To Lunchtime And Beyond! Why there’s no more loyal servant of the Anglo-Saxon Empire than the New Zealand National Party

THERE IS A REASSURING CONSISTENCY about the prejudices of the National Party. No matter how thick the spin-doctors and PR specialists apply the lacquer of moderation to the institution’s exterior, the reactionary timber beneath just keeps rotting away.

Nowhere is the utterly unreconstructed nature of National’s political mission more apparent than in the fraught arena of war and peace – and the antiquated diplomatic instincts such crucial foreign policy issues excite in what passes for the National Party’s intelligentsia.

The first real hint we got of just how atavistic those instincts might be came with Dr Don Brash’s infamous “gone by lunchtime” quip to a group of US officials back in January 2004. Clearly, the National Party had only ever paid lip-service to New Zealand’s anti-nuclear stance. Yes, it had embraced a Nuclear-Free New Zealand as far back as 1990, but, clearly, the party’s conversion to foreign policy independence was in all respects cosmetic.

Dr Brash’s comment that the policy would be “gone by lunchtime” in the event of a National Party victory in 2005, showed that National’s MPs were only willing to wear the T-Shirt because that was part of what it took to regain power. The moment they got their feet under the Cabinet Table, however, all such left-wing fripperies would be headed straight for the incinerator – “by lunchtime – probably”.

In marked contrast to Dr Brash, the present National Prime Minister has displayed an admirable forbearance in the matter of New Zealand’s anti-nuclear stance. Six years after he was swept into office, John Key has yet to initiate anything resembling a serious review (let alone repeal) of New Zealand anti-nuclear legislation.

Is this because Mr Key is a convert to anti-nuclearism? Has the Prime minister embraced the independent spirit of Norman Kirk’s foreign policy and learned, finally, “the trick of standing upright here”? Well, no. His refusal to get all het up about nuclear weapons and nuclear power is because he understands that the big issues of the 1980s are not the big issues of the 20-teens.

Like any good blitzkrieg general, Mr Key has simply directed his armoured columns around such potentially dangerous obstacles. He knows that if he pushes past it far enough the anti-nuclear policy will begin to look like the diplomatic relic of some long dead foreign-policy consensus. When that eventually occurs, there will only be a handful of people who will notice, and even fewer who will care that, following some distant future lunchtime, the policy has gone.

And when it does, be in no doubt, the unreconstructed National Party stalwarts will all display wolfish grins of satisfaction. Those required to live through its creation, will be able to mentally tick-off yet another faded remnant of the Left’s policy legacy.

Just how eagerly the Right is anticipating that moment was revealed earlier this week (20/1/15) when the NZ Herald published an article by the National MP for Manawatu from 1978 to 1987, Michael Cox. EntitledClark’s sad legacy in ’84 affair shrinks UN hopes, the think-piece positively gloats over the presumed unwillingness of the USA and the UK to sanction Helen Clark becoming the next UN Secretary-General.

While careful to acknowledge Ms Clark’s undoubted strengths and eminent eligibility for the United Nations’ top job, Mr Cox warns his readers that it is at this point that “her positives” stop. This is because two of “the most powerful members of the Security Council, the United States and Britain, will not have forgotten that she led the charge that weakened Western resistance to the USSR during the Anzus debacle in 1984.”

It is difficult to recall a sentence more weighted-down with National Party ignorance and prejudice than this little gem.

Yes, both the US State Department and the Pentagon were pissed-off with New Zealand for breaking ranks in 1984, but they weren’t that pissed-off. By 1984 it was already clear that the Soviet Union had no plans to impede seriously the advance of the new, global, market-driven economic order. They were also well aware that when it came to providing examples for the world to follow, New Zealand’s sterling efforts in radical, top-down, market liberalisation far outshone her quaint, bottom-up, ban on all things nuclear.

To make his case against Ms Clark, Mr Cox draws heavily on the historical research of Gerald Hensely, Head of the Prime Minister’s Department under David Lange. In his book Friendly Fire, Mr Hensely suggests that it was well understood by the Americans that Ms Clark “accepted Roger Douglas’s right-wing financial policies [because] there had been a trade-off by which those on the Left, led by her, gained the mandate for the anti-nuclear ship policy in return for going along with his economic reform”.

If this is true (and as someone who was very active in the Labour Party Left during the 1980s, I’m not sure that it is) then both the Americans and the British will actually be more – not less – likely to back Ms Clark’s bid for the Secretary-General’s job. There is no better qualification for such a position than a proven record of making – and sticking-to – such Faustian political pacts.

Mr Cox does not see this. Like Mr Hensely, his sensibilities are those of a backwoods conservative raised on the uncompromising slogans of anti-communism, and whose loyalty to the global interests of the English-speaking peoples is absolute and unquestioning. In the eyes of such people, Ms Clark remains an oath-breaker and a quasi-traitor, whose disloyalty will never be forgotten, and certainly not forgiven, by the five “fingers” of the Anglo-Saxon fist.

Viewed from this perspective, Ms Clark’s 2003 refusal to let New Zealand’s armed forces join in the illegal invasion of Iraq would only have heaped more hot diplomatic coals upon her earlier, anti-nuclear, treachery.

For the Brits and the Yanks, however, it will be Ms Clark’s diplomatic behaviour in the aftermath of the Iraq War that really counts. Quite how Messers Cox and Hensely reconcile their blue-stockinged traitor with the woman the US Secretary of State, Colin Powell, called his “very, very, very good friend” is anybody’s guess.

What cannot be doubted, however, is that the National Party’s visceral attachment to the English-speaking brotherhood finds a more than worthy champion in the present prime-minister. His comment that New Zealand’s sending troops to train the Iraqi armed forces for their battle against the Islamic State, should be seen, simply, as “the price” we must pay for membership of the Anglo-Saxon “club”.

Making particular reference to the “Five Eyes” intelligence-sharing agreement, to which New Zealand is a signatory, the Prime Minister stated that it was important that his country was regarded as a reliable member of the club. Because, “we do know that, when it comes to the United States and Canada and Australia and Great Britain and others, that we can rely on them.”

And clearly, our “very, very, very good friends” (the 1984 “affair” notwithstanding) can still rely on us. Or, at least, on those of us who continue to vote, unwaveringly, for the New Zealand National Party.