Chris Trotter: The Revenge of the ‘Cookers’ Is Here

Richard Prebble’s intriguing speculation about a last-minute intervention by Jacinda Ardern notwithstanding, few informed observers expect this government to survive. It shows every sign of becoming the first two-term New Zealand government since the Lange-Palmer-Moore-led Labour Government of 1984–1990 and the only one, so far, under MMP. Political commentator Bryce Edwards has recently listed 10 cogent explanations for its widely anticipated demise. Personally, I believe Labour’s fall will be attributable to just one cause: over-promising and under-delivering. The voters will forgive a government many sins, but raising their hopes and then dashing them, winning their love and then deserting them – that they will not forgive.

So, let’s rule out some death-defying, last-minute charge of the Jacinda Brigade and assume that Labour loses the election in the most brutal fashion, securing a share of the party vote even lower than the 25 per cent received by David Cunliffe’s Labour Party in 2014. If that seems unlikely, then the reader is reminded that the Bill English-led National Party sank even lower in 2002, receiving just 21 per cent of the party vote.

Why so low? Doesn’t Labour usually manage a little surge in the final week of most election campaigns? Isn’t it possible that Labour will do the same in 2023? My reasons for doubting such a last-minute comeback are bound up with the extraordinary mood of anger, dissatisfaction and even violence abroad in the electorate. Obviously, people are angry about the cost of living: especially the price of food, petrol, power, rental accommodation and rising mortgage interest rates; but that is by no means all that’s riling Joe and Josephine Public.

The reason so many Labour and Green voters are turning away from their parties in disgust has everything to do with the sort of mindset that could come up with the words gammon and cookers to describe all those voters – male voters, in particular – who have abandoned their traditional left-wing allegiances. The insult ‘gammon’, a cut of pork usually smoked and with the flavour of ham, is most commonly heard in England, while ‘cooker’, presumably after ‘Captain Cookers’, the descendants of the pigs released into New Zealand by the eponymous explorer in 1769, is a decidedly local coinage. The point of either insult is, however, unmistakable: to equate those who oppose ‘progressive’ ideas with swine.

Now calling a group of people ‘pigs’ is hardly original – hippies were hurling the insult at police officers more than 50 years ago. Over many centuries, in many lands, the pig – commonly seen as an uncouth and unclean animal – has been the logical choice of those seeking to demean and diminish their enemies. When a German hails you as a schwein – he’s not being friendly!

In New Zealand, in 2023, however, the well-educated, well-paid and well-known members of the elites cannot be caught resorting to epithets which, if directed at a Maori or a Muslim, would be condemned as ‘hate speech’. Openly referring to their poorly educated, poorly paid and poorly regarded political opponents as ‘pigs’ would be seen as very poor form. Hence, their resort to the sly circumlocution of ‘gammon’ or ‘cooker’ when referring to those who pig-headedly (sorry!) continue to spurn co-governance and have no difficulty in telling a man from a woman. Think of these insults as just two more entries in the elite dictionary that began with Hilary Clinton’s “deplorables”. A special vocabulary for special people.

The thing is, when you’re of the mindset that perceives ‘gammon’ and ‘cooker’ as a very fine ‘in-joke’, then you don’t actually have to use the insults – or, at least, not all that often – because the sort of people against whom you’d normally direct them already know you regard them as a lower form of life. As deplorables, as pigs, as schwein.

Unfortunately for Labour, the people who run the party, represent it in Parliament and defend it on Twitter, cannot help communicating their deep disdain for the uncouth, unclean and politically unsound rabble upon whose votes they depend for victory. They got the message loud and clear in the early months of 2022 when people a lot like them (just a wee bit more intense, perhaps) gathered on Parliament’s front lawn to protest against vaccination mandates.

When they heard the protesters described as filth, when the Prime Minister and her colleagues refused to talk to them, when the cops squirted pepper-spray into their eyes and when the good and the great cheered on the authorities (myself included, to my shame), then they knew.

Even though they had no problem with the vaccination mandates. Even if they did not believe that Covid-19 was a dastardly plot by Bill Gates. Even if they had been the most loyal members of Jacinda’s “Team of Five Million” – they knew. That the people in charge, the people who stood up there on the Speaker’s Balcony looking down at their fellow citizens on the parliamentary lawn, did not see human beings – just useful animals. On a good day, the people were sheep. On a bad one, pigs.

Slowly, and then with gathering speed, the realisation swept through the ranks of the 50.01 per cent of the electors who had voted for Jacinda in 2020: that her Labour Government was all a sham, a con; a case of promising the dumb bastards the moon, and then delivering them three-fifths of f**k-all. Turning Auckland into a South Seas version of West Berlin for four months didn’t help. It merely confirmed the doubters’ suspicions – especially if they were Aucklanders! – that ordinary New Zealanders had become the dupes of people who’d promise them anything to win power – and then forget them the instant they had it. People who, when the dupes resisted the imposition of policies they had never voted for, dismissed them as ‘gammon’ and ‘cookers’.

This is the love that Labour’s lost. The love freely given, cynically taken, carelessly forgotten. The love won by promises of happiness and security. The love that grows and flourishes in a home of one’s own. The love underpinned by a good job with good pay. The love that flows out of a happy citizen’s heart and into a nation where all are valued equally and none are left behind.

That was the love Labour lost. And the why of it is no great mystery. In fact, its brutally simple: Labour fucked us and forgot us. So, now, we’re going to return the favour by taking from Labour the thing it values above all else: not love, but power.

Think of it as the cookers’ revenge.

Chris Trotter is a political commentator who blogs at bowalleyroad.blogspot.co.nz. This article was first published HERE