The real question is: “Why is Labour going to lose?” At the beginning of the year the party stood at 38 percent in at least one of the major polls. Hipkins’ takeover from Jacinda Ardern had been executed flawlessly and his “bonfire of unpopular policies” had been well-received. For a few precious weeks, the electorate believed Labour was listening to them. Had Hipkins and his colleagues followed through: focussing, laser-like, on “bread and butter” issues as promised; they would now be odds-on-favourites to win the electoral race. But, they didn’t follow through, they stopped listening, and Labour’s long, slow slide into the sub-30 percent electoral “death-zone” commenced.
It is clear now that Hipkins’ really didn’t care one way or the other about the “unpopular policies” – and neither did most of his colleagues. There was no factional divide in either Cabinet or Caucus over issues like Three Waters or Free Speech: no ideological conflict with passions running high on all sides; just the polls, the focus-group findings, and the tactical opportunities they presented.
That’s why what was probably the least popular of the “unpopular policies”, Three Waters, underwent only cosmetic changes. The Māori caucus wanted it because Iwi leaders wanted it, and if they didn’t get it, they might start knocking on Te Pāti Māori’s door. No one else in the Labour caucus proper felt strongly enough about the issue to organise any kind of serious resistance. So, Hipkins allowed Three Waters to be tweaked and re-named, and hoped that the public would be satisfied with a ludicrous name change. They weren’t.
It was left to Labour’s resident policy boffins, Grant Robertson and David Parker, to come up with something to replace the “unpopular policies” theme. It had to be about tax (because tax was National’s headline policy initiative) and it had to be bold enough to get the voters thinking and talking about Labour’s radical proposals all the way to the polling booths. To give Robertson and Parker their due, the plan they came up with felt like a winner. Certainly, it would have kept the political spotlight fixed upon the Government. Parker’s investigation into who-pays-what in tax had already predisposed the public to radical change – the polls were saying so quite emphatically – so, it just might have worked.
But, if the polls were pointing to widespread public support for making the super-wealthy pay their fair share of tax, Hipkins was adamant that the focus-group reports were all pointing the other way. From the other side of the world, in Vilnius, Lithuania, the Prime Minister issued his “Captain’s Call”, voiding Robertson’s and Parker’s plan, thereby making Labour’s election defeat inevitable.
Why did he do it? Because, deep down, Hipkins is a conservative politician, with a conservative politician’s deep-seated horror of anything that threatens to upend the status quo, and a genuine conservative’s loathing for all those who presume to challenge it. Oh sure, he is a Labour Party politician, but only because he got into parliamentary politics via student politics, where a rhetorical commitment to the Left is more-or-less de rigueur.
At heart, however, “Chippy” believes in the hierarchies of expertise and competence by which New Zealand politicians are surrounded from the moment they enter Parliament. It matters not at all whether they enter the circles of power as political advisers, Members of Parliament, or, in the cases of Hipkins’, Robertson and Ardern, a good measure of both: the idea that all great political ideas come from below, from the people, is dismissed out-of-hand as antiquated nonsense. Those who believe otherwise do not fare well in the NZ Labour Party of the Twenty-First Century.
The great irony, of course, is that if the Labour Party had somehow remained a mass party, made of, by, and for the New Zealand working-class, then Labour’s present difficulties would never have developed. A party permitted – nay, encouraged! – to engage in robust policy debates would have equipped its parliamentary representatives with a set of policies which enjoyed the democratic imprimatur of a political movement boasting powerful and organic attachments (through trade unions and community groups) with something very close to a majority of the voting public. A party of that sort would require a lot of convincing to take on board policies that struck its members as peculiar, offensive, unfair, unscientific and/or at odds with plain, old-fashioned, human decency.
Such a party is, of course, an impossibility in a society dominated by neoliberal ideology. Such a society cannot countenance any serious political movement that is not dedicated to preserving the interests of the ruling elites, or run by anyone other than their enablers in the professional and managerial class. What Chris Hipkins (and Jacinda Ardern) have shown us is that remaining in office is, ultimately, much less important than ensuring that no policies are contemplated – let alone enacted – which might undermine the neoliberal order.
Unpopular policies, especially those that encourage social division, are nothing for neoliberals to worry about. It is the policy capable of attracting two-thirds or more of the electorate’s support, the policy holding out the promise of actually challenging and changing the neoliberal status quo, that must be resisted – at any cost. A policy calling for the introduction of a Wealth Tax, for example.
The next time you see Chippy on the news, take a look at his eyes. There you will see the sadness and resignation of a man who not only knows that he cannot, but also that he must not, win. Labour is going to lose the election, not because it wants to, but because it has to – before it remembers who it was created to serve.
Chris Trotter is a political commentator who blogs at bowalleyroad.blogspot.co.nz where this article was sourced.
It is clear now that Hipkins’ really didn’t care one way or the other about the “unpopular policies” – and neither did most of his colleagues. There was no factional divide in either Cabinet or Caucus over issues like Three Waters or Free Speech: no ideological conflict with passions running high on all sides; just the polls, the focus-group findings, and the tactical opportunities they presented.
That’s why what was probably the least popular of the “unpopular policies”, Three Waters, underwent only cosmetic changes. The Māori caucus wanted it because Iwi leaders wanted it, and if they didn’t get it, they might start knocking on Te Pāti Māori’s door. No one else in the Labour caucus proper felt strongly enough about the issue to organise any kind of serious resistance. So, Hipkins allowed Three Waters to be tweaked and re-named, and hoped that the public would be satisfied with a ludicrous name change. They weren’t.
It was left to Labour’s resident policy boffins, Grant Robertson and David Parker, to come up with something to replace the “unpopular policies” theme. It had to be about tax (because tax was National’s headline policy initiative) and it had to be bold enough to get the voters thinking and talking about Labour’s radical proposals all the way to the polling booths. To give Robertson and Parker their due, the plan they came up with felt like a winner. Certainly, it would have kept the political spotlight fixed upon the Government. Parker’s investigation into who-pays-what in tax had already predisposed the public to radical change – the polls were saying so quite emphatically – so, it just might have worked.
But, if the polls were pointing to widespread public support for making the super-wealthy pay their fair share of tax, Hipkins was adamant that the focus-group reports were all pointing the other way. From the other side of the world, in Vilnius, Lithuania, the Prime Minister issued his “Captain’s Call”, voiding Robertson’s and Parker’s plan, thereby making Labour’s election defeat inevitable.
Why did he do it? Because, deep down, Hipkins is a conservative politician, with a conservative politician’s deep-seated horror of anything that threatens to upend the status quo, and a genuine conservative’s loathing for all those who presume to challenge it. Oh sure, he is a Labour Party politician, but only because he got into parliamentary politics via student politics, where a rhetorical commitment to the Left is more-or-less de rigueur.
At heart, however, “Chippy” believes in the hierarchies of expertise and competence by which New Zealand politicians are surrounded from the moment they enter Parliament. It matters not at all whether they enter the circles of power as political advisers, Members of Parliament, or, in the cases of Hipkins’, Robertson and Ardern, a good measure of both: the idea that all great political ideas come from below, from the people, is dismissed out-of-hand as antiquated nonsense. Those who believe otherwise do not fare well in the NZ Labour Party of the Twenty-First Century.
The great irony, of course, is that if the Labour Party had somehow remained a mass party, made of, by, and for the New Zealand working-class, then Labour’s present difficulties would never have developed. A party permitted – nay, encouraged! – to engage in robust policy debates would have equipped its parliamentary representatives with a set of policies which enjoyed the democratic imprimatur of a political movement boasting powerful and organic attachments (through trade unions and community groups) with something very close to a majority of the voting public. A party of that sort would require a lot of convincing to take on board policies that struck its members as peculiar, offensive, unfair, unscientific and/or at odds with plain, old-fashioned, human decency.
Such a party is, of course, an impossibility in a society dominated by neoliberal ideology. Such a society cannot countenance any serious political movement that is not dedicated to preserving the interests of the ruling elites, or run by anyone other than their enablers in the professional and managerial class. What Chris Hipkins (and Jacinda Ardern) have shown us is that remaining in office is, ultimately, much less important than ensuring that no policies are contemplated – let alone enacted – which might undermine the neoliberal order.
Unpopular policies, especially those that encourage social division, are nothing for neoliberals to worry about. It is the policy capable of attracting two-thirds or more of the electorate’s support, the policy holding out the promise of actually challenging and changing the neoliberal status quo, that must be resisted – at any cost. A policy calling for the introduction of a Wealth Tax, for example.
The next time you see Chippy on the news, take a look at his eyes. There you will see the sadness and resignation of a man who not only knows that he cannot, but also that he must not, win. Labour is going to lose the election, not because it wants to, but because it has to – before it remembers who it was created to serve.
Chris Trotter is a political commentator who blogs at bowalleyroad.blogspot.co.nz where this article was sourced.
16 comments:
Thought-provoking article, Chris, but your statement:-
"At heart, however, “Chippy” believes in the hierarchies of expertise and competence by which New Zealand politicians are surrounded from the moment they enter Parliament."
- stands out like a massive boil on a pristine unblemished shoulder.
You're taking the piss, right? You must be. This government has been the antithesis of expertise and competence. It's been a bloody shambles and a dangerous runaway train with the driver asleep at the controls.
Are you saying that, for the greater good of NZ, Chippy is deliberately driving Labour off a cliff. Or to put it another way, condemning a now deranged, but once beloved close family member to a long prison sentence.
It's painful but it has to be done.
I don't wear it. The guy's been at the forefront of some of the most objectionable policies forced on NZ for the past three years, both before Ardern left and since. And now he's realised, in a Road-to-Damascus-like revelation, the terrible error of his ways and, like Dr Frankenstein, is trying to destroy his terrible creation.
Or another simpler take on it is he's just a shit leader, surrounded by a shit cabinet, who openly promoted shit policies, and is too far gone to dig himself out of the shit. I prefer that one.
Mr. Trotter, I think you miss the aboslute.
New Zealanders like their freedon, their democracy and the idea that as a country we puch above our weight (whether true or not).
We like the fact that Maori got the right to vote early.
We like the fact that Women got the right to vote early.
We like the fact that we have a liberal democracy based upon one person one vote of equal value.
We like the fact we have a strong, efficient and valuable agricultural economy.
We like the fact that we are (or now were) once high in all OECD metrics.
We like the fact that we are (or were) respected as a little country whose hopitality, friendliness and countrywide beauty was renowned.
What Labour have brought to us is pure division and destruction of the things we held dear to us as New Zealanders.
The regime (and I call it a regime because it has not been governance) has started a culture war, an urban/rural war, a race war, a rich/poor war and a class war (see vaccination status as that fulcrum).
They have demonstrably demolished freedoms and rights along with educational standards, social cohesion, our economy and our justice (if one can call it that now) system.
They have legislated ethnic division that would it occur in any other country New Zealanders would be appalled and call it out as the cloaked apartheid it is.
They have manufactured political stories through media that they purchased compliance from and have gaslit the nation at every turn from the Treaty, to taxpayer money being unaccounted for to the very name of our country 'New Zealand'.
They have instigated a sociolinguistic eugenics programme to save a language that is barely spoken in an attempt to promote more people to speak it even though it has no utility in a modern global environment and the outcome is that more people are annoyed by this indulgence than not.
The result, seemingly is that no more wish to learn it than before and those that do so are more likely to be caucasion of origin rather than the target.
For all this going on, a measure or purpose I cannot fathom that all this has been done, and upon speaking to other New Zealanders so, so many also cannot get the reason (if indeed there is a )'why'.
So they will lose the election not because they must to regain what they once were because that horse has bolted and will never return.
Labour will never be the same party representing the working man ever again because they have been tainted by ideology that suits their purpose and not their citizen voters purpose.
They will lose because they are lost.
They are lost because they were lead astray by ideology that is like a cult and in being lost they betrayed every single New Zealander.
The trust is lost because of the treason done.
Kakistocracy is a noun that signifies a government or country that is run by incompetent people or people who have the least qualifications or abilities to run the government. A kakistocracy is is powered by the worst element of the populace.
Of the many destructive features of a kakistocracy, is the continuing failure of progressivism to help the very constituencies (the young, the poor, and minorities) whom it claims to serve.
That about sums up the last 6 years?
Most of Chris' reasonings are beyond me, at least in just one or two readings. Perhaps it has at last dawned on the wider public that Labour is heading us to ever more maorificarion and to maori control, and that the only way to counter without incurring cancellation is to vote Labour out.
Well said DeeM.
Since 2017 and especially since 2020, this Labour government has acted with deceit, contempt for voters and clear orders from the Maori caucus to install a racist agenda to divide NZ.
Its lack of integrity has condemned it to oblivion - and rightly so.
Its members are a total disgrace to NZ.
Lincoln: You cannot fool all the people all the time.
There must be a full enquiry into the disaster wrought by Ardern, then Hipkins to destroy a once great nation. This cannot pass without scrutiny - these dangerous politicians must be called to account.
Touché Deem.
I think you nailed it with the last sentence.
Labour and their hacks / advisors are amateur hour personified.
Not a brain cell of common sense amongst the lot.
They look feel and smell of a group think session gone off the rails and don’t quite know what to do next.
Yep, a stinking turd of a govt if ever I witnessed one
I'm with you DeeM. Both Ardern and Hipkins have been deep-dyed wokesters from the off. I find it interesting to look at the forces that formed them - and led them to so corrupt what was once a 'party for the workers'
Jacinda learned to think in the Mormon Church, and Hipkins at the knee of a mother who espoused - well- less than orthodox theories of education.
The rest of us have let them do it - we are by no means without responsibility - so the time is now to get rid!
So Chippy has to lose because he is in fact a conservative. What an excellent piece of twisted logic.
DeeM, you didn't mention the corruption, nepotism and criminal actions by the lady with the WINZ barcode on her chinny chin chin. Kiwialan.
Chris your articles are thought provoking but somewhat cryptic to decipher.
I do agree with the jist of your argument that Chippy and many in Govt believe in the “ specially trained” govt expert whom are supposed elites and made to rule the ignorant voter.
Higher education however has raised the knowledge of more and more people and the internet allows that knowledge to be accessed easily.
The Digital age will rip these old government systems down. Labour will die along with the notion that an elite few know better than everyone else.
It’s a tough time to be at the top.
Well Chris, you got us all fired up with that one and the subsequent comments sum it all up and are, as the ad goes - "priceless!"
I have never seen a labour government so hated on the Westcoast south island in my 50 years .this is were they begun and were there loyalists supporters ounce lived but they now seem to feel that labour has tryed to abandoned democracy with several policies led by 3 waters.
I very much prefer DeeM’s position on this. Labour this time around have been a total shambles from start to finish. No sound policy platform, insufficient talent in the caucus to sustain a Cabinet capable of governing. And finally, no guts: Labour have been ridden over rough shod by the bully boys in the Maori Party.
Anna M....perfectly written imo. Someone recently said to me when we were talking about the terrible state of this country due to this destructive divisive labour government, 'you have an anger problem ', I said ' no i dont, I have an idiot problem'.
So did David Parker and Grant Robertson include the tax status of Māori Incorporations when considering taxing the wealthy?
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