The Greens’ Unhappy Relationship With Power.

Rule-Breaker? It is easy to see why poor James Shaw found himself brutally deposed as the Greens’ co-leader. By seeking the responsibilities of leadership – and exercising them – he violated the first rule of Green Party governance. Then, by accepting the limitations of the Green Party’s electoral mandate (7.8 percent of the Party Vote) and practicing the art of the possible with Labour and National, he violated the second.

THE GREENS have a problem with power. The whole concept of leadership makes them uneasy. Who should have power? How should it be wielded? These are questions radical environmentalists have struggled with since the Values Party was formed 50 years ago. If nothing else, the peculiarly self-destructive actions of the Greens over the course of the past week have exposed how urgently the party needs to address and resolve the problems of political power.

Perhaps the first question that the Greens need to answer is: How much power do they want? This may sound like a silly question, but exactly how powerful the Greens see themselves becoming has never been all that clear. Unlike most parties, the Greens do not ask the electorate explicitly for a decisive parliamentary majority.

Now, you may say this reflects a commendable humility on the part of the Greens. By accepting that securing a parliamentary majority is beyond them, and that the best they can hope for is to partner a much larger party in a broad progressive coalition, they are, surely, acknowledging political reality? True, but they are also accepting that the amount of power they will ever be able to wield in their own right is limited.

Except, in the face of global warming and all the other environmental threats to the planet, isn’t the Greens’ acceptance of relative powerlessness a little self-defeating? Examining their manifesto, it is clear that unprecedented state power will be needed to achieve the goals the Greens have set themselves. Power that only a determined Green Prime Minister, Cabinet and Caucus, commanding a huge parliamentary majority, could hope to wield.

All of which confirms the Greens’ deeply contradictory relationship with power. Green Party members seem unusually diffident about exercising power in their own right, but are resentful of the power exercised by other party members over them. At the same time, the Greens aren’t the least bit fazed, collectively, by the idea of the entire population being required to submit to their party’s radical environmental remedies.

Blend these contradictions into a single Green political style and what do you get? A party deeply mistrustful of effective leadership. A party which gives more weight to the objections of minorities than it does to the affirmations of majorities. A party which compensates for its crippling internal contradictions by demanding unquestioning public compliance with Green Party policy. A party, moreover, which makes these demands fully aware that, on a good day, it represents barely a tenth of the electorate – and yet considers that enough.

With all this in mind, it is easy to see why poor James Shaw found himself brutally deposed as the Greens’ co-leader. By seeking the responsibilities of leadership – and exercising them – he violated the first rule of Green Party governance. Then, by accepting the limitations of the Green Party’s electoral mandate (7.8 percent of the Party Vote) and practicing the art of the possible with Labour and National, he violated the second.

Shaw’s first violation bespoke an unhealthy amount of un-Green ambition. His second dispelled the membership’s cherished illusion that maximum policy gains can be extracted, without compromise, on the basis of 10 out of 120 seats in the House of Representatives. His thumping victory notwithstanding (71 percent of the AGM’s voting delegates supported Shaw) the man obviously had to go!

It’s tempting to interpret Shaw’s landslide “victory” as evidence that the core of the Green Party membership retains a healthy measure of common-sense. Unfortunately, that same membership recently ratified a revised Green Party constitution that militates aggressively against common-sense. Only a party deeply ambivalent towards effective leadership, and deaf to the appeals of political realism, could endorse a process allowing 29 percent of voting delegates to declare an unopposed candidate with 71 percent support – not elected.

More to the point, the Greens’ constitution also attests to an ambivalent relationship with democracy itself. It takes a particularly virulent strain of individualism to construct a political ideology in which majorities are, at best, suspect, and, at worst, instruments of tyranny. Certainly, it places the Greens well outside the great movements for human liberation that have illuminated the past 250 years.

To save the world, you must be willing to lead it. If you would have us trust you to do that, then, for the planet’s sake, trust yourselves!

This essay was originally published in The Otago Daily Times and The Greymouth Star of Friday, 29 July 2022.

Can Labour Serve Two Masters?

Sold! Is Labour capable of putting its ideological convictions to one side in the name of holding on to its electoral advantage? There is a price to be paid either way. So, which of Labour's two "masters" will pocket it? Pragmatism or Idealism?

THE QUESTION to be answered, one way or the other, before 2023 is pretty simple: Can Labour serve two masters? Will it hold to the course recommended by its professional advisers? Or, will the party be driven into the weeds by the convictions of its caucus? Put another way: is Labour capable of putting its ideological convictions to one side in the name of holding on to its electoral advantage? There is a price to be paid either way. So, which master will pocket it? Pragmatism or Idealism?

Before anyone gets too excited, the idealism in question is not the old-fashioned social-democratic kind. Virtually no one in Labour’s caucus favours pushing capitalism to the outer limits of its tolerance. This is not a caucus that is going to agitate for the reintroduction of universal union membership, or the unfettered right to strike. There’s no hardcore bunch of “Big Taxers” arguing for a top income tax rate of 90 percent on incomes over $200,000. Nor will a “Renationalisation Faction” emerge to threaten the Aussie banks. The Labour Party of 2020 doesn’t do that sort of idealism.

There is actually a greater chance of Labour’s pollsters and focus group moderators advancing these sort of ideas than Labour’s MPs. That’s because New Zealanders, like Americans, are surprisingly positive about making the rich pay their fair share and reclaiming their country’s economic sovereignty. Notwithstanding the electorate’s willingness to embrace such progressive policies, those same pollsters and focus group moderators would, nevertheless, hesitate to recommend their official adoption. Poke capitalism too hard and it will, most assuredly, poke you back – but much harder.

Labour’s professional advisers would also be acutely aware that a fair amount of the poking-back would come from the party’s parliamentarians. Considering the socio-economic strata from which nearly all Labour’s MPs have been recruited, such opposition would be entirely understandable and predictable. Turkeys don’t vote for Christmas.

No, incipient socialism is not what Labour’s professional advisers fear. After all, it’s not as if there’s anything resembling a majority available for such a programme in the House of Representatives. Not even the Greens would feel comfortable advancing such a programme – not when they considered the reaction of their voters in the central city electorates, the ones on fat salaries, the ones among whom both their own party and Labour go looking for “good” candidates. New Zealanders may surprise opinion pollsters with their progressive policy preferences but, lacking a political party to take them forward, those preferences don’t amount to a hill of electoral beans.

What scares the bejesus out of Labour’s advisers, however, is the radical cultural agenda for which an alarming number of Labour and Green MPs would be prepared to die in a ditch. They are all-too-aware that this is not an agenda which enjoys broad electoral support. Even worse, they know that it is not an agenda which the parties of the Right (even in the unlikely event that a significant number of liberal Nats subscribed to it) could possibly allow to pass unchallenged. More bluntly, it’s an agenda which promotes division and dissension in ways that do not favour Labour’s re-election. The Government’s professional advisers will be urging the Prime Minister and her Cabinet colleagues to steer well clear.

But will they listen? Can Kris Faafoi be dissuaded from introducing legislation against “hate speech”. Can the Maori Caucus be turned aside from embracing the sort of constitutional radicalism that the Maori Party has already gone all the way with? How many women in Labour’s caucus are willing to wear the term “TERF” as a badge of honour? Will Nanaia Mahuta’s Cabinet colleagues counsel her against removing the right of electors to force local authorities to submit their proposals for Maori wards to a referendum? Is Chris Hipkins strong enough to resist the introduction of a compulsory New Zealand history curriculum in which greedy Pakeha settlers are invariably cast as the “baddies”, while noble indigenous Maori are consistently presented as the “goodies”? Will agreement at Ihumatao open-up all previous Treaty settlements for re-negotiation – even as it allows privately-owned land into the anti-colonial Poker game?

Labour MPs who would energetically resist being labelled “socialists” (in any other sense than endorsing the nostalgic veneration of Mickey Savage) might find it a great deal harder to deny their support for “decolonisation”, curbing hate speech, and facilitating early gender transitioning. Repudiating such key elements of the radical cultural agenda will be made even harder if they become the subject of private members bills. Will Jacinda Ardern risk a caucus revolt by ordering her parliamentary troops to ruthlessly vote all such legislation down? And, if she doesn’t, how does she propose to prevent such bills passing? Now that Winston’s handbrake is no longer there to give her plausible deniability on the pragmatism front?

The Prime Minister’s problem is positively Biblical in its moral complexity. It is, after all, in Matthew’s gospel that Jesus is recorded as saying: “No man can serve two masters: for either he will hate the one, and love the other; or else he will hold to the one, and despise the other. Ye cannot serve God and mammon.”

Unfortunately, it is Jacinda Ardern’s efforts to serve both masters that has so far distinguished her second term. Mammon, it must be said, has – so far – received the best service. Keeping the business community sweet, and not “the preferential option for the poor”, has been the order of the day. God must be wondering when it’s going to be his turn.

There is a way in which the Lord could be served that even the professionals might see some merit in exploring. If economic and cultural radicalism could be combined: if emancipating people from the grip of poverty could be undertaken at the same time as they were being encouraged to break free from the grip of racism, sexism and transphobia, then the prospects of success for each of these emancipatory projects would be greatly enhanced. History, certainly, leaves little room for doubt: if a revolution is not an all-embracing festival of freedom: economic, cultural, sexual and political; then, almost certainly, it is not a revolution at all.

This essay was originally posted on The Daily Blog of Tuesday, 8 December 2020.

The Looming Fight.

Social Distancing Be Damned - It's Jacinda! Shortly after ascending to Labour’s leadership, Jacinda described herself as a “pragmatic idealist”. It was an inspired oxymoron – packing into just two words the essence of the social-democrat’s dilemma. It was good to know that she knew what lay ahead of her. That as undisputed leader of the centre-left, she would herself become the battlefield upon which these contradictory impulses: her idealism and her pragmatism; would engage one another.

 

THERE’S A FIGHT LOOMING. No, not with National – they’ll be licking their wounds for years. Not with Act, either. Their numbers will gradually decline as National’s slowly recover. And the looming fight certainly won’t be with the Greens. They have some very serious soul-searching to do out there in the political wilderness where the voters are poised to send them. Like all prophets, they will be required to wrestle with the Devil in lonely places, defeat him, or never be heard from again. No, the fight that’s looming will be where it always is when the future of New Zealand is being decided – in the Labour Party.

Now some on the Left may be anticipating a renewal of the fight that was brought to an abrupt end by David Cunliffe’s catastrophic performance in the general election of 2014. The election (by the slimmest of margins) of Andrew Little to Labour’s leadership was a vote, by what remained of Labour’s left, for what David Lange called “a cuppa” – a pause in the ongoing hostilities during which the wounded could be attended to and the dead decently buried. It was a long truce, during which nothing much happened either ideologically or practically. Under Little, a grey fog descended upon Labour. A poll-depressing pall which was only lifted by the sudden rise of Jacinda’s glorious sun.

If, as seems increasingly likely, that same brilliant Jacinda leads Labour to an absolute electoral victory on 17 October, all thought of some sort of factional renaissance should be dismissed out of hand. For the foreseeable future, what Jacinda wants, Jacinda is likely to get. Which means that the fight, at least initially, will be for the Prime Minister’s ear. Ground-breaking policies will be proposed. Bright futures sketched-out confidently on paper serviettes. Historic opportunities grandly explained. Only then will the real fight finally begin – the fight between Jacinda’s heart and Jacinda’s mind.

Shortly after ascending to Labour’s leadership, Jacinda described herself as a “pragmatic idealist”. It was an inspired oxymoron – packing into just two words the essence of the social-democrat’s dilemma. It was good to know that she knew what lay ahead of her. That as undisputed leader of the centre-left, she would herself become the battlefield upon which these contradictory impulses: her idealism and her pragmatism; would engage one another.

The coalition with NZ First and her understanding with the Greens spared the prime Minister the worst of it. For the past three years jacinda has been able to make out a plausible case for her idealism having little choice but to reach a series of pragmatic accommodations with “Mr Peters” innate conservatism. It was a good line, because it allowed her followers to believe that Jacinda’s idealism remained unbeaten and unbowed. That, given a chance, her bright blade would flash in the sunlight and the forces of inertia and indifference would be laid low beneath its righteous fury. Jacinda’s pragmatism, it seemed, was all about making sure that, when the moment came, her idealism would be ready.

Barring something truly awful intervening between now and election day, it would seem that this long awaited and keenly anticipated moment will soon be upon us. Jacinda’s pragmatism, if it is not to be twisted into a cynical and demoralising opportunism, will then be required to meet the extraordinary challenge of setting the unencumbered Labour government’s idealistic pace. How “unrelentingly positive” can Jacinda and her colleagues afford to be – and how kind?

Much will turn on how Jacinda perceives “idealism”. Does she equate it with the phenomenon that some call “wokeness”? Is it a simple matter of scratching every itch inflamed by the Twitterati’s ideological eczema? Will an unencumbered Labour Government put all TERFs to flight? Legislate for tino rangatiratanga? Ban all forms of hate speech? Destroy the dairy industry? Squeeze the rich until the pips squeak? Or, is Jacinda’s idealism something more organic? Something rooted in the idea of community? In the mutual obligations of citizenship?

We must hope it is the latter. Because if it is the former, then the next three years will be very fraught and full of political danger. “Wokeness” has about as much support in the New Zealand electorate as the Green Party – which is to say, bugger-all. Not that the woke understand that. As actual or wannabe members of the “progressive” wing of the political class, they are anxious to impose their own, tortuous, ideology upon what they regard as the deplorable prejudices of their unenlightened fellow citizens. If Jacinda’s idealism turns out to be woke idealism, then the people will flee from her in droves – and bitter disappointment.

But I do not believe that the looming fight will be a struggle between a woke Jacinda and the rest of us. I believe it will be a fight between Jacinda’s vision of a government that continues to foster the solidarity and sacrifice manifested in the battle against Covid-19, and those who want to put an end to it. Her idealism, so far, has been about bringing New Zealanders together. Is it too much to hope that an unencumbered Labour government, led by Jacinda, will be one which builds on New Zealanders’ new appreciation of the role an active and protective state can play in securing the common welfare of all its citizens?

Everything in Jacinda’s political career to date points to her almost instinctive understanding of how important it is (to quote Jim Anderton’s famous injunction) “to build your footpaths where the people walk”. Her political pragmatism has always recognised the futility of trying to force people to be good. Her political idealism is founded on her conviction that people find goodness in themselves, or not at all. “They are us”, she declared on 15 March 2019, and a whole nation showed the world what she meant. “Unite against Covid-19”, she urged, and New Zealand did just that. “Be kind”, she implored, and 50 percent-plus of us are willing to go on giving it a try.

This essay was originally posted on The Daily Blog of Tuesday, 22 September 2020