The final results are in and the Righteous Crimson Tsunami was even greater than election night with an increased Party vote and flipping 3 electorate seats!
Never before have we had a Mother of Dragons with such pitiful Policy Dragons.
WINNERS:
Labour Party – They hit 50% and turned three electorates. It is unprecedented, they have all the power and no plans whatsoever to use any of it. It’s like winning Lotto only to be told you can’t spend any of it because the people who didn’t win Lotto will feel grumpy if you do.
If you ask the average Kiwi who voted Labour this year to name just one Labour Party policy, I would put money down on the vast majority of them answering with, ‘Jacinda saved NZ?’
When your policy platform is seen by the vast majority of people as ‘saving our lives’, you have built an emotional 20 lane multi level motorway suspension bridge towards a mandate that demands use.
The psychology of the NZ electorate has fundamentally shifted. All the female voters Labour lost to Key have all come home to Labour for Jacinda. The strength of this solidarity afterglow must be nurtured if it is to bloom into anything meaningful.
Māori Party – They win another MP off the List! If Labour want to ensure they win the next 5 elections, a strategic alliance should be formed with the Māori Party whereby they stand candidates in the Māori electorates and Labour push only for the Party vote. That could cement a power relationship that can’t be broken by National.
Chloe Swarbrick – She actually increased her Auckland Central majority and almost won the cannabis referendum.
Chloe has the political courage we wish Jacinda had.
Incremental Nothingness – Elections change Governments, Revolutions change States. Jacinda crusades when she is in a crisis, but when it comes to real transformative change, Jacinda isn’t prepared to take on the neoliberal State. The Wellington Bureaucratic elite run NZ, not the Labour Party, and they have zero intention of changing tings now. Yes we will get 10 days sick leave and a Matariki public holiday, but that’s it. Welcome to Incremental Nothingness.
LOSERS:
National – They went down and lost electorate seats.What’s fascinating about the National Party Autopsy is that NO ONE has pointed out that this result marks the death spiral of the Party and that the Boomer dominance over political influence is now finally ended!
The National Party campaign was a train-wreck dumpster fire that collided with a school bus that exploded next to a pet store.
Simon Bridges fell foul of the sudden solidarity created by Covid and National were caught flat footed by a crisis that only became worse by more free market deregulation.
No one wanted to hear about the State being cut back when everyone was running to the State for safety.
It highlighted the utter vacancy of National Party ideology, all they kept coming up with was privatisation!
Their ever changing position on the border was farcical and that’s after you had to accept a former President of the Party leaking privileged information to a National MP who then leaked it to the media, another MP sending sext texts, another Party Offical smearing their own candidate, and the Todd Muller coup ignited by cowardice.
They will wander in the wilderness trying to work out who and what they actually stand for.
Hosking, NZ Herald and Corporate Media – None of the main broadcasting platforms have any openly left wing broadcasters yet over half the country just voted in Labour and the Greens. It’s like a Warehouse with no stock or poorly paid staff getting sacked.
Helen White – She was such a bad candidate for Labour in Auckland Central that even people from overseas who had never met her fled from her!
Justice – The first test of Jacinda & Labour was whether or not they use their massive majority to revoke a racist drug law – she & Labour have refused point blank to do that!Labour could change a racist drug law, but they won’t because 50.7% support the racist drug law! This is appalling political cowardice!
Greens – Begged for crumbs and got even less than that. Honestly, they have all the tactical capacity of slow growing moss.
Matt King – The boiled Ham of the North got dumped.
Hooton’s reputation – After helping the Muller Coup, Hooton has become the Grim reaper of the National Party, any time he gets close to power they implode. He’s like an Anti-Midas.
CONCLUSION:
Labour have brilliantly captured the Greens and silenced any meaningful criticism of Labour’s incrementalism. Labour couldn’t believe how little the Green leadership ended up wanting and were happy to down play any real policy gains for a couple of empty baubles.
The shock articulated by Russel Norman, Sue Bradford and Catherine Delahunty at how pathetic the gains are when opposition would have been far preferable should have everyone deeply concerned.
The ultimate proof to this pudding will be the first 100 days policy platform, if nothing meaningful happens legislatively during that period, it won’t happen. You have a window of 100 days to force change before the Wellington neoliberal bureaucratic elites shut transformative change down.
The idea that Labour + Greens after specials could have a such an enormous majority and still do nothing meaningful on welfare increases, the climate, housing, worker rights, public broadcasting, mental health, prisons and poverty could erode faith in the system more than a dozen Donald Trumps ever could.
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Excellent summary. “It’s like winning Lotto only to be told you can’t spend any of it because the people who didn’t win Lotto will feel grumpy if you do”.
The 50 group signatory letter due to reach Jacinda today, calling for Benefit increases of at least $100-$150 (single person) and higher for families, is the type of community organising that needs to happen.
Noise has to be made, and appropriate direct action taken, if the Labour Caucus is to be moved on anything before the scabby senior public service move on them. Carmel Sepuloni has been captured by the neo libs from day one and was a tragic choice to be renewed as Minister for WINZ/MSD. Her portfolio needs special attention from the working class, child poverty and all sorts of other unnecessary misery could be alleviated within months if benefits were raised, benefits individualised, stand downs removed, and abatement rates shrunk. It needs to be seamless for people to transition between work and income support, and part time work while on a benefit. The sadistic moralism needs to be removed and MSD based on a service model rather than punishment.
The Govt. could easily make all CEOs and senior managers reapply for their jobs, and start a Basic Income administered by IRD, with a social security agency for disabled and special needs. Everyone loves Jacinda, but they will love her even more if she starts to roll back neo liberalism, and that will only happen with PRESSURE.
I don’t think trump was expecting or prepared for the presidency in 2016.
I think he might be relieved by loosing and go happily back to profitable bankruptcies in civvy street.
But he is pretty pissed at the moment and there is another possibility.
That he spends the next 4 years doing the preparations and making the contacts he needed to have and didn’t have this time, so that when he gets re elected in a real landslide in 2024 he has a team he can rely on in the key positions to do what he wants to do.
Biden is made of playdough. He is a thing of the establishment ,will say the pious words that are needed in all situations that sound right and mean absolutely nothing. And do what Wall st bids.
If he survives the country will be heartily sick of him. And of Kamala.
D J S
” The Wellington Bureaucratic elite run NZ, not the Labour Party, and they have zero intention of changing tings now ”
This election and result was only about one issue and that was covid it had nothing to do with actual policy so for me it was a non binding result.
It was not a vote for Labour party policy , the direction we should go in or a repudiation of an economy that does not deliver for the majority of its citizens.
The arrogance is already on display with comments about their massive majority means that for the next three years they will act and behave like a first past the post dictatorial administrations of the past something we turned away from with MMP.
Like the election of Biden and Harris the neoliberal market bus is still moving but with a change of driver and the one riding shotgun in the front.
100 days …no the fact that they will not act in the way they need to is already been confirmed with their ministerial appointments with the same do nothing approach of the last three years.
Now we will discover that Winston and his colleagues were not the only ones with their hands on the brake.
Good summary of how thinks are going to pan out. Jacinda and Labour won because they were in power when covid struck and they played their cards well and National were in disarray and had little to offer. The question is what were Labour offering.I never saw any mention of large increases in benefits or family support . Little was done in their 3 years to improve poor people’s lives and with the increases in rent and food costs their lives are getting worse by the day.
Yes not many people predicted the Maori Party could and would win Waiariki and go on to get 1.2% of the Party vote to get Ngarewa Packer in. My daughter who resides in Auckland called me to say her vote was a waste of time, and I said she needs to wait for the specials to be counted, it will make a difference as unlike myself who voted Labour she gave the Maori party two ticks. If you watched the Maori channel and the Maori debates Waititi ran an excellent campaign. He was also there for our people in Tauranga and throughout the motu. He was there for or Tauranga whanau who were/are getting poisoned by the toxic industrial site. And unlike the Labour Party Maori caucus, he fronted early and they (Labour) turned up too late and only when they realised they may lose the seat. Our people aren’t dumb they saw this as insulting and they voted accordingly. I registered my daughter who was not going to vote, cause she said she didn’t like the two main parties. I told her she could vote for uncle John. Now he didn’t get in but her one party vote did make a difference and I am about to email her and tell her so. People need to realise every vote counts.
Winners global neo liberalism. Losers anything that’s not global neo liberalism.
Labour are Covid Wardens, and not much more.
No Cannabis = No Labour Vote 2023
The balancing of voting priorities can be quite a fine thing.
So educated to vote for Act (say) to have cannabis and as a consequence of that being top of the bucket list, accept the selling off of our schooling system.
It will be an interesting 3 years. The Blairite is being blatant with her desire to keep courting her new supporters and the expense of traditional left leaning voters. The success of this depends on the economy and this is underpinned by agricultural exports being stable during covid.
Who would have thought Labour’s strategy would be to pander to the centre right, top end of town and primary sector. Of course they’ll be lot’s of committees with Maori names, token progression of workers/women’s rights and lots of big picture environmental strategies but nothing concrete and certainly not ‘progression’ with our nuclear moment being more akin to an Iraqi scud.
At the moment there is no risk either to the right or the left as both the Greens and National are rabbles for different reasons but rabbles much the same. Act and MP like pesky flies annoying but nothing else. In a post covid world however things can change rapidly.
I have always voted tactically on the Maori Roll depending on how the parties are polling. Last election I voted Labour 2 ticks as they needed it. This election, once JT denounced going with Natz I electorate voted for him as Marama and Peeni wil be in on the list. I gave party vote to NZF but will consider Maori party next time.
Housing housing, housing.
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