaviour has made him dangerous to know. One can only imagine what might have happened if he had rebelled in the name of something more critical to the wellbeing of New Zealanders than his personal reputation.

This essay was originally posted on the Interest.co.nz website on Monday, 22 August 2022.

Sweet Surrender.

Who's Ya Mama? What makes Labour’s decision to dilute the power of the Electoral College so puzzling is that Jacinda Ardern would undoubtedly be elected by Caucus and Party with near unanimous support.

THERE IS ALWAYS something deeply depressing about the phenomenon of people voluntarily surrendering their political power. That sense of tragedy is only compounded when the power being surrendered was hard-won. To have power ripped away from you by force is bad enough, but to meekly hand it over is morally reprehensible. Why, then, has the Labour Party chosen to behave reprehensibly?

The hard-won power under scrutiny here is the right of the Labour Party’s rank-and-file members and its trade union affiliates to participate in the election of the Labour Leader – alongside Labour’s Parliamentary Caucus. This was significantly diluted at Labour’s “virtual” Annual Conference which took place over the weekend just passed (6-7/11/21).

Utterly inadequate coverage of the issue by the mainstream news media (assisted greatly by the Labour Party organisation’s decision to bar journalists from witnessing the entire decision-making process) has given rise to a certain amount of uncertainty. Will the new electoral regime operate only when Labour is in government, or all the time? Assuming it’s the latter, then the electoral college will only ever come into force if a candidate for the leadership fails to secure two-thirds of the votes of his or her Caucus colleagues.

The most common argument advanced by those favouring this revision of the Party’s constitution was historical. Members were encouraged to look at the record. The Electoral College delivered Labour David Cunliffe and Andrew Little. The Caucus, on its own (because the election was less than three months away) delivered Labour – and New Zealand – Jacinda Ardern.

Cunliffe led Labour to its worst result since the 1920s. Ardern lifted Labour’s vote to the point where Winston Peters could anoint her Prime Minister. According to this argument, the Electoral College has been road-tested to the Party’s near destruction. Labour’s recent political history proves that party leaders are best chosen by the candidates’ parliamentary peers: the people uniquely positioned to see them up-close and personal. In short: Caucus should elect Labour’s Leaders, because Caucus knows them best.

Superficially, at least, this argument has a powerful attraction. There is no doubt that David Cunliffe was not well-liked by a significant number of his Caucus colleagues. Nor can it be disputed that his conduct of the 2014 election campaign was, at best, erratic. There are, however, a great many reasons why an ambitious member of any parliamentary caucus might end up being despised by his or her colleagues. Likewise, there are many factors contributing to the production of an erratic campaign.

A clever and ambitious parliamentarian who refuses to recognise the political pecking-order, and/or is unwilling to join one or other of the dominant party factions, preferring, instead, to set about constructing his or her own, will very, very swiftly acquire some pretty powerful enemies. Their enmity will only intensify if it becomes clear that the upstart has made him or herself the darling of the party. Throw ideological heterodoxy into the mix (almost certainly the explanation for Cunliffe’s popularity with Labour’s anti-neoliberal rank-and-file) and that enmity will turn deadly. The senior Labour MPs behind the ABC – Anybody But Cunliffe – group certainly recognised a dangerous interloper when they saw one.

A party caucus containing a majority of political enemies can inflict a great deal of damage on the best of leaders. Private off-the-record briefings against Cunliffe began long before he was overwhelmingly elected to the Labour Party leadership in September 2013. His exposure of the yawning ideological gulf separating Labour’s Caucus from the Party’s rank-and-file only made matters worse.

The open and relentless hatred directed against Cunliffe arguably kept him emotionally and politically off-balance. Running an effective Opposition election campaign is hard enough when your party’s heavy-hitters are all behind you. Battling one’s electoral opponents, while attempting to fend off one’s political enemies (and their well-briefed media allies) makes the job well-nigh impossible.

That Grant Robertson failed (by the narrowest of margins) to defeat Andrew Little in the second (and last?) leadership contest was in no small measure due to the membership’s smouldering resentment at the Caucus’ all-too-evident failure to support their choice for leader. That resentment congealed into something approaching despair when it became clear that Little, himself, saw his job as “healing the divisions” within both the Caucus and the Party by more-or-less jettisoning just about every left-wing policy victory that had been achieved since the departure of Helen Clark in 2008.

It was into this dank and sullen slough of despond that Jacinda Ardern descended like a star-shell just a few weeks prior to the 2017 General Election. The Caucus knew that it had no other choice, and the Party was glad it didn’t. Jacinda’s hands were refreshingly clean of fratricidal blood; she made people feel good; and, Jeez! she could hardly be any worse than her predecessors. Hardly! From her very first press conference it was clear that “Jacinda” had been hiding her light under a bushel. From the moment she began to speak, the assembled media’s mouths fell open in frank amazement. Here was a communicator to rival David Lange.

What makes Labour’s decision to dilute the power of the Electoral College so puzzling is that Jacinda Ardern would undoubtedly be elected by Caucus and Party with near unanimous support. For that matter, her most likely successor, Grant Robertson, would, almost certainly, be elected by a similar, unequivocal, margin. For the foreseeable future, therefore, the Electoral College process poses no threat to Labour’s succession planning.

What is it, then, that lies behind the Labour Party organisation’s self-limiting impulses? The answer, sadly, is the general antipathy to the fundamental processes of democracy that characterises so much of the thinking of the Professional and Managerial Class. Since the 1990s, this class has emerged as the dominant social and political force: not only within the Labour Party, but across New Zealand’s public and private bureaucracies.

This frankly elitist mode of governance seeks to achieve two key objectives. The first is to centralise decision-making wherever possible. Handing-off the most important judgements to those with the requisite credentials and experience to make them. The second, related, objective is to insulate and protect these decision-makers from the ill-informed and all-too-easily-manipulated masses. Only in this way can the world (and the Labour Party) be protected from its demagogic Cunliffes. Only then can the ignorant and the importunate enjoy the benefits of its dazzling Arderns.

The tragedy inherent in this narrative lies in its substitution of the broad-based wisdom of crowds for the narrow prejudices of cliques. (A problem all-too-familiar to the National Party!) Expecting a self-perpetuating oligarchy to think beyond its own self-interest is the purest folly. After all, testing the acceptability of a political party’s leadership by regularly submitting it not only to the endorsement of its peers, but also – and more importantly – to the judgement of its members, is, what a properly functioning parliamentary democracy should encourage.

To see demos (the people) surrender kratos (power) to those who put no store by their judgement, is always a distressing sight. Perhaps it is time for the Electoral Commission to take its statutory obligation to ensure that all registered political parties follow “democratic procedures” a little more seriously?

This essay was originally posted on the Interest.co.nz website on Monday, 8 November 2021.

Louisa Wall: Rebel In A Wrong Cause

Running The Wrong Way: Brave though she undoubtedly is: and tough as an old Rugby boot; on the crucial issue of China, Louisa Wall is just plain wrong.

I WISH I could like Louisa Wall. I really do. Labour has so few mavericks in its ranks these days. Following the historical contribution of the late, great Jim Anderton, they’ve rather gone out of fashion. And, no, I’m not forgetting the exploits of the hapless David Cunliffe. He did, indeed, show every sign of being a gutsy maverick – right up until he won the Labour leadership and self-destructed. (Albeit more slowly that Todd Muller!) Certainly, Labour’s due a rebel or two. Someone to recall the party to its core principles. Which it needs. Unfortunately, Wall is not that person.

Which is not to suggest for a moment that Wall hasn’t made an important contribution to New Zealand political history. Her Marriage Equality legislation fulfilled a long-standing goal of the LBGTQI community – on whose behalf she has been a tireless fighter.

Wall’s staunch advocacy on these issues has not been without cost. In the South Auckland Pasifika communities she represented there were many who harboured deeply-held religious objections to the causes she espoused. Wall’s outspokenness saw her fall prey to the internal machinations of Labour’s factions. That she faced them down, and forced them to back-off, bears testimony to her courage and resilience. As Jacinda Ardern discovered, Louisa Wall is one tough cookie.

Tough to the point of pig-headedness. It’s the greatest weakness, as well as the greatest strength, of the maverick. Once they get hold of an idea, or attach themselves to a cause, they will not let it go. Neither, sadly, will they suffer anyone to interrogate their adherence. Mavericks are not very good at seeing both sides of the story. They are even worse at admitting that their version of the story might not be the right one.

Hence my unwillingness to join Wall’s fan-club. Brave though she undoubtedly is: and tough as an old Rugby boot; on the crucial issue of China, Louisa Wall is just plain wrong.

If you intend to make your next big stand on the field of foreign affairs, then the very first thing you have master is the art of due diligence. In the fraught field of geopolitics, claims and counter-claims fly back and forth like artillery shells – with almost as much destructive effect. Before committing yourself to one side or the other, it is absolutely imperative to discover who is making those claims – and why.

Nowhere is this more important than on issues relating to China. Under the leadership of Xi Jinping, China is asserting its interests in ways that make the rest of the world – especially the United States – uneasy. For more than a century, China was on the receiving end of Western and Japanese imperialism. Weak, and prey to foreign exploitation and conquest, it had not been in a position to assert very much of anything. The rest of the world is neither accustomed to, nor comfortable with, a powerful China. Predictably, it is resisting its resurgence.

China’s treatment of political dissidents and ethnic minorities has provided her enemies with extremely useful propaganda targets. Rather than examine the reasons for the Chinese Government’s behaviour, which, in its essence, is indistinguishable from that of all other great powers when confronted with internal challenges to their imperium (think of England’s treatment of the Irish, or the United States’ treatment of Native Americans) China’s enemies accuse her of committing the most appalling atrocities – up to and including genocide.

Wall has proved herself to be an eager consumer of these horror stories. She has been convinced that the Chinese authorities are “farming” political prisoners for their organs. Rather than believe that the Chinese state is willing to use the organs of executed criminals to either save or improve the lives of desperately ill citizens, she has accepted at face value the claim that officials are murderously “harvesting” the organs of innocent civilians for profit. Rather than accept the Chinese authorities’ explanation that it is incarcerating Uighur nationalists and Islamists in re-education-through-labour camps in preference to going after them militarily, Louisa has bought into the USA-driven accusation that the Chinese are engaged in “genocide”. Given that the Uighur population of Xinjiang province is roughly twice as large as it was 50 years ago, one could be forgiven for observing that the Chinese definition of genocide is somewhat different to our own!

At the heart of just about all of these accusations against the Chinese Government one finds the virulently anti-communist cult known as Falun Gong. It is from Falun Gong that supposedly independent groups like End Transplant Abuse in China (ETAC) and The China Tribunal are fed the outrageous and unproven charges of organ farming, crimes against humanity, and genocide.

It is highly instructive that prior to the election of Xi Jinping as China’s head-of-state, Falun Gong’s horror stories were largely received with the international disdain they deserved. It is only since China’s new assertiveness began manifesting itself around the world, that the cult’s claims have been accepted as admissible evidence. The United States has ceased to treat China as a friendly off-shore manufacturing platform, and begun portraying it as a disruptive and increasingly aggressive force in world affairs. In this new endeavour, set in motion by President Barack Obama, the gruesome propaganda of Falun Gong has proved invaluable. So much so, in fact, that one could be forgiven for thinking that it was created for just such a purpose!

Given Louisa Wall’s political achievements, her descent into the murky waters of anti-Chinese propaganda is deeply regrettable. (Especially so, given the Falun Gong cult’s vicious homophobia.) There are already more than enough New Zealanders busying themselves in fomenting the next Cold War, without this hitherto formidable Labour MP joining their ranks.

The well-being of hundreds-of-thousands of New Zealanders depends upon this country’s diplomatic and economic relationship with China remaining strong. China’s enemies will not reward New Zealand for engineering a break with Beijing. Their local helpers will be cast aside with as much dispatch as they were recruited.

It is a great pity that Louisa Wall appears to have forgotten that mavericks are called mavericks precisely because they refuse to be driven in the same direction as the rest of the herd.

This essay was originally posted on The Daily Blog of Tuesday, 13 July 2021.

KiwiBuild Should Be Targeting The Poor.

Lotto - Oops, I Mean KiwiBuild Ballot - Winners: Derryn Jayne and Fletcher Ross pose with Phil Twyford and Jacinda Ardern outside their new KiwiBuild property in Papakura. Twyford is willing to buy Labour’s promised houses straight off the property developers’ plans. At a stroke, bad financial bets are transformed into sure things. Phil’s happy. The developers are happy. The banks are happy. And the winners of KiwiBuild ballots are over the moon.

KIWIBUILD, Labour’s flagship housing policy promising first-home-buyers 100,000 affordable dwellings by 2028, is a dog. It started out as a political fix and has yet to mature into coherent policy. Nowhere are Labour’s ambitions for KiwiBuild matched by the resources needed to fulfil them. Worst of all, the people most in need of 100,000 extra dwellings – beneficiaries and the working poor – are not the scheme’s targets. KiwiBuild is a perverse mixture of corporate and middle-class welfare, offering a handsome subsidy to builders and a generous hand-up to young professionals.

KiwiBuild began its life as David Shearer’s answer to David Cunliffe. In November of 2012, convinced that the Labour Left was plotting to replace him, Shearer was casting about desperately for a political circuit-breaker. He needed something that would halt the ambitious Cunliffe in his tracks and reassure the party’s rank-and-file that he was a Labour man through-and-through. KiwiBuild was that something. His announcement that the next Labour government would build 100,000 affordable homes for young New Zealanders brought Labour’s 2012 annual conference to its feet. In the warm glow of the membership’s support, an emboldened Shearer banished Cunliffe to the back-benches.

Having served its purpose, KiwiBuild was filed and forgotten. The necessary detailed development work on how it would be implemented, by whom, and at what cost, never progressed much beyond the hurried sketch vouchsafed to conference delegates and the news media six years ago. The consequences of Labour’s failure to fill in the gaps are now embarrassingly clear.

A Labour Party with stronger connections to the world beyond Parliament would have identified much sooner the practical limitations of KiwiBuild. The people and the products required to build 10,000 dwellings every year for 10 years simply aren’t out there. New Zealand’s construction industry remains chronically short of labour. The private sector will struggle to meet its own deadlines – let alone the government’s.

Unlike the First Labour Government, Jacinda Ardern’s coalition is attempting to build thousands of additional new dwellings with a construction industry at full-stretch. John A. (Jack) Lee, the man who oversaw Labour’s massive state-house-building programme between 1935-1938 could summon thousands of unemployed carpenters, tilers, plumbers, electricians and other construction workers to the cause of housing the people. Idle factories could be reactivated to supply the required building materials. This is what made “The Houses That Jack Built” possible. The absence of such vital enabling factors explains the houses that Phil Twyford cannot build in 2018.

Six years ago, when KiwiBuild was born, the full extent of the housing crisis had yet to emerge. Back then, affordability was the issue. The near impossibility of young professionals getting their feet on the first rungs of the housing ladder. Fortuitously, these same young professionals just happened to be the Shearer-led Labour Party’s prime electoral targets. First and foremost, KiwiBuild was a political “solution” to a middle-class “problem”.

Six years on, and the focus has shifted to beneficiaries and the working-poor sleeping in their cars or shivering in the overcrowded garages of family and friends. Voters for Jacinda’s transformational “politics of kindness” they may be, but they’ve not been deemed worthy of 10,000 houses per year. For these, the working-class people in whose name Jack Lee built the “social housing” of 80 years ago, 6,000 new state houses, in total, is considered adequate.

The irony is that, at an estimated price of $650,000, KiwiBuild’s “affordable homes” are rapidly moving beyond the reach of all but the luckiest of middle-class offspring. Those to whom the Bank of Mum and Dad still happily provides a deposit. Those for whom the wills of Mum and Dad hold out the prospect of eventual relief.

Undeterred, the Housing Minister presses on. Treasury may have revised downwards its projection of the scheme’s contribution to residential investment – but what do those “kids” know? Twyford is willing to buy Labour’s promised houses straight off the property developers’ plans. At a stroke, bad financial bets are transformed into sure things. Phil’s happy. The developers are happy. The banks are happy. And the winners of KiwiBuild ballots are over the moon.

About the only people who aren’t happy are those who believe that publicly funded social interventions on the scale of KiwiBuild should be directed first to those most in need. Tragically, however, the Coalition Government is selling the poor a pup.

This essay was originally published in The Otago Daily Times and The Greymouth Star of Friday, 2 November 2018.

Why I'm Not At The Labour Conference This Weekend.

A Fading Rose: Labour’s villains have become banal, and her heroes are dead and gone. For me, the party’s annual conference no longer beckons. Fortunately, there’s plenty to keep me busy in my garden. This year’s roses are a particularly vivid shade of red.

 

I SHOULD BE at the Labour Party’s annual conference. I fully intended to attend. I’d received the usual e-mail inviting me to apply for media accreditation. But, with the deadline looming, I just couldn’t do it.

 

Wearing a media pass around my neck this year would have felt hypocritical – inauthentic. Labour conferences have never been just another journalistic assignment for me. Ever since I cast my first vote (more than 40 years ago now, God help me!) Labour’s cause has been my cause. Regardless of whether I was attending as a delegate, or a journalist, Labour conferences mattered.

 

It’s why I worked so hard to get to them. As the only political organisation in New Zealand with a realistic prospect of actually improving the lives of working people, the internal life of the Labour Party has, for me, always been a matter of huge significance.

 

As a journalist, I never found the official conference speeches of much interest. What mattered to me were the conversations with rank-and-file delegates; the policy workshop debates on economics, trade and foreign affairs [all closed to media this weekend] and the chance to get some idea of who was on the rise and who was on the way out. I never got the impression that more than a handful of the journalists in attendance were remotely interested in any of these things, but for me this annual pulse-taking was invaluable.

 

I kept coming back for more because I never went away from a Labour conference disappointed. At the grass-roots level of the party there was always a sense of optimism. No matter what the setbacks, I never got the sense that Labour’s forward march had been halted.

 

Even at the annual conference following the rout of the Fourth Labour Government in 1990, delegates could point to established leaders like Helen Clark and Michael Cullen, and to new MPs like Steve Maharey, Pete Hodgson and Leanne Dalziel, and tell me with considerable confidence that Labour’s sun would rise again. And, of course, nine years later, with a lot of help from the Alliance, it did.

 

Even with the departure of Clark and Cullen, the party’s confidence remained undimmed. Indeed, between 2008 and 2014 I detected an exciting groundswell of rank-and-file assertiveness. There were hundreds in the party who, with Clark safely ensconced in New York, were determined that their party should, once again, become the driving force of progressive change in New Zealand. These were great conferences to attend.

 

Two individuals stood out in this headlong rush for a Labour rebirth: Helen Kelly and David Cunliffe. Like those undaunted delegates in 1990, Labour activists looked to them in confident expectation of another brilliant sunrise. It was not to be.

 

Maybe that was it – the reason why, on the afternoon of Tuesday, 1 November, I just couldn’t fill in my accreditation form. Helen was gone, and now David was going. Labour’s bright sunlit morning had turned into a grey rainy day.

 

Yes, the delegates will all be there in the conference hall this weekend. The workshop debates will splutter and stutter to some sort of conclusion. Party vacancies will be filled, reports presented, and Andrew will deliver his speech. Except, this time, the political drama’s script will not have been written by a Kirk, a Lange, a Clark, or even a Roger Douglas, but by a committee.

 

Labour’s villains have become banal, and her heroes are dead and gone. For me, the party’s annual conference no longer beckons. Fortunately, there’s plenty to keep me busy in my garden. This year’s roses are a particularly vivid shade of red.

 

This essay was published jointly on Bowalley Road and The Daily Blog on Sunday, 6 November 2016.

Radicalising, Renewing & Repositioning Labour: David Cunliffe’s Impossible Mission.

The Party Was Behind Him - Shame About The Caucus: David Cunliffe’s unforgiveable sin – at least in the eyes of his colleagues – was being seized of the need for Labour to reposition itself ideologically. He understood that, in the aftermath of the global financial crisis, social-democracy must either have a rebirth of radicalism or fade into irrelevance. It was not a message that his colleagues wanted to hear. When Cunliffe, despairing of rousing Labour’s parliamentary wing, reached out to the party membership, he sealed his fate.

 

SO, DAVID CUNLIFFE’S LEAVING POLITICS. I’d be lying if I told you I’m surprised. The toxic, soul-rotting environment of the Labour caucus is no place for a rational human-being. In fact, what really surprised me about Cunliffe was how long he managed to endure the company of those “colleagues” whose petty jealousies and unreasoning hatreds inflicted so much damage – both to him and the Labour Party he tried to lead.

 

Some on the left of New Zealand politics have compared Cunliffe to Jeremy Corbyn. Inasmuch as both men have been on the receiving end of an extraordinary amount of poisonous media invective and rank caucus disloyalty the comparison is a sound one. But Cunliffe cannot lay claim to Corbyn’s outsider status. As a highly competent and effective cabinet minister in the Clark-led Labour Government, he moved in the inner, not the outer, circles of his party.

 

Corbyn languished on the back benches of the House of Commons for thirty years, a harmless throwback to the era of Michael Foot and Tony Benn. Cunliffe’s ambition was much easier to spot. That was his undoing. As one commenter on the Labour-leaning blog, The Standard, put it: “David Cunliffe was always the smartest guy in the room. Unfortunately he knew it, and let others know he knew it.”

 

Cunliffe’s other, even more unforgiveable, defect – at least in the eyes of his colleagues – was being seized of the need for Labour to reposition itself ideologically. He understood that, in the aftermath of the global financial crisis, social-democracy must either have a rebirth of radicalism or fade into irrelevance. It was not a message that his colleagues – beset as so many of them were with moral and intellectual lethargy – wanted to hear. When Cunliffe, despairing of rousing Labour’s parliamentary wing, reached out to the party membership, he sealed his fate.

 

In this aspect, also, the parallels with Corbyn are striking. Neoliberalism, it would seem, has no stronger defenders than the legatees of Tony Blair and Roger Douglas. Having defanged their respective labour parties so ruthlessly in the 1980s and 90s, the prospect of social-democracy growing a new set of teeth is one which these children of the neoliberal revolution will do almost anything to prevent.

 

It was Corbyn’s good fortune to take control of the British Labour Party a full five years out from the UK’s next general election. It’s a schedule that affords him just enough time to win the ideological and organisational battles within the party before turning to defeat Labour’s real enemy – the Tories.

 

Time was a luxury David Cunliffe did not have. He won the leadership just 12 months out from the 2014 election. Defeating his internal enemies and the National Party was simply too big an ask.

 

This was the brute fact that undid Cunliffe’s leadership. Torn between honouring his promises to the membership, and preventing his caucus enemies from moving into open revolt, Cunliffe found it almost impossible to make the crucial strategic and tactical decisions that effective political leadership demands.

 

One of the reasons Cunliffe was so reluctant to abandon the leadership in the days following the 2014 election was because he knew how vital it was to finally have the internal fight that the exigencies of waging an election campaign had postponed. By 27 September 2014, however, Cunliffe was in no shape to launch a struggle for the heart and soul of the Labour Party. Emotionally wrung-out, his marriage falling apart, assailed with extraordinary viciousness by his caucus enemies and deserted by even his closest allies, he resigned the leadership and threw what support remained to him within the party behind the candidacy of Andrew Little.

 

Part of the explanation for Cunliffe waiting so long to announce his retirement is, perhaps, that he couldn’t quite bring himself to accept that Little was never going to radicalise, renew or reposition the Labour Party. In spite of the worldwide voter hunger for a principled alternative to the exhausted philosophy of free markets and free trade, the New Zealand Labour caucus’s preference for fudging and fiddling remains undiminished.

 

So David Cunliffe is leaving. Moving back into the commercial world where, in marked contrast to the political world, incompetence is punished and excellence rewarded.

 

Walk away with your head held high, David. You gave it your best shot. The struggle continues.

 

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, 4 November 2016.

Cause For Celebration: An Entirely Fictional Exchange.

"Shhh, Sir! Walls have ears. Even Here." "No, Rachel, not here. The GCSB sweeps this place every week. We can speak freely here."

 

A PRIVATE DINING-ROOM in an exclusive Wellington restaurant. Seated at a window table and reading a newspaper is JULIAN, a well-dressed senior officer in the NZ Security Intelligence Service. The door opens and a waiter ushers in RACHEL, a much younger officer.

 

RACHEL: That’s not The Guardian I see you reading, is it Sir? Tsk, tsk! What would the Minister say?

 

JULIAN: Well, yes, I’m afraid it is, Rachel. I’m keen to discover exactly how much they actually know about our SAS deployment in Iraq.

 

RACHEL: Shhhh, Sir! Walls have ears! Even here.

 

JULIAN: No, Rachel, not here. The GCSB sweeps this place every week. We can speak freely here.

 

RACHEL: Well, that’s good to know because I’ve just received some very interesting intelligence from one of our more reliable sources in the Labour caucus.

 

JULIAN: Hah! I’m relieved to hear that at least one of them is reliable! What have you been told?

 

RACHEL: It’s your old friend, Mr Cunliffe. He’s leaving Parliament.

 

JULIAN: About bloody time!

 

RACHEL: I thought you’d be pleased.

 

JULIAN: More relieved than pleased, Rachel. Cunliffe was a real problem.

 

RACHEL: For a while.

 

JULIAN: Oh, for more than a while, I think. From the moment he began to grasp the implications and ramifications of the Global Financial Crisis the man’s been a bloody great thorn in our side. Vaunting ambition armed with a convincing explanation. Nothing is more dangerous to the status quo than a man in a hurry with a story that makes sense.

 

RACHEL: Not that very many people ever got to hear it.

 

JULIAN: No, that’s true. But we were forced to rely on the media to an extent that made me distinctly uncomfortable.

 

RACHEL: But it worked, didn’t it? Our journalistic assets made sure that Cunliffe’s message never got taken seriously.

 

JULIAN: Oh yes, it worked. But the media is an unreliable ally. All it takes is for someone like Cunliffe to say something on live television or radio that resonates with the electorate. Something that can’t be edited out. Something that sets people on fire. When that happens the bloody journos just can’t help themselves. A story – is a story – is a story.

 

RACHEL: But Cunliffe did just the opposite, didn’t he? I mean, if we had worked night-and-day for a month we couldn’t have come up with anything half as good as “I’m sorry I’m a man.”

 

JULIAN: Heh-heh! No. That was way beyond even our most sanguine expectations!

 

RACHEL: And even if Cunliffe had said something … inconvenient … we were still covered. Didn’t you tell me that there was plenty up the Service’s sleeve if the campaign looked about to tip Cunliffe’s way? Something about a woman? Or was it two women?

 

JULIAN: Oh yes, there was plenty in reserve if something was needed to “shift the narrative” – as our academic friends might say.

 

RACHEL: Like a $100,000 bottle of wine?

 

JULIAN: Like a $100,000 bottle of wine.

 

RACHEL: And then there were the ABCs – although they never needed much in the way of encouragement from us!

 

JULIAN: No, they didn’t. But it was good to know they were there. Nothing turns the voters off faster than the spectacle of public disunity – let alone open revolt.

 

RACHEL: They would really have gone that far?

 

JULIAN: Rachel, my dear, they would have gone as far as tearing the Labour Party into bloody little chunks on the six o’clock news if that was what it took to prevent Cunliffe becoming Prime Minister. These are seriously unpleasant people – even by our rather loose standards.

 

RACHEL: Well, I suppose we only have to look at what’s happening in the UK to get some idea of what Labour MPs are prepared to do to ensure that a socialist never becomes prime minister. I had no idea MI5 had so many of them in its pocket.

 

JULIAN: No, neither did I. It has really been quite an impressive demonstration.

 

RACHEL: Corbyn’s still there, though.

 

JULIAN: For now. We, on the other hand, have something a little closer to home to celebrate. Some Champagne, I think.

 

RACHEL: Excellent idea, Sir! But, before we celebrate, I’d like to know why you think it took Cunliffe so long to take the hint – or should that be hints?

 

JULIAN: Do you know, I think it can be put down to his misplaced faith in Andrew Little. He really did believe that the man he helped to install as leader was a politician after his own, rather soft, Anglican heart. That although Little had to pretend to the ABCs that he shared their loathing of him, Cunliffe was convinced that, deep down, what Little really shared was his ideas. That, when victory came, there would be a prime, if not a prime-ministerial, job for him in the new Labour-Green cabinet. It’s taken him two years to realise that, in the highly unlikely event that Labour does win the 2017 election, there will be nothing for David Cunliffe. Nothing at all.

 

RACHEL: Good to know that Little can be relied upon to do the right thing.

 

JULIAN: Yes, it is, isn’t it? Cause for celebration. See if you can find that waiter, will you.

 

This sketch was originally posted on The Daily Blog of Wednesday, 2 November 2016.

The Secret Agreement.

The Crusher Returns: Judith Collins, a shrewd Auckland lawyer, is well aware of the widely-held belief that politics has become an almost entirely disreputable profession. She knows that those who enter it are greeted with a knowing cynicism – as if both the voter and the politician have entered into a secret agreement that nothing good will ever come from the latter’s intentions and achievements.

 

JUDITH COLLINS is to be congratulated. There are very few western nations in which a parliamentarian hauling as much baggage as Ms Collins would be given a second chance. When did ours become the country that awards the average politician more lives than the average cat?

 

Is no one surprised that Ms Collin’s rehabilitation is so unsurprising. Is no one asking: why wasn’t her treatment of Justice Binnie; her decision to allow Serco into the New Zealand prison system; her fraught dealings with the Orivida company; and her friendship with the highly controversial blogger, Cameron Slater, enough – more than enough! – to rule out a return to the Cabinet Table?

 

The answer lies with, and in, us – the New Zealand electorate. Our steady disengagement from the political process (in which we were once amongst the world’s most enthusiastic participants) has been accompanied, and justified, by the widely-held belief that politics has become an almost entirely disreputable profession. Those who enter it are greeted with a knowing cynicism – as if both the voter and the politician have entered into a secret agreement that nothing good will ever come from the latter’s intentions and achievements.

 

In practical terms, this means that it is the honest and principled politicians who attract the most scathing condemnation. Such people have clearly failed to understand their job description, which demands only a show of decency – and not even that if the politician’s indecent objectives can be achieved swiftly, decisively – and with ostentatious brutality.

 

As Freddy Gray wrote recently in the British magazine, The Spectator: “What strange people we Brits are. We spend years moaning that our politicians are cynical opportunists who don’t stand for anything. Then along comes an opposition leader who has principles — and appears to stick by them even when it makes him unpopular — and he is dismissed as a joke.”

 

Not that the Brits have “strange” all to themselves. When David Cunliffe, having heard the statistics on domestic violence and met with some of its victims at the Women’s Refuge charity’s annual conference, told his audience that it made him “feel sorry for being a man” – a not unreasonable admission in the circumstances – he was universally pilloried. The New Zealand electorate doesn’t appreciate that sort of raw and unmediated political honesty.

 

Ms Collins, a shrewd Auckland lawyer, would never make such a fundamental error. She knows what New Zealanders expect of their politicians – and she gives it to them good and strong.

 

Critics accuse her of arrogance, but a heapin-helpin of self-importance has been de rigueur for National Party politicians ever since the days of “Piggy” Muldoon.

 

Others accuse Ms Collins of being unable to differentiate private from public responsibilities. But those who believe that all politicians are venal and self-serving remain completely unfazed by such charges.

 

The same applies to the Serco contract. Sure, the company has a less than stellar international reputation. Yes, it is determined to make incarceration profitable. But – so what? That’s what Capitalism does, and it’s unreasonable to ask capitalist politicians to do otherwise.

 

But, surely, it is the duty of the Prime Minister to uphold the highest standards of behaviour in public office? Regardless of the low esteem in which many citizens hold their political representatives, shouldn’t the Prime Minister do everything within his power to elevate the public expectations of his government?

 

John Key knows better than to attempt such a risky project. Improving the average citizen’s opinion of politics and politicians must, of necessity, involve reversing that secret agreement between the leaders and the led. Instead of endorsing the public’s withering contempt for the political process, Mr Key would be forced to contradict it. Instead of validating the unspoken assumption that the system is rotten and immutable, he would have to redefine politics as the best way of improving the lives of ordinary people.

 

In conveying these messages to the electorate, the Prime Minister would, of course, also be asking them to assume responsibility for holding him and his ministers to account. He would be inviting them to apply a consistent moral code to the conduct of all politicians, and imposing the duty of taking action to reprimand and/or punish all those who break that code. In short, he’d be demanding they behave like virtuous citizens.

 

“Crusher” Collins would roll him before you could say “Democracy”.

 

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, 11 December 2015.

Puppet On A String? Has Andrew Little Become The Plaything Of Labour’s Dominant Factions?

Hardly Napoleonic Andrew: Consigning David Cunliffe to the rear of the battlefield, and replacing Nanaia Mahuta with Kelvin Davis do not strike me as the decisions of a wise general. (Although they may be those of a panicky one.) While advancing his Right, a wise general would have taken care to keep his Left strong – just in case his confidence in all these newly promoted commanders proves to be misplaced.

 

CLEARLY I ERRED in likening Andrew Little to Napoleon Bonaparte. Whatever else people may say of Napoleon, no one can fairly accuse him of dissipating his forces on the field of battle.

 

Concentration, concentration, concentration, was Napoleon’s mantra: what the American Civil War General, Nathan Bedford Forrest, later summarised as “getting there firstest, with the mostest”.

 

Consigning David Cunliffe to the rear of the battlefield, and replacing Nanaia Mahuta with Kelvin Davis do not strike me as the decisions of a wise general. (Although they may be those of a panicky one.) While advancing his Right, a wise general would have taken care to keep his Left strong – just in case his confidence in all these newly promoted commanders proves to be misplaced.

 

As a number of right-wing commentators have already pointed out, the treatment of Cunliffe is as wasteful of the man’s talent as it is self-indulgently vindictive. They contrast Little’s demotion of Cunliffe with National’s treatment of Bill English. In spite of leading his party to the worst defeat in its history, English’s colleagues did not consider it appropriate to signal his imminent political demise. On the contrary, his talent was retained and directed, very successfully, against the political enemy.

 

But that’s Labour’s problem, isn’t it? For far too many Labour politicians, the political enemy is seated on their own side of the parliamentary aisle. The Government benches contain only their opponents.

 

It is interesting to speculate about how Cunliffe’s supporters in the broader Labour Party will respond to Little’s brutal treatment of him. Some will recall the statespersonship of Helen Clark, who judiciously divided up the top jobs between her friends – and foes. The result – a “ministry of all the talents” – proved crucial to ending the serious factional strife that had long plagued Labour’s caucus. Others will recall with some bitterness the assurances given to them by the Labour hierarchy at the party’s recent conference.

 

The bitter divisions of the past had been healed, they said. Caucus and party were now working together, they said.

 

Yeah, Right.

 

It is now very clear that the only “peace” secured at Palmerston North was a Carthaginian Peace. Satisfied that their rank-and-file opponents had no more fight left in them, Cunliffe’s enemies immediately prevailed upon Little to order the New Lynn MP’s political demotion.

 

Expressed in the most brutal terms, Little’s reshuffle pushes Grant Robertson’s people (especially Jacinda Ardern) “up”; casts Cunliffe’s people “down”; and raises the very serious question as to whether Little has any “people” at all.

 

Are we looking at a Labour Leader in command of his own caucus, or a Labour Leader dancing to the tune of its dominant faction? A faction characterised by petty spitefulness, and almost completely lacking in the magnanimity so crucial to building and bringing together an effective government.

 

The last time we had a puppet Leader of the Opposition was in the years immediately prior to the 1984 general election. The difference then, of course, was that the public never doubted that David Lange was going defeat Sir Robert Muldoon and bring an end to nine years of divisive National rule.

 

That Andrew Little is about to do the same to John Key is not a bet that many New Zealanders would take. And this reshuffle in no way improves the odds.

 

This essay was posted on The Daily Blog and Bowalley Road on Monday, 30 November 2015.

Frank Sinatra - One For My Baby (And One More For the Road)

 

 

Drowning your sorrows in the early hours, in an empty bar, recalling the love that's lost. Isn't this just the right song, not only for David Cunliffe, but for the whole damn Labour Party? Take it away, Mr Sinatra ...

 

Video courtesy of YouTube

 

This posting is exclusive to Bowalley Road.

One For The Road: David Cunliffe Reminds Labour’s Rank-And-File Why They Voted For Him.

 

WAS IT PURE COINCIDENCE? Just 48 hours before the opening of Labour’s annual conference in Palmerston North, David Cunliffe contributes a blinder of a speech to Parliament’s General Debate. Watching and listening to the speech it’s hard to avoid the impression that the man lumbered with all the responsibility for Labour’s catastrophic 2014 election defeat was using his speaking slot to send a message to the gathering rank-and-file.

 

“If you’ve been wondering why you voted for me back in 2013,” Cunliffe seemed to be saying, “it’s because, when I want to, I can unleash a speech like this.” He had no need to add: “Can anyone on Labour’s front bench say the same?” Because Labour’s members were already asking themselves that question.

 

It’s increasingly difficult to form a clear impression of Cunliffe the politician. Blackening Cunliffe’s name, and trashing his performance as party leader, have played a crucial role in enhancing the shaky legitimacy of the man who replaced him. It has also allowed the party to avoid examining too closely the contribution of other Labour MPs to the 2014 debacle. The stories of Cunliffe’s indecision; his inability to formulate a strategy and stick to it; his obsessive and exhausting micromanagement; these are all that’s needed, now, to explain away Labour’s worst electoral performance since 1922.

 

And Andrew Little (the man whose winning margin was less than 1 percent) has been able to emerge from this carefully constructed narrative as Labour’s unlikely saviour. After a long run of incredibly bad luck, Little is portrayed as Labour’s lucky break. A strong and stable contrast to the unaccountably hopeless Cunliffe.

 

Because that is the contradiction that so many of Cunliffe’s supporters still cannot reconcile: the before-Cunliffe and the after-Cunliffe. The coolly ruthless assassin of David Shearer’s hopes; the man who repeatedly reassured his supporters that he would be leader of the NZLP, and then proved as good as his word. Could he also be the hapless, accident-prone, foot-in-mouth Cunliffe who, as Leader of the Opposition, took Labour from 37 percent in the polls to 25 percent at the ballot-box?

 

Listen to Cunliffe’s speech carefully, and an answer, of sorts, emerges. National’s strategy, which turns out to be exactly the same strategy as that of the Crosby-Textor-advised Conservative parties in the UK and Canada, is to use the Right’s allies in the news media (and the blogs) to destroy the reputation of new Opposition leaders before the public has time to form a firm opinion of their own. Foot-tripped from the very beginning, and unable to establish any kind of secure footing, Cunliffe struggled constantly to tear off the labels being fastened to him from every quarter (including, tragically, by members of his own caucus).

 

Cunliffe does not dispute the facts of his less-than-stellar performance as Labour Leader. There are things he knows he should not have done – or, at least, done differently. All he was trying to say in his Wednesday-afternoon speech was, in essence, two things. First: “You weren’t wrong to make me your leader, because, when I’m good – I’m bloody good!” And second: “I know I stuffed a lot of things up, but, never forget, I had plenty of help!”

 

This essay was originally posted on The Daily Blog of Saturday, 7 November 2015.

Andrew Little: Wanted And Wondered At

Here Comes The Sun: Andrew Little's political career has prospered in no small way by the care he has taken to mask both his ambition and his talent until the most propitious moment. Like Shakespeare's Prince Hal he has imitated the sun; hiding his brilliance behind "base contagious clouds" until the moment "when he please again to be himself" so that "being wanted, he may be more wondered at".

 

HAS THERE EVER BEEN a leader who commanded absolute loyalty? A king, a party boss, a prime minister so blessed with the attributes of leadership that not even one of his barons, ward-heelers or cabinet ministers ever felt moved to ask the question: “Why not me?”

 

Even in the court of King Arthur, Mordred plotted murder and ruin. The “one brief shining moment” that was the Kennedy White House shivered in the shadow of Lyndon Johnson’s unappeasable ambition. On the plane-ride back from Norman Kirk’s Waimate funeral his colleagues lobbied furiously for the numbers to succeed him.

 

The acid of political power dissolves all friendships, all pacts, all solemn pledges of loyalty. All leaders knows this and conduct themselves accordingly. On the battlefield, they bring victory. At the ballot box, more votes than their opponents. On the Government Benches, favourable polls and reliable majorities.

 

The moment a leader fails to furnish the victories, votes and validation promised to his followers, challenges – and challengers – are inevitable.

 

Power belongs to those with courage to take it – and the skill to wield it.

 

Which is why the initial conclusions of Labour’s election review panel made me chuckle. One of the reasons the party performed so poorly, reported the four wise heads appointed to identify where Labour went wrong in 2014, is that its parliamentary caucus failed to unite around the leadership of David Cunliffe.

 

Well, duh!

 

David Cunliffe knew that he faced a caucus full of enemies when he put his name forward for the Labour leadership. What he did not appear to understand was how urgently he needed to neutralise that enmity.

 

In this respect, the behaviour of Mr Cunliffe’s successor is instructive.

 

To begin at the beginning: Andrew Little’s whole parliamentary career appears to have been inspired by Prince Hal’s soliloquy from Shakespeare’s Henry IV, Part One:

 

Yet herein will I imitate the sun, 
Who doth permit the base contagious clouds 
To smother up his beauty from the world, 
That, when he please again to be himself, 
Being wanted, he may be more wonder’d at, 
By breaking through the foul and ugly mists 
Of vapours that did seem to strangle him.

 

There are times when one’s leadership ambitions are better served by keeping them hidden than by openly parading them before one’s colleagues and the world. Like Prince Hal, Mr Little was at pains to smother up his leadership qualities until such time as his party had most need of them.

 



Prince Hal In Glasses? Labour's Andrew Little.

 

And what a masterful job he made of it! As far as most of the political class was concerned there was very little to be hoped for from Mr Little’s wafer-thin victory over Grant Robertson. Commentators almost gloated that Labour’s new leader was everybody’s second choice; had never won a seat; carried neither his caucus nor the party membership; and almost didn’t make it into Parliament at all! Needless to say, the wider electorate’s expectations were similarly modest.

 

But Mr Little, like Prince Hal, understood that:

 

By how much better than my word I am, 
By so much shall I falsify men’s hopes.

 

Far from being “a modest little man, with much to be modest about” – as Winston Churchill famously described his nemesis, Clement Atlee – Mr Little burst out of Labour’s corner with his dander well-and-truly up, landing punches on a Prime Minister whose reaction to this new leader’s wholly unexpected onslaught was almost as disbelieving as the Press Gallery’s.

 

For the first time in a long time the whole of the Labour Party experienced that surge of energy and hope that comes from seeing one’s champion lay low the enemy’s best fighter. MPs, party grandees, union bosses and ordinary members alike heard Mr Little tell the Prime Minister to “cut the crap” and knew that Labour had, at long last, a leader worthy of the name.

 

Mr Cunliffe failed dismally to unite his caucus for the very simple reason that nothing he did gave his enemies cause to cease questioning his right to lead them. Like a medieval king defeated on the field of battle, Mr Cunliffe was forced to endure, through the whole duration of his long retreat, the contemptuous scorn and open hostility of his embarrassed barons.

 

Mr Little, by contrast, having demonstrated the requisite courage and skill, can now present that surest proof of leadership.

 

Followers.

 

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 December 2014.