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.

Parting Shots.

On The Way Out: Gaurav Sharma has clearly had enough of Parliament and is more than ready to return to his life as a medical professional. What he has been willing to do on the way out, however, is draw aside the curtain, if only for a moment, and let the electors of New Zealand see how their representatives are treated. For this, those same electors owe him a vote of thanks. 

GAURAV SHARMA has clearly had enough of parliamentary life. Equally clearly, he is not suited to it. Nevertheless, he has made an extremely useful contribution to the bullying debate.

His op-ed piece for the NZ Herald confirms what all political journalists should know: that Parliament is Ground Zero for institutionalised bullying. It would, however, be naïve to expect members of the Press Gallery to augment Sharma’s observations with their own. The Press Gallery is no less enmeshed in the system of punishments and rewards that pervades every corner of the parliamentary complex than the MPs themselves.

What emerges from the Gallery and the Labour Party itself over the next few days promises to be a master-class in the art of dismissing, diminishing and disparaging an individual who has had the temerity to breach the iron law of omerta which governs the practice of party politics.

Like Fight Club, the first rule of party politics is not to talk about party politics.

It is to be hoped that Sharma is a resilient person, because the amount of emotional violence heading his way will likely be personally devastating.

That hope may be a vain one, however, since Sharma appears to have entered Parliament without the necessary acculturation to the vicious political environment of the New Zealand Labour Party.

Purely from the perspective of an outsider, Sharma’s selection appears to have been a pro-forma affair. Very few Labour strategists would have anticipated success in the Hamilton seats – which, prior to 2020, had been in National’s column for four elections in a row. Sharma would likely have seen himself as nothing more than a booster of Labour’s Party Vote. A not unreasonable view, given his Number 63 position on Labour’s Party List. Just as it did for most Hamiltonians, Sharma’s victory in Hamilton West would have come as a mighty shock.

Nothing like as big a shock, however, as the political culture of the Labour Caucus. Those Labour politicians who spent years fighting their way into Parliament would have had an enormous advantage over a political naïf like Sharma. They would know what to expect. Whose way to keep out of. Whose prospects to block. And, whose hunting party to join when the Leader’s minions identified a member of caucus to be taken down a peg or two. All of them would have mastered the courtier’s art of sucking-up and punching-down. Putting it bluntly, a disturbingly high proportion of Sharma’s colleagues would be – as he has now charged – bullies.

Those who weren’t bullies would’ve been doormats. Selected as candidates for their placidity and biddability, they are the sort of people who can be relied upon to back their party right or wrong, and to support whoever occupies the top leadership roles with an equally undiscerning fervour. The traditional term for these types is “hack”. Sharma likely found these Labour lambs even more disturbing than Labour’s wolves.

Judging from his op-ed piece, Sharma may even have been labouring under the misapprehension that he was in Parliament to represent the electors of Hamilton West. He may even have thought that they were the people to whom he was ultimately answerable. Wrong! Wrong! Wrong! That is merely his constitutional role.

His actual role is to shut up and do as the Whips command. Make a speech on a subject he knows nothing about. Sit on a Select Committee and vote exactly as the Labour Chair indicates – no matter how wrong or stupid. Most importantly, say nothing, write nothing, and do nothing that attracts unwanted attention.

The poor man would soon have discovered that this “sit still and shut up” rule applied with equal force in caucus. If he was ever incautious enough to stand up in front of his colleagues and express views contrary to those of the Front Bench, then he would very soon have appreciated why those tasked with the responsibility for keeping the Back Bench under control are called “Whips”.

Think about it for a moment. Labour has a caucus of 65 MPs. Most of them, like Sharma himself, highly qualified professionals. How, then, is it possible that all but two of these intelligent and (presumably) principled men and women (the exceptions being Louisa Wall and, now, Sharma) have never even once spoken out of turn or (God forbid!) expressed a viewpoint on any major – or even minor – issue that was not in 100 percent conformity with the official party line? What does it take to inspire and maintain that sort of collective discipline? The answer, tragically, is fear. Fear of being written-off as a troublemaker; and fear of the emotional violence inevitably inflicted upon those who, at least initially, refuse to be bullied, by those who long ago abandoned all resistance.

The good little bunnies of the Labour caucus will, of course, object that party politics cannot function without party discipline. They will remind their critics that politics has always been “the art of the possible”, and that nothing will ever get done if a government is mired in endless internal debates.

These objections will be backed-up energetically by the Press Gallery as basic common-sense. How could they not, when the members of the Press Gallery are just as much victims of the “Stockholm Syndrome” as the MPs they cover. Gallery journalists are expected by their editors to hunt as a pack – not on their own. They are also prone to being bullied by the darker variety of ministerial minion, who will threaten them with a denial of access to the key newsmakers if they step too far out of line.

How many of the current crop of Labour MPs and Gallery journalists are aware of the fact that the First Labour Government’s caucus was a hotbed of dissent and disputation, and not above over-ruling the demands of Cabinet Ministers? Strangely, given the dictates of “common sense”, that First Labour Government still managed to keep its promises to the electors – and transform a nation. Which is not to say that the 1930s party was lacking in bullies, merely that, back then, there was no shortage of Labour MPs willing to stand up to them.

Sharma, sadly, is not doing that. He has clearly had enough of Parliament and is more than ready to return to his life as a medical professional. What he has been willing to do, however, is draw aside the curtain, if only for a moment, and let the electors of New Zealand see how their representatives are treated. Those same electors owe him a vote of thanks: not only for the glimpse of the bullying culture that pervades their Parliament, but also for the demonstration that is bound to follow of how that same, sick, system responds to its critics.

Undoubtedly, there will be Labour supporters reading these words with mounting disbelief – and fury. It is fitting, then, to close with a vivid illustration of Labour’s long-standing culture of bullying.

At the Labour Conference of 2002, a tiny handful of mostly younger delegates attempted to protest the Labour-led Government’s decision to sent troops to Afghanistan. As Helen Clark began speaking, one young man rose to his feet and attempted to make his opposition known. As he did so, a number of party heavyweights (fortuitously seated next to him) also rose to their feet. The dissenter was grabbed – none too gently – and physically dragged from the auditorium. Two young women, positioned closer to the stage, who attempted to unfurl an anti-war banner, received very similar treatment.

When Willie Jackson boasts that Labour has a different definition of democracy – he’s not kidding.

This essay was originally posted on The Daily Blog of Friday, 12 August 2022.