THE QUESTION to be answered, one way or the other, before 2023 is pretty simple: Can Labour serve two masters? Will it hold to the course recommended by its professional advisers? Or, will the party be driven into the weeds by the convictions of its caucus? Put another way: is Labour capable of putting its ideological convictions to one side in the name of holding on to its electoral advantage? There is a price to be paid either way. So, which master will pocket it? Pragmatism or Idealism?
Before anyone gets too excited, the idealism in question is not the old-fashioned social-democratic kind. Virtually no one in Labour’s caucus favours pushing capitalism to the outer limits of its tolerance. This is not a caucus that is going to agitate for the reintroduction of universal union membership, or the unfettered right to strike. There’s no hardcore bunch of “Big Taxers” arguing for a top income tax rate of 90 percent on incomes over $200,000. Nor will a “Re-nationalisation Faction” emerge to threaten the Aussie banks. The Labour Party of 2020 doesn’t do that sort of idealism.
There is actually a greater chance of Labour’s pollsters and focus group moderators advancing these sort of ideas than Labour’s MPs. That’s because New Zealanders, like Americans, are surprisingly positive about making the rich pay their fair share and reclaiming their country’s economic sovereignty. Notwithstanding the electorate’s willingness to embrace such radical policies, those same pollsters and focus group moderators would, nevertheless, hesitate to recommend their official adoption. Poke capitalism too hard and it will, most assuredly, poke you back – harder.
Labour’s professional advisers would also be acutely aware that a fair amount of the poking-back would come from the party’s parliamentarians. Considering the socio-economic strata from which nearly all Labour’s MPs have been recruited, such opposition would be entirely understandable and predictable. Turkeys don’t vote for Christmas.
No, incipient socialism is not what Labour’s professional advisers fear. After all, it’s not as if there’s anything resembling a majority available for such a programme in the House of Representatives. Not even the Greens would feel comfortable advancing such a programme – not when they considered the reaction of their voters in the central city electorates, the ones on fat salaries, the ones among whom their own party, and Labour, both go looking for “good” candidates. New Zealanders may surprise opinion pollsters with their policy preferences but, lacking a political party to take them forward, those preferences don’t amount to a hill of electoral beans.
What scares the bejesus out of Labour’s advisers, however, is the radical cultural agenda for which an alarming number of Labour and Green MPs would be prepared to die in a ditch. They are all-too-aware that this is not an agenda which enjoys broad electoral support. Even worse, they know that it is not an agenda which the parties of the Right (even in the unlikely event that a significant number of liberal Nats subscribed to it) could possibly allow to pass unchallenged. More bluntly, it’s an agenda which promotes division and dissension in ways that do not favour Labour’s re-election. The Government’s professional advisers will be urging the Prime Minister and her Cabinet colleagues to steer well clear.
But will they listen? Can Andrew Little be dissuaded from introducing legislation against “hate speech”. Can the Maori Caucus be turned aside from embracing the sort of constitutional radicalism that the Maori Party has already gone all the way with? How many women in Labour’s caucus are there willing to wear the term “TERF” as a badge of honour? Will Nanaia Mahuta’s Cabinet colleagues counsel her against removing the right of electors to force local authorities to submit their proposals for Maori wards to a referendum? Is Chris Hipkins strong enough to resist the introduction of a compulsory New Zealand history curriculum in which greedy Pakeha settlers are invariably cast as the “baddies”, while noble indigenous Maori are consistently presented as the “goodies”? Will agreement at Ihumatao open-up all previous Treaty settlements for re-negotiation – even as it introduces privately-owned land into the anti-colonial Poker game?
Labour MPs who would energetically resist being labelled “socialists” (in any other sense than endorsing the nostalgic veneration of Mickey Savage) might find it a great deal harder to deny their support for “decolonisation”, curbing hate speech, and facilitating early gender transitioning. Repudiating such key elements of the radical cultural agenda will be made even harder if they become the subject of private members bills. Will Jacinda Ardern risk a caucus revolt by ordering her parliamentary troops to ruthlessly vote all such legislation down? And, if she doesn’t, how does she propose to prevent such bills passing? Now that Winston’s handbrake is no longer there to give her plausible deniability on the pragmatic front?
The Prime Minister’s problem is positively Biblical in its moral complexity. It is, after all, in Matthew’s gospel that Jesus is recorded as saying: “No man can serve two masters: for either he will hate the one, and love the other; or else he will hold to the one, and despise the other. Ye cannot serve God and mammon.”
Unfortunately, it is Jacinda Ardern’s efforts to serve both masters that has so far distinguished her second term. Mammon, it must be said, has – so far – received the best service. Keeping the business community sweet, and not “the preferential option for the poor”, has been the order of the day. God must be wondering when it’s going to be his turn.
There is a way in which the Lord could be served that even the professionals might see some merit in following. If economic and cultural radicalism could be combined: if emancipating people from the grip of poverty could be undertaken at the same time as they were being encouraged to break free from the grip of racism, sexism and transphobia, then the prospects of success for all of these emancipatory projects would be enhanced considerably. If history has taught us anything, it is that a revolution which is not an all-embracing festival of freedom: economic, cultural, sexual and political; then, almost certainly, it is not a revolution at all.
Chris Trotter: What style of irrelevency should Labour offer people who will be homeless by 2023?
Everyone: ok.
Good post Chris!
I hope to hell you’re right – because the last thing we want to see here in NZ is the kind of woke mess that the UK has descended into.
>Where cops arrest will you for saying on Twitter that there are only two genders. Your name goes on a public register and your future employment prospects effectively destroyed.
>Where comedians are arrested, charged and given a criminal conviction for making a joke that someone didn’t like.
Stop exaggerating Andrew
Stuff appear to also have an advance copy of the Royal Commission report into the Christchurch massacre. https://www.stuff.co.nz/national/christchurch-shooting/123626151/royal-commission-recommends-new-security-agency-for-nz-following-march-15-shootings
“The commission is also understood to have recommended adding hate-motivated offences to the Summary Offences Act and the Crimes Act, including an offence of inciting religious or racial disharmony based on an intent to stir up, maintain or normalise hatred through threatening, abusive or insulting communications.
The definition of objectionable in censorship legislation should include racial superiority, racial hatred and racial discrimination, the report says.”
– no doubt there’ll be an exemption for the Maori party.
Stop exaggerating that people are exaggerating, and be careful what you wish for.
Not content with punishing people for the offensive things they say on public online platforms, now there are moves afoot to punish them for what they say privately too. This week the Labour MP Lucy Powell put forward a Bill in parliament that would ban private online discussion forums because, she says, hate speech can fester in these “echo chambers.” Why not go the whole hog and mic us all up so that you can hear what we’re saying at all times of the day?
Even more perversely, these non-crimes really just mean “insulting comments.” So if you’re in Yorkshire and someone on Facebook calls you a fat slob, call the cops. If you wear a niqab and a work colleague tells you—a la Boris Johnson—that you look a little bit like a mailbox, phone the police.
In essence, South Yorkshire Police want people to report on everyday conversations. This is Stasi territory. Coppers asking citizens to file reports on things they have read or overheard really should have disappeared from Europe with the fall of the Berlin Wall. Yet here it still is, this GDR-style instruction to eavesdrop and squeal, though now it’s happening on the other side of the old Iron Curtain.
It is testament to how entrenched censorship has become in 21st-century Britain that a police force can so casually call for reports about speech
Yes, Andrew. Innocent statements by public UK figures are insanely pounced on, you are certainly not exaggerating. When a traditional elitist school is sacking staff, upsetting parents, and disturbing its pupils with the compulsion to raise its interpretation of gender issues, then it can be described as a woke mess. Overheard workplace conversations do get reported to management here, too, but forcing opinions as truths upon children can be confusing for them, and very damaging.
“Will Jacinda Ardern cause a caucus revolt by ordering her parliamentary troops to ruthlessly vote all such legislation down?” No. Because the bottom line is that they want to keep their jobs, and many will be fundamentally decent sort of people, even if not charismatic headline grabbers.
PC parents may be embracing their pre-schoolers now being taught to refer to their labia, but their grandparents sure as hell won’t be, and will not be intimidated by the reckless labelling of the divisive global woke attempting to negativise qualities which helped build this and other countries into reasonably well functioning post-modern constructs. If ‘boomer’ is going to be used as a Molotov cocktail, it will not just be rural rednecks who pick that cocktail up and hurl it back again.People do do that.
Today the playing fields of Eton are being muddied by boys now taught to refer to New Zealand as Aotearoa, equating masculinity with being toxic, and decolonisation – whatever that means – replacing the jingoism used by colonial masters to manipulate lesser beings into doing their bidding.
Stuff’s attempt to consolidate this trend is likely to backfire when in this young country, we are too close to our pioneering roots to accept blatant bull shit and insults. Being a property owner is not akin to being a demon either – if it were, then there would not be the ongoing dialogue rueing how difficult it is to be one, and that in itself is acknowledgment of the growing inequality which needs to get sorted.
Government using Kiwi banks would be quite nice too. I wonder why they won’t do this.
@ SW.
“Government using Kiwi banks would be quite nice too. I wonder why they won’t do this.”
Well…? I think that, is a great question.
And incase you missed it, here’s a very telling TDB Post by Chris Leitch – Banks, Borrowing, Bonds, Silly Statements and Raging House Fires
https://thedailyblog.co.nz/2020/12/01/guest-bog-chris-leitch-banks-borrowing-bonds-silly-statements-and-raging-house-fires/
The reason why OUR government doesn’t use OUR banks is because foreign banks are already making huge money out of us.
And on that note; how and why is that?
We’re a small population on a relatively large land area and a vital-resource rich one at that so why do we have foreign banks manipulating us and rorting us and why do we have poverty, anxiety, homelessness and FUCKING BROCCOLI SELLING FOR $3.00 FUCKING EACH!
We need to find out where the money is between the less than a $1.00 a kg for raw wool and the $700 dollar jersey went? Where’s the money go between the $19.00 a KG of ‘prime, lean’ shredded dairy cow and the poor bastard who must follow it around in its permenantly pregnant and muddy misery until it’s spent then killed, cooked and eaten by us aliens on a biosphere more designed to carry non human species who have learned to live in harmony?
But I digress.
To quote Chris Leitch
“Former NZ Prime Minister, John Key, while touring an engineering factory shortly after the Christchurch earthquake said ”If printing money is the way to go, and that’s going to bail out our problems in Christchurch, why don’t we just print lots of money and give it to every New Zealander and they’ll have a great Christmas. The reality is, it’s a bit of a fool’s paradise.”
The reality is, actually, that statement proved how illiterate Mr Key, now the chairman of ANZ Bank New Zealand and director of ANZ Bank Australia, was about money – or economics at all for that matter.”
Chris Leitch goes on to write:
“Because, despite Mr Key’s silly attempt to ridicule to idea back then, just eight years later the Reserve Bank is printing $128 billion in new electronic money over the next two years.
Not a word anywhere you’ll note, about ‘funny money’ – that charge laid at the door of Social Credit who have been championing the use of Reserve Bank money to support government spending for neigh on one hundred years.”
What we need to remember as a people of AO/NZ is that when business becomes involved in democratic politics particularly the bankster scum, that democratic politic STOPS being a democratic politic and becomes a business and we all know what happens to a business-ified politic. Yep. [It] becomes fascist.
We soon see our financialised democratic politic turn its fearsome head around to start devouring the hand that feeds it and it won’t stop until everything and everyone’s devoured balls and all. As we’re seeing daily in the stats and in the faces of the homeless.
It also shows how jonky and his cronies can retain control of what we rather romantically think of as our country when really it’s under his steerage while labour, which is not much more than window dressing to keep up appearances while we The Masses are anaesthetised by logical fallacy spouting gas bags and we can do NOTHING at all about that and I do honestly fear who jonky and his dirty bankster kind are selling us out to. Or perhaps have already done so ! ?
Is it just me or has Social Credit enjoyed the same anonymity as agriculture. The same media invisibility, the same demonising and cold shouldering. What do you reckon’s going on there then? Are there little secrets? Are there little fortunes being hidden? Are there traitors in our midst? Fucking looks like it!
CB I really do appreciate your insightful analysis.
I see what you describe.
Capitalism NZ Style, inherit money and become a wealthy intergenerational family – then lobby the government to ‘fast track’ your change of zoning and tax payers provide all the infrastructure, so that the rural land you bought for a song, can be developed super cheap and then you don’t have to pay your workers so much! The NZ dream!!! Then give a knighthood, while the media stamps over anybody who disagrees with the NZ ‘progress’ of helping the rich get richer with government aka taxpayer money. Could be the Natz at work!
Nothing stopping them trying to do a factory on the land zoned for it, but then that would not be so profitable! Give more taxes and government money to the rich to trickle to the poor, is neoliberalism’s motto! Make exceptions for the rich in zoning!
Sleepyhead estate: Waikato Regional Council under fire for ‘anti-business’ opposition to plan
https://www.nzherald.co.nz/business/sleepyhead-estate-waikato-regional-council-under-fire-for-anti-business-opposition-to-plan/724MO6INP6AEEQM22QLBQIWUBI/
The Prime Minster’s goal is to remain popular. Nothing else.
Worked for John Key.
They all do Ada, they all want to be popular. Look at Seymour. He was the gun lobbyist who wanted to be populist with all gun owners, so won their vote. He forgot that guns kill and we are now seeing more and more shootings in this modern era, yet we’re not hearing a peep outa Seymour on this now that he’s got the popular gun vote.
Was it popular to argue for assisted dying legislation?
I think you’re trying to minimise the PM’s failure.
Define failure, a cop being shot and killed, driveby shootings, murders?
Assisted dying was of course popular and garnered many popular votes.
I think you’re trying to minimise the P.M.’s achievements…
https://www.labour.org.nz/our-record
It appears Ada, you only see what you want to see. If you look for failures you only see failures, open both eyes.
Chris proposes a hypothesis which has not yet played out – as far as we know – ergo Ardern cannot be said to have failed at or on this point.
After three years, there is a track record you can look at.
Kiwibuild’s failure wasn’t the result of NZ First.
Child Poverty, who was the Minister for that?
Giving obvious favours to the wealthy in NZ, that nobody else gets, is not popular to the public. Helping the rich constantly with benefits mean’t Key’s popularity was declining and why he left parliament before he was voted out.
Conjecture.
Maybe Key recognised that a fourth term was not at all likely and people wanted change.
So what ?
So Key left before he wasted another year as PM and lost an election.
So Key was only in it for himself, sounds very similar to Trump.
The neoliberals use the woke agenda of ‘cheap’ talk about “hate speech” and ‘Terfs’ to distract from real issues.. for example how supermarkets who produce nothing, are somehow able to control and discriminate against small and larger growers, which then bankrupts and drives farmers out of business, lowers wages and conditions, leaving agribusiness to be run by multinational big companies going forward, that supermarkets prefer to work with.
Price dictators: How growers say supermarkets came to call the shots
https://www.stuff.co.nz/business/farming/123350213/price-dictators-how-growers-say-supermarkets-came-to-call-the-shots
“Many of the 34 newcomers to the list have made their fortunes in the grocery business, a generation of men who’re now worth around 60 million each.
https://www.scoop.co.nz/stories/BU1808/S00537/oh-thats-where-they-get-their-profits-from.htm
The problem being that the average supermarket worker is on minimum or minimal wages. It is clear minimum wages are not enough to live off and cause many families financial hardship. These owners have the ability to lift wages, and to lift the struggle from these families, but thus far they have not.”
The other major problem is that NZ taxes are being diverted to prop up the low wages in profitable industries, instead of using taxes for health and education, which are instead increasingly becoming profit driven with the rise of paid for health and education, and not a social good.
Compulsory New Zealand history curriculum in which greedy Pakeha settlers are invariably cast as the “baddies”, while noble indigenous Maori are consistently presented as the “goodies”
Sounds like you are upset Chris with Stuff media omitting to being racist and portraying Maori in such a bad light for so many years and its taken this long for them to say it was wrong and it was unfair. When growing up I use to enjoy watching American Cowboys and Indian movies. Yet it was always the Native American Indians who were made to look like savages and bad and this has been a common theme even in countries like ours but many others also. As for your view on constitutional radicalism, from a Maori perspective there is nothing wrong with this stance as this aligns with our Treaty and the sovereignty or Tino rangatiratanga promised to us but never delivered. I see the British are calling for protection of there sovereignty in the Brexit trade deal, well is it any different to what we want and what we were promised by Queen Victoria. Our elected politicians have to swear allegiance to the Queen but here is no mention of the document that gave the Queen such power and authority that being the TOW.
‘Can Labour Serve Two Masters?’
No problem, Chris. Jacinda is already serving seven masters (at least):
1. the global corporations which require unimpeded access to markets,
2. the international banking cartel, which decides the relative values of currencies and interest rates
3. the mainstream economists, whose bizarre theories do not match anything happening in the real world but are put on a pedestal
4. the opportunists in the business world who promise to create employment while stuffing their bank accounts with government handouts
5. the NZ corporations that have unprofitable and completely unsustainable -even in the short term- business models and require continuous provision of subsidies from taxpayers/ratepayers.
6. the bureaucrats who operate the rorts and dysfunctional systems at the local level, and pay themselves enormous salaries for achieving gross incompetence.
7. the Anglo-American ‘security’ scam, whereby enormous amounts of money are siphoned out of the nation’s natural wealth to support resource wars geared to stealing other nations’ wealth.
The fact that the entire system is in the process of collapsing as a consequence of the inherent flaws, contradictions and inconsistencies within it, whilst causing so much damage we face the prospect of the Earth becoming largely uninhabitable within a matter of decades, is of NO interest to Jacinda Adern nor, apparently, of any interest to anyone else in parliament.
Thus, we will be required to endure yet more rearranging of the deck chairs onboard NZ Titanic, which has already hit the iceberg and is taking on water fast.
The terminal collapse of the US gives us a window into the future of NZ:
Covid Is Toppling America’s “Points of Failure” Dominoes
December 7, 2020
Sorry Fed, it’s too late. The dominoes are already toppling, and every point of failure is being exploited by the catalyzing effects of Covid.
America’s many points of failure–leverage points where a break brings down the entire system–are falling like dominoes, a process catalyzed by Covid. These systemic points of failure have been masked for the past 20 years by the widespread distribution of trillions of dollars, either printed or borrowed.
There’s no point of failure that can’t be glued together or covered up a bit longer with fountains of cash. That’s the American way of solving problems: just throw more money at it.
Unfortunately for America, substituting borrowed trillions for real problem-solving generates its own set of problems, problems that increase the system’s vulnerability to collapse. Healthcare / sickcare is a leading example of this: as the corruption, pay-to-play and profiteering deepened, the federal government’s endless borrowed trillions boosted healthcare / sickcare from 5% of the nation’s economy to roughly 20% today.’……
https://www.oftwominds.com/blogdec20/failure-points12-20.html
In the original meaning of your article, Chris, it is clear that Jacinda and ‘her team’ are serving Mammon.
Far from ‘throwing the money-changers out of the temple’, successive governments have given the money-changers free rein to do whatever they wanted. And now the money-changers are in full control, and when they say jump, Jacinda asks, “How high?”
…’God must be wondering when it’s going to be his turn’…
Indeed. Made me chuckle.
—————–
…’There is a way in which the Lord could be served that even the professionals might see some merit in following. If economic and cultural radicalism could be combined: if emancipating people from the grip of poverty could be undertaken at the same time as they were being encouraged to break free from the grip of racism, sexism and transphobia, then the prospects of success for all of these emancipatory projects would be enhanced considerably ‘…
—————–
Exactly,… at least on this earth. And Jesus Christ also went on record as saying; ”Let he without sin cast the first stone”. The background of which was the woman caught in adultery,- which was a capital offense in the context of that Patriarchal historic society. Don’t know what happened to the bloke though,… he probably just received some counselling and a weeks worth of homework reciting the Torah.
—————–
…’If history has taught us anything, it is that a revolution which is not an all-embracing festival of freedom: economic, cultural, sexual and political; then, almost certainly, it is not a revolution at all’…
—————–
True enough in many respects,… however, … in every society since time began there has always been groups just like the Pharisees whether in South America, Africa, Europe or elsewhere who seek to control, dictate and preserve the status quo,… and most certainly will use murder, exile, imprisonment, and financial ruin under ‘their’ laws to enforce it. Which is exactly why they nailed the aforementioned Jesus Christ to a cross to die a hideous death, – because he dared to challenge their sick interpretation of a just society.
Which only goes to show just who really rules this world.
The obsession of some on the left and all on the right with culture issues and woke millennials as the root cause of societies problems and the main reason working class voters reject the left is misguided and is putting focus in the wrong place. It is red herring and is being used to overlook the fact that the working class – in particular – are intrinsically conservative not just on social issue but also on economic issues.
This can be seen across the globe in elections in the US, Australia, the UK, Brazil and India – where large swathes of working class voters have propelled right wing nationalist leaders into power based on the promise of more jobs – low paid low skilled jobs – gained at the expense of immigrants and foreigners.
There is a false assumption at the heart of many leftist commentators that the working class are conscious of there economic position but are rejecting economic improvement because they don’t like gay marriage or immigration.
I think this is false – the working class explicitly rejects class solidarity and have a natural deference to and belief that the wealthy will take care of them. This is underpinned by patriotism and patriarchy as was clearly obvious in the election of Trump (a billionaire) but also in the UK – who’s working class voters have chosen Conservative and more specifically the upper class over social democratic candidates consistently for decades.
This has always puzzled me until a recent conversation with a working class friend. The discussion was around a UBI and as I tried to explain the economic and social benefits of ensuring all citizens can get by regardless of their employment situation – his response was ‘why should I get a hand out I want to be able take care of my family and not be dependent on any one else.” What about WFF’s I said this is an investment that we as a country are making in the future of your children – he did not see it this and said I take the WFF money but I don’t like it.
As for the middle class – they share the same deference for the wealthy and add to it aspiration to be wealthy.
It is this collective deference and worship of wealth and the wealthy which has stymied any progressive economic policy. It is not a handful of woke millennials – I just find this argument ridiculous and no different from blaming exploited immigrant labor for low wages etc.
We live in a democracy and the blame for a lack economic change must be placed where it belongs – the voters – a large chunk of them working class.
An old adage: “the worker is his own worst enemy………..”
Largely agree with you here – documented and applicable in both the UK and USA – but the N Z immigrant labour issue may be part of a separate incomplete picture – and no exploitation is acceptable.
” There’s no point of failure that can’t be glued together or covered up a bit longer with fountains of cash. That’s the American way of solving problems: just throw more money at it ”
What an amazing contradiction that is when we were told in 1984 that was the reason for the move to neo liberalism and the market economy was for to long we tried to solve our problems by throwing money at them and we had to live within our means and that the previous 60 years had been a failure because we couldn’t balance the books.
But when this evil system we have created is failing and threatening those with immense wealth and the hangers on they want to throw money at it to maintain its grip all of a sudden throwing money at it becomes acceptable business practice after all those years of crushing austerity that has caused economic misery for the rest of us.
It seems some aspects of kenyanism weren’t that bad after all.
Jacinda and Grant have to choose between two masters while people like me , those in streets nearby and at work serve many faceless ones.
It’s like the Labour government is standing on a stage shooting promises into the crowd day after day, promises made of tissue paper rather than money and not real transformation currency but make-believe bank notes of change. I actually saw Jacinda on Breakfast yesterday making EXCUSES for her administration, asking John “Do you know how much we have spent on social development in our term?” (it is actually about the same as a week of covid wage subsidy thanks). Ardern gaslit her audience further (she actually got owned on a show which is not exactly hard hitting), arguing straight out of the Orwell playbook that doing nothing on poverty recommendations is actually doing a lot. A $25 benefit increase, Ardern argued, is not to be sniffed at. In actual fact if we look at the past 25 years of Labour/National neoliberalism, the benefit has then risen by one dollar per year while the Prime Minister’s salary has gone up by $12,000 per year in the same period. The PM came off as both difficult and deflective in interview, at times throwing her head back with a wry grin while speaking of the country’s most vulnerable, serving her inner PR, her front stage management, her backroom accountants, her homeowners associations and her mysterious ideology. Thankyou.
New Zealand has an opportunity deficient.
The poor don’t count and for good reason, now they can just euthanize them.
OK theatrical utterances aside, the reality is this is another in a long line of far right governments in NZ. Anyone who is deluded to believe they actually are living under a left wing government needs serious help. The commitment to far right economics by labour is the tail that wags the dog. Economic policy is what is driving all the decisions, and those decisions are far right. What is this far right economics I’m banging on about – neoliberalism.
Two, yes one breath, our humanity, not masked knowing, the other our monied control.
The question raised by this article is “can Chris Trotter please two audiences?” – the woke and the unwoke.
Look at this curious olive branch offered to the woke in his last paragraph: “If economic and cultural radicalism could be combined: if emancipating people from the grip of poverty could be undertaken at the same time as they were being encouraged to break free from the grip of racism, sexism and transphobia, then the prospects of success for all of these emancipatory projects would be enhanced considerably.”
Having reservations about “facilitating early gender transitioning” doesn’t make one “transphobic” – it merely reflects the knowledge that children can be highly impressionable, and that (as Douglas Murray put it) people aren’t made of Lego. Neither does opposing the more extravagant demands of Maori activists make one “racist”.
I wonder if Trotter’s last paragraph was written in a hurry. He acknowledges the widespread opposition to the woke agenda, and in the past has himself pointed out how intellectually and morally incapacitating identity politics is. Yet he now suggests the solution for Jacinda is to couple the woke agenda to what a Labour Govt. should actually be doing – reforming the economic system.
Can you explain to me why exactly that’s a good idea Chris?
A shrewd comment, Your Holiness!
My hope, based on my limited experience as a trade unionist in the 1980s, is that when people see that those they may have been wary of, or actually disliked, are “there for them” when the time of struggle arrives, all kinds of wonderful things happen. Solidarity is a truly magical experience. It can make prejudice and bigotry disappear – and never return.
Well I can’t argue with solidarity. But for a moment there it seemed like you were implying that hate speech legislation and making war on the so-called “gender pay gap” are fine provided they’re combined with nationalizations and a more progressive tax system.
Probably a moot point anyway, I fear. Most current Labour MPs wouldn’t dream of re-nationalizing the power companies, the universities, or Air NZ; and Jacinda is reluctant to do anything that might scare off the soft National voters she’s succeeding in winning over to her brand of “progressive” neoliberalism.
Since I don’t follow anything but what concentrates my interest I ignore what doesn’t matter (to me, anyway). So, the neediest and climate change are my priorities. Housing is absolutely vital for all of us, not least the homeless. An opportunity for Realpolitik Labour (glad I’ve never voted for them).
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