Corbyn, the NZ Political Left and how we can make it happen this election

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‘we-won’t-offend-our-corporate-overlords’

Watching our NZ Political Left scrambling to associate themselves with Corbyn on social media is a sad joke. Corbyn’s real left policy won the day and robbed Theresa May of a victory in a political comeback not seen since Christ’s resurrection. In NZ, our Left policy is a warmed up cold grey gruel compared to the 7 course Dégustation offered voters in the United Kingdom.

Corbyn excited people into believing Government was supposed to serve them, not the other way around. Corbyn’s economic policy platform was a real left counter to neoliberalism, in NZ we have a Green Party desperately attempting to remodel themselves away from being environmental social justice activists into a middle class sorority club and a Labour Party that actually unleashed the neoliberal revolution in the first place.

For the NZ Left to gain the Corbyn or Sanders effect they need policy that isn’t safe middle of the road watered down bullshit.

When Grant Robertson & James Shaw signed their ‘we-won’t-offend-our-corporate-overlords’ promise, were they acting like Corbyn? When you consider the spinelessness of that surrender note to capitalism, our political left is a million miles away from Corbyn’s policy dynamism and popularity.

Labour are too frightened to mention neoliberalism because of their political history and the Greens want to be liked and retweeted. The NZ political left only offer policy to those they know will vote, and those who vote are older property speculators, hence their watered down policy platform to not offend or spook that class of voters.

The political left are not prepared to try and inspire voters who have been failed by capitalism because that’s too hard, so how do we, the people who are suffering from the current economic settings, going to get them, our political representatives, to adopt policy far more meaningful than they are offering?

TDB Recommends NewzEngine.com

There’s more than one way to copy a Corbyn. If we the progressive voter want our progressive political parties to actually stand for something in the 2017 election and if we want to emulate what Corbyn did, there will be a way to do that.

 

Stay tuned.

54 COMMENTS

  1. Corbyn made it work by hitting the streets, since the minute he got the job, doing speech after speech nationwide. Trump and Sanders did the same, and that is the key.

    • I seem to remember a former USA president did the same -after he was mocked as ‘ not having a chance’… and I think it was in one of Chris Trotters articles some time back.

      Of course the ‘ Corbyn effect ‘ could be replicated here.

      Of course it could.

      However, as I and many , many others have said repeatedly ( and often been criticized for ) several things need to be done. And those things are not that very different between the positions of the UK Labour party and the NZ Labour party.

      First off, an acknowledgement that neo liberalism was and is a failure. A destructive , odious self serving failure. The problem , of course, – is that not only did Labour implement it first with the treacherous Roger Douglas , – for decades their caucus was dominated by a long long list of neo liberals.

      Many of them are still there.

      Similar thing to the Blairite factions .

      We only have to look back at the ABC’s to see the destructive influence they have had for these last three decades. They need to be purged from that party and then an acknowledgement that not only was neo liberalism a complete failure but that new initiatives such as the UK Labour party manifesto be drawn up.

      Secondly , no more pandering to identity politics. That has had its day and has been seen as a diversion from the fundamental Labour movement interests of economic equity. Get that right and any other discrepancy in equity will then be addressed, – not the other way round. Neo lberalism so easily hijacked those ‘ causes’ and used it to create a wedge between the Left. It has been a classic ploy of theirs.

      It was always a method of coup d’etat used by the far right to give an air of legitimacy to their social programs while their real motives were actually to hijack those movements in order to gain political ascendancy.

      That is why we have seen this impotent , apologetic , watered down and compromised ‘ Left’ in NZ .

      The root cause is the neo liberal lobby groups and their political front people. Business is subservient to the STATE – not the other way round. And politicians answer to US – again , – not the other way round.

      This country is small and easily hijacked, – and that was why we were chosen to be the economic and political guinea pigs for neo liberalism,… a laid back population which was small, was tied to western institutions and reliant on trade … no other country on earth embraced neo liberalism like New Zealand, and we have paid a horrific price for doing so.

      And in answer to how Corbyn got around the MSM and being constantly portrayed as a lost cause?… open air campaigning and social media. Winston Peters more or less won Northland the same way.

      There are plenty of political examples of how this has been done historically.

      • True all that Wild Katipo,

        Of course NZ First have always been further left of Labour as their policies are tuned into the “have nots” and offer help to the failing provinces under this current policy of Nat/labour to garnish the biggest city rather than all sharing in our “common” wealth.

        NZ First give more support for the other provinces much fairer than the others.

        The Corbyn effect I would say.

        • Yeah, nah…

          NZ First doesn’t come within a cooee of being left. Who’s your next example of left wing? Genghis Khan?

      • No truer words.
        And neo-liberalism seeks to commodify EVERYTHING, then sell it to the highest bidder – not just goods and services, but basic human necessities: health, education and housing, but THEN also those quaint old ideas such as sovereignty, a national identity, the Earth and its diverse environments, culture AND language itself.
        If you look at the early years of it all, it began on a firm foundation of solid bullshit, and its run on that foundation ever since.
        The market the market! – Competition is good! It’s Good for the consumer and will drive down prices. (“Win Win” and all that kaka)
        > We then see takeover after takeover and the tendency (actually mission) towards monopoly and duopoly. Power prices anyone? Forget Latta and Campbell …. we actually make fuck all – nature does, whether it’s dairy or pine.

        The State is inefficient – Privatisations are necessary for fishinsy n fektivniss n accountability
        > We then see a complete fuckup in areas that are ‘natural monoploies’ …. a copper network (and now a fibre one); electricity reticulation; a rail network; a roading network; water …..
        Indeed the State’s corporatised administrative wing. A ‘digital divide’; outsourcing of everything that has allowed little or NO accountability – the latest project (failed) that sought to remove a government’s responsibility and accountability for health, housing and education.

        Public ‘Service’ as administered by the State’s administrative institutions – Christ!!!! don’t get me started or we’ll be here
        all day – and that’d be before we even get to Public Service Broadcasting, and quaint old concepts of nationhood, and citizenship, and community, and democracy.

        Neoliberalism has probably been one of the most toxic and invasive ideologies – or if you prefer, cult religions ever devised.
        It’s something that even feeds on itself in order to grow
        g r o w GROW G R O W in a sustained rather than sustainABLE way.

        The only thing its proponents didn’t think of was the mathematics of it all – as the 90/10% becomes the 99/1%, and that the natives might eventually get a bit restless. Many STILL haven’t realised. Corbyn did, and has

      • Definitely with the IDPol nonsense, it has done so much damage and Balkanised the working and middle classes into powerless blocs where once they were an electoral force to be reckoned with.

        With Neoliberalism, I’d say it’s a matter of defining three or four aspects which need major corrective action, as ‘neoliberalism’ still doesn’t mean enough to a lot of people, and means a lot of different things to those who do take interest.

        Not sure what they’d be, but the one which is most critical I’d suggest the revitalisation of state industry as part of a new drive towards full employment. Under that umbrella I would look to Cunliffe’s suggestion of bringing back the conservation corps to renew native environments.

      • I will try my 10 finger touch-typing to get through this contribution.

        I’ve never voted Labour–spoiled my ballot in 87 for the lack of choices. ‘Treacherous’ Roger Douglas suggests he had demo-cratic principles to begin with. According to Warren Freer he was always all over the place.

        Labour…it’s all in the name, the pre-84 associations make us rancorous, interested, stung etc in the present.
        I joined the Labour Party–laughed myself silly often at the thought–to vote for Cunliffe post 14. For him to do what Corbyn did.

        Identity politics is fairness in the now rather than at the judgment day you suggest. The crime wasn’t ‘provoked’ by Labour, place the sin where it belongs with the perpetrators. Just as keeping quiet about the fantasy of religion has produced a fantasy about reality in America that now involves the 8 billion of us keeping all 20 of our digits crossed.

        I.e. A lot more rousing soapbox socialists and less of present grey leaders/followers of polling.

    • Further. Investors of all kinds have been scrambling to exit the Euro reflected in the falling pound and euro so they are getting out because – If money you have invested is cuasing you fisical pain then that is money you shouldn’t have invested in the first place.

      So investers have lost confidence in the pound because of who is in controll of the single euro market. Because Britain has fairly poor export prospects for a number of reasons. One reason is The UK economy is geared towards supporting the UK defence force and another is Rolls Royce Turbine engines. Its no wonder investors are unable to find good investments that wont blow up in there face.

      Special mentoin goes to the rest of the UK economy that has been opened up to big financial houses and German pension funds who always try to shut the door behind like good little bonus hoers.

      • Questions need to be asked like why Peter Thiel got citizenship in NZ, why he was given a sweetheart deal which made him $23 million with xero shares while the government got little (http://www.nzherald.co.nz/business/news/article.cfm?c_id=3&objectid=11794020), and his involvement and influence in Facebook and Cambridge Analytica.

        The Natz are desperate to woo Thiel, who probably normally would not have anything to do with Kiwi government yokels. He an advisor to Trump, the question is, why the Natz are desperate for him?

        And after Scenic hotels, how many of these companies and individuals are getting government contracts and deals after giving something to the National Party which could be concealed in a clever way such as the xero deal described as

        “A Wall St analyst told the Weekend Herald the clause left the Government facing a “horrendous risk-return proposition” that had no place in agreements between commercial parties. “If a professional investor signed this deal, they would be the butt of their colleagues’ jokes all the way out the door,” the analyst said. “This is a clear ‘heads I double win, tails I lose’, ‘heads the taxpayer loses, and tails the taxpayer loses’ proposition, and a very savvy deal for Thiel.” .

    • Where are the firebrand leftys?? Inspirational and a shining light for the downtrodden…not in this country.

  2. So very true, how many of these people said that Corbyn was un-electable, certainly Jacinda Adern did and that flake that was over there that sometimes does commentary one of the ‘political’ (joke) programmes on TVNZ or TV3 oon radio nz and who has stood numerous times for the Labour party (female).

    Under his leadership and with the many beliefs that he has despite many of his miserable Labour colleagues we might have seen real change for the middle class and those below that – the ones that really matter. I heard Corbyn say the other day, despite the money required for re-nationalisation of the railways and many other great things something like 90% of people would pay NO MORE TAX than they already were.

    May was absolutely stupid to think she could get away with not debating Corbyn live, she is a bloody public servant and as such she should have had to (just as coleman should have to front up to John Campbell and talk about the funding for mental health and the funding for it. Who the hell do these people think they are.)

    VIVA Jeremy Corbyn a true hero of the working class! It has been a long time coming Labour.

  3. But haven’t we already tried a Jeremy Corbyn style politician in NZ with David Cunliffe? Was Cunliffe perhaps still too right-wing iyo to win over the ever missing left-wing youth vote? Like Cunliffe, Corbyn DIDN’T have the full support of his party; indeed just like here, they actively attempted to distance themselves from him and even sabotage his message. Or was Cunliffe just a few years too early to gain any momentum from the disenfranchised?

    • I believe Cunliffe was sabotaged by a carefully managed covert plan against him. This involved Whaleoil, National Party apparatchiks, the NZ Herald, and perhaps with support from certain ABCers within the Labour-right. Check out who the players were with NZ Herald’s Shayne Currie’s tweets regarding the imminent release of the Donghua Liu fake-news story: https://fmacskasy.wordpress.com/2015/07/15/the-donghua-liu-affair-one-year-on/

      Coupled with a lack of support from his own caucus, and Cunliffe was very much a Man Alone.

      • True every word Frank.

        Cunliffe was a warm human soul, not a wooden spoon as we see mostly now from the current stock we have.

        They should send Andrew to the “School of Mickey Savage” to learn how to speak with warm caring compassion.

          • That may be entirely optical – Cunliffe was very lower middle class in his family background, while Jeremy Corbyn and his Trotskyist brother Piers to their credit were both from a very, very well off family but crossed the line for working people.

      • Agree with Frank M and NITRIUM when he said “Cunliffe just a few years too early to gain any momentum from the disenfranchised”.

        The Natz win because they use everything to their advantage and zero scruples. They even rip off music artists for Gods sake. Propaganda about their policies that the MSM lap up, propaganda against the opposition about their polices, smearing, dividing, fake news, using government agencies against the opposition aka SIS lying about Phil Goff, and it has created a mini shock doctrine in the Labour party itself. They use all the past mistakes of the Labour party against them and of course everything wrong is from the Labour party too…

        I think Little is turning Labour party around. But clearly the Natz dirty team are coming for him too…

        Also Cunliffe did not really offer any alternative, more taxes, and this will keep the existing levels of social care going (aka not make then any better, like free tuition fees) and his policies seemed to be more against the many not the few, in terms of increasing the retirement age which was a blow in particular for workers and putting capital gains on property (which there is already, I see another season of the Block, so will IRD take the taxes, nope). Rightly or wrongly 65% of Kiwis own property so it’s not a good voter block to make any mistakes on. The Labour polices seemed piecemeal and more like bribes ‘oldies get 2 extra doctors visits’ but not much coherent strategy.

        The other big turn off was the way Labour and Greens treated Dirty politics. The opposition seemed to shrug it off. NZ had two of the biggest exposes since Rainbow Warrior and the opposition called it a distraction. The herald poll around that time said more than 50% of people believed Dotcom not John Key. There was not enough support for Nicky Hager who got harassed by police.

        So the opposition were supposed to be for independent foreign policy and social justice but they didn’t care? What happened to innocent before proven guilty? As it turns out, Dotcom was right, Key was a liar, the copywrite charges have been dropped as it is not a crime and he’ll be no more guilty of money laundering than most of the profitable CEO’s in the world – in fact less so, because he never even had offices in the US.

        Somehow the Natz manipulated the opposition and so their response to seemed unfair, weak and petty, and then the Natz gained from it as lack of voter turn out by disgusted Labour and Green voters who stayed home.

        Would Corbyn, say dirty politics was a distraction? Let the FBI take over criminal prosecutions for personal US individuals and businesses? Put up the retirement age? The media in the UK would not allow dirty politics to just disappear. People would be fired, MP’s forced to resign. The NZ media is owned by foreign interests and as such don’t particularly care about how corrupt NZ gets. In fact the more corrupt and more sell offs – the better!

        Corbyn is such a strong individual he was able to take the ridicule and fight the in fighting, he also had a strong and creative support team (unlike Labour, Vote Positive, vomit), used social media and stood in front of the people again and again with a clear message that did not waver. People want to listen to someone who has finally got something decent to say, that you can trust.

      • Back stabbers and saboteurs the likes of Poto Williams are still alive and kicking in the Wageslave Labour Party.

      • “This involved Whaleoil, National Party apparatchiks, the NZ Herald, and perhaps with support from certain ABCers within the Labour-right.
        They’re still at it Frank, albeit in their dying days. The sad part is that many of them are/were one’s ‘contemporaries’, and I often wonder what changed them – more often than not, I’ve come to the conclusion they were full of shit to begin with.
        ….and ALTHOUGH RNZ (formerly Radio New Zealand – before all that “re-branding going forward”), is a public’s greatest hope of an impartial media driven by what’s best described as a 4th Estate, they have their fair share.
        I’m tired of the (finlayson-like – small ‘f’) excuses, such as how they grew up, had families and took on responsibilities. If that were true, they’d not be selling their kid’s futures in order to preserve their own comfort.
        ( I note RNZ is STILL, for example, trotting out its rent-a-voices – such as a Pagani “LIVE FROM LONDON” at every opportunity, and it still gives a supposedly ‘authoratative voice’ to a Hooten – even tho’ his credibility must be wearing bloody thin by now [do a fact check, a content analysis, a bitchiness-check over the course of a few months – verily, I say unto you, it’d be worse than watching an episode of Stirring the Pot, or Don Who? on 83] ).

        Probably the greatest invention ever known to mankind is the concept of time. And also that eventually the collective voice isn’t actually stupid when it comes to the basic human instinct of survival. Tik bloody Tok

      • Don’t forget the sneaky neolib policies – raising the retirement age? – that also had an effect on the vote. Cunliffe was sabotaged but those policies also sabotaged the Labour vote. The next manifesto must be bold – regardless of media flak – if it is to capture the Millennials as Jeremy Corbin and Bernie Sanders have. They have an organic relationship with the internet and high functioning bullshit meters.

    • Cunliffe didn’t have the courage to reclaim Labour for labour. Break up the parliamentary party for the people. I joined to vote for him and that. On his recommendation I helped Little barely over the line. It is difficult to envision, let alone initiate revolution, though obviously it was going through his mind. I realise, unlike Corbyn, there was a huge degree of egoism in Cunliffe.

      During our post -Parekura Horomia by-election I remember seeing him in Gisborne walking along the statehouse , non-footpath side of Stout St deep in thought and a camelhair over-coat.

      Peculiar, one of the last working class Labour MPs was the baronet Sir Basil Arthur. And me wishing John A. Lee , who died in 1982, could have lived another 10 years to say what Labour is really about–not the ‘party of change’ of Geoff Palmer. By some means they silenced the voices of old Labour. Shallow roots, tribal loyalty and paying off their egomania took care of them I think. They couldn’t have paid off the generation of Savage.

  4. Turn left.
    Return to socialist roots.
    Campaign on policies.
    Use social media.
    Show integrity.
    Talk to people.
    Offer an alternative to neo-liberalism.

  5. “Corbyn excited people into believing Government was supposed to serve them, not the other way around.”

    Well said Martyn!!!!!!!!!

    These NZ Government workers used to be regarded by themselves as “serving us” as they were then constantly reminded by our (public media) as being called “PUBLIC SERVANTS” remember this!!!!!!!!

    The government workers are now trained by NATZ to believe they are just “agents” of Government policy, and that was where it has all gone wrong.

  6. Another thing to consider is just how toxic the Tory manifesto was. If they’d sat tight, promised to go all in on Brexit, and done nothing else beyond that, they probably would have held or slightly grown their majority. Instead they got so carried away by their margins in the polls that they let the hubris get the better of them, resulting in the most carcinogenic manifesto since Thatcher. English and Joyce are far more cautious and cynical, they won’t make the same mistake, as shitty as their current budget may be.

  7. If the Labour party don’t return to their founding principles and continue with the current leadership they will lose this year’s general election.

    If the party will not change then there will be pressure to stand alternative democratic socialists to the current Labour party which will split the left vote even more.

    A fourth defeat and three more years in opposition may force change but i am not convinced.

    The party must change or risk the continued domination of the National party and the status quo.

  8. “The youth for today: how the 2017 election changed the political landscape”

    https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2017/jun/09/corbyn-may-young-voters-labour-surge

    “Turnout”

    “The “youthquake” was a key component of Corbyn’s 10-point advance in Labour’s share of the vote – exceeding even Blair’s nine-point gain in his first 1997 landslide. No official data exists for the scale of the youth vote but an NME-led exit poll suggests turnout among under-35s rose by 12 points compared with 2015, to 56%. The survey said nearly two-thirds of younger voters backed Labour, with Brexit being their main concern.”

    Election results: Huge youth vote ‘swings election for Labour’

    http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/election-results-latest-youth-vote-swings-for-labour-jeremey-corbyn-hung-parliament-a7780966.html

    THIS IS HOW IT IS DONE, Labour and Greens of NZ In.!!!

    Do they need another lesson, send them packing their bags now, to head to the UK, book some media and activist training sessions on the advice by Jeremy Corbyn, and do not come back before you passed the exams, thanks.

    I thought NZ was so smart and well ahead, you know, number eight wire and so. But it seems they lost the plot long ago, time to get cracking, Labourites and Pale Greens, get cracking to LEARN how it is done, thanks.

  9. Although Andrew Little is a long way from being a Bernie Sanders or a Jeremy Corbyn, I’m so looking forward to the leaders’ debates this year.

    Little will annihilate English, because he will use facts to argue with. Whereas English, like a rat cornered, resorts to dirty, smarmy personal insults and attacks particularly when under pressure, which is his style and very typical of Natz leaders. Can’t see him gaining any momentum during the upcoming election leaders’ debates.

    • Not so sure about that Mary A. Little is prone to stumbling and mumbling. He needs a total change of image and to adopt a stronger Left lean. I don’t think he is capable of that.

      • Hi Garibaldi … yes I agree to a certain extent what you say that Little needs to lean more left. Throwing out the neo libs and the poor image they are giving the party would be a good start! They are preventing Labour returning to its core values of serving the backbone of the country, working class Kiwis.

        However, despite his mumbling and stumbling, which isn’t an indication of his debating skills, I’m confident Little will come out on top in any debate with the totally incompetent Bill English.

        And also let’s not forget John Key had a slight speech impediment as well.

      • Unfortunately, garibaldi, I have to agree. The way Little waffles and mucks around answering a question is tragic and painful to see. He desperately needs media counselling. Or something.

  10. This is just one more example of how bad the mainstream, corporate establishment neoliberal media is in New Zealand.

    Even after Brexit
    Even after Trump
    Even after Corbyn

    They still believe what they hear in their own echo chamber.

    Louise Wallace actually says that Corbyn’s ideas had no influence on the election result and that it was a reaction to Brexit.
    Is she not aware that the SNP and the Liberal Democrats are the most pro-European parties in the UK? If she is correct, why didn’t people in England flock to the Lib Dems?

    So is Louise Wallace really that ignorant?
    Or is she just lazy and repeats whats she hears from right wing media sources in the UK?

    I sense both.

    http://www.radiolive.co.nz/home/audio/2017/06/environews—whio—blue-duck-/sunday-brunch–louise-wallace—david-slack.html

  11. Labour’s leadership is populated by craven no account neo libs. I respect Little’s decency I have zero respect for that pompous backstabbing ass Robertson and that gutless nothing Ardern. I wouldn’t vote for these assholes even if they did come up with a a half decent manifesto. I hope Winston and Gareth Morgan steal all their thunder their votes and their chance of getting over 30% . Labour do not deserve to be the majority party in any coalition government. Pity about the Greens this would have been their first real chance of being in government. Get the message the suits and women’s magazine covers are so 90’s and not where it’s at or what is needed.That shit doesn’t register with the under 30’s. I am in my 60’s and not that media savvy and I can see what is not working. Why the fuck can’t our left politicians. They need to tell the business sector to go fuck themselves and embrace a renewable energy sector and medicinal cannabis industry a radical illicit drug law reform program and force the de stocking of dairy farms remove all tuition fees and bring in a Tobin Tax while removing the reserve bank act.Oh lower GST and bring in a desperately needed UBI. No balls no brain that’s the NZ left.

  12. As long as Labour remain steadfastly and seemingly dubiously and purposefully ignorant of the farming money, and farming money alone, that’s used to operate NZ ( Never mind the farmer $-billions that’s syphoned off into private vaults while farmers become strategically impoverished then preyed upon by Banksters) and run a kind of weird, head-fuck defence for infamous National Party from farmer thievery and head fuckery as that lot of crooks gleefully dip their hands into that income stream for their private jet setter mates to gorge on NZ will flounder and list until we get decolonized by a smarter pack of crooks who will occupy the very lands our farmers derive our income from.
    NZ politics is worryingly dependant upon our ability to see into that particular abyss but we’re clearly all too fucked in the head to see down that far…
    Do you know what makes just a little bit of sick come up my craw? People who solemnly discuss Labour as though they are, in some way, an alternative to the scum right wing. They’re not. There’s no Corbyn here I’m afraid. They’re all just slippery crooks, stacked one on top of the other.
    The solution? I don’t see one. I don’t see one single individual that could be a rising star to lead NZ into a new socio-economic renaissance for us. I do remember however, the cadre of swine that crawled, like maggots, out of Labour then dragged us down into an ally way, clubbed us over the head with bullshit then went through our pockets and now blame us for losing the plot.
    Perhaps that’s it?? Perhaps that’s the solution? Before Labour starts up with the High Wankery of the pre electioneering charade, they start to hunt down those scum who rose up out of Labour and make them atone. Like little jimbo bolger tried on. But for real. Hunt them down. Subject them to inquiry after inquiry… The dirt’s there. We just have to dig it up.

  13. Martyn, giving oxygen to TOP is most definitely NOT going to help bring about a change of government; quite the opposite, in fact.

    • Martyn, agree with Castro, while I agree with most of what you write maybe have a bit more of a perspective such as just how bad National is, and although the left might be wanting, what the nightmare alternative it is, if they don’t get in.

      Corbyn also succeeded by uniting his voters. And that is what Labour and Greens need to do as well as commentators desperate for a change of government to facilitate.

    • I believe over the past 6 years , in particular, the population of N.Z has become apathetic to N.Z. politics. They have become immune to the serious issues National have ignored and will vote the incumbent government because of the “whose in government, lets just vote them” attitude. Voting with closed minds is why it is going to be difficult to effect a change of government.

  14. So, here it is…

    *** THE UK LABOUR PARTY MANIFESTO ***

    http://www.labour.org.uk/index.php/manifesto2017

    This is what we want. Literally.

    We want to take this document, and substitute “NZ” for “UK”, “New Zealand” for “Great Britain” and where we see an institution we don’t have here, like the NHS, we want to add a clause to say we will create it.

    Once we’ve done that, we want to demand, incessantly, that the NZ Labour Party adopt that Manifesto.

    We want to take all of their whining about how “it can’t be done” and “NZ is different”, and all of the rest of the Blairite rubbish they come up with, and dismiss it, repeating our demand as if we never heard any of their excuses.

    You can bet there are feverish talks now in Labour inner circles about how they can pretend none of this ever happened, that if they just ignore it and spin it away, the earth-shaking precedent set by Corbyn’s Labour successes can pass over them like a cloud, leaving them unscathed. We must not let them forget or ignore this for a second.

    The situation now is that it is the CENTRISTS who are making NZ Labour unelectable. This is now an established fact. We must act accordingly.

  15. As per usual I’m ‘contributing’ way after the fact but as a kiwi born who was in england the summer of ’15 by chance and the summer of ’16 by choice because of the disgusting neoliberal chicken coup, and who worked his aging arse off to help support Mr Corbyn, I can say unequivocally that there is no way in the world I would walk to my own front door for Andrew Little or any of the other ersatz lefty hacks who dominate the NZ Labour Parliamentary party.
    I will be in Aotearoa come November and yes we can agree “feelings are mutual, cobber” when it comes to how that mob of careerist tosspots would view any contribution from the likes of moi, but, it is gonna take a lot more than the refusal of aged humanist activists before the bubble inhabiting self-interested pseuds finally recognise that arguing with the nats over the mythical ‘center’ is a zero sum game.

    Rising at 5.30 just to listen to drivel hopefully will not become a habit, but I did hook up to national radio this am; just to try and get a handle on what the kiwi spinners’ POV on Mr Corbyn’s demonstration of the power of interacting with the ignored was.

    Hooten & Williams blathered – with a lot of help from the far from objective compare – three unashamed neolibs search for points of difference in an ocean of bland bullshit more like.

    The wasn’t much disagreement at all, nauseatingly both Hooten & Williams put the result down to the campaigns. They both said Corbyn ran a good campaign and May ran a shithouse one. Even worse they tried to claim that Mr Corbyn’s teriary education strategy had ‘bought’ the youth vote.
    What a creepy claim of utter fiction.
    For a start I doubt the campaign had turned around many voters at all, the problem with their thinking (aside from the fact both those turds see themselves as professional electioneers & so attribute just about everything that happens to spin doctoring – good or bad) is that they still believe ‘the polls’ generate an accurate reflection of voter intent.

    Maybe they don’t understand exactly how screwy UK polling is, although they should since the kiwi version shamelessly apes the UK model. Most of the brit polls are funded by media outlets which makes their independence from neoliberal & tory influence highly suspect, but in case Hooten & Williams don’t know, the media are having their own austerity drive and have been for well over a decade, so the polls are done on the cheap. The average sample size for a brit ‘national’ poll is 1,000 to 1400 respondents – not voters, respondents, in an entity with a population of about 64 million there is simply no way that a pool that small can hope to capture a cross section of such a diverse society as 2017 UK.

    Add to that the fact that the polls pretty much discounted young people, either because of inaccessibility – like in most nations young people simply don’t use circuit switched phone networks which is the preferred vector for budget polling, or the pollsters decided that young citizens weren’t worth interrogating since “they never vote”.
    That of itself indicates how out of touch the pollsters were.
    In the 2015 Corbyn campaign there was a great amount of informal signing up of voters, but by 2016 that had become an intrinsic part of interactions – sign them up now, Momentum-trained canvassers were including enrolment forms as part of their “Isn’t it awful what these neolib derps are doin to Jezza” spiel as well as taking notes about any mobility issues, responsiveness to older people ,or preference for peer interaction etc.
    Plus of course the citizen’s preferred means of contact – email (yep still in use), FB/WhatsApp, phone etc- all of which have a considerably longer life than a physical addy.
    As I pointed out in one of the Trotter things around here back in April, mebbe June, by the time May called her election Mr Corbyn & Seumus Milne were totally prepared.
    May’s hubris and self delusion were well known to anybody who bothered to look and she was open about her belief that she would go down in history as the ‘leader who destroyed Labour’.
    Sure the campaign went well for Labour but when the tory press now mutter about the Labour Party deliberately leaking the Labour manifesto they are either trying to cover for some sleazy self interested blairite who imagined leaking it would distract Labour leadership by going on a wild witch hunt or they are just being disingenuous a la Russiagate & searching for excuses for their own screw up.
    Getting in young tech heads did pay off – for example this Momentum vid https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Edt3d0xjEdU copped more than 7 million views in its various iterations.

    The Labour Party of Aotearoa will doubtless try to imitate Mr Corbyn but their lame insincerity will only serve to remind young and/or disaffected voters of Kiwi Labour’s 100% inauthenticity.

  16. Matthew Hooton and Mike Williams with Kathryn Ryan were useless this morning discussing Corbyn’s triumph.
    Not once did they mention the manifesto. That was why people voted the way they did. Yes, Corbyn is a fantastic campaigner, mostly because he’s relaxed and not trying to bullshit people. Yes May was dreadful, mainly because she herself knew she was lying her arse off
    Corbyn didnt read the mood of the people, the people read him , and they liked what he was saying
    He’s the only politician in recent times to dare talk about foreign policy and bring it in to the campaign.He unapologetically describes himself as a socialist , he joined the CND while he was still at school and he’s still a peace campaigner,, so much for starting off as a leftie then turning in to a conservative as one “matures”, he rides a bike and doesnt have a car
    He’s way better than Sanders who just wants more people sharing in the spoils of war
    Where’s our Sanders!! Or are the Brits different from us, more inclined to take to the streets with pitchforks?
    We need someone with humour, willing to take the debate to the streets , unafraid to go for broke with real leftwing policies, and please please please, someone who’s for peace

    • Well spotted Francesca!

      Which basically reveals the maggot-work being done to RNZ.

      It used to be the last remaining source of unbiased news.

      Not any more…

  17. This is one of your best ever blogs Martyn and I have so enjoyed reading it and the comments stream. I hope the current Labour people can get the message. New Zealand deserves better.

  18. So we’re left with the “choice” the late George Carlin often described.
    Blue or red, with seemingly bugger all difference between the two.
    Well, whilst the former will never change (neoliberalist extremist capitalism is in their very DNA), the latter does at least have the POTENTIAL to change.
    And quite frankly, rather than not vote, and thereby help guarantee a perpetuation of this neoliberal hell we live in, I’d rather vote for the red team.
    Sure, they show few signs of being the truly leftist party we all want. But they are still a political home to many left leaning voters. And therein lies great hope. Change from within.
    I agree with the sentiments expressed by many here, but given the Greens continued to display their complete ongoing political naivety when the budget came out, and that you simply can’t trust Winston – EVER – then the only serious game in town is Labour.
    This is politics. Our options may well be, on the face of it, exceedingly poor. But to NOT vote for the only serious contender capable of displacing this corrupt government, and the one major political entity we know won’t go into coalition with or support a Nazional administration ……. is to ensure nothing will EVER have a chance to change. Well that’s my two cents worth. Hate deflectors activated.

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