Is It “Game Over” For The Greens?

By
Chris Trotter
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120
3969

THERE IS NO POSSIBILITY of a centre-left government being formed if the Greens are no longer in Parliament. That’s a sobering thought, and yet the return of the Greens is taken for granted by most political pundits. A party which could survive the self-immolation of Metiria Turei in the weeks leading up to the 2017 general election, it is widely assumed, can survive anything. But can it? Is the Green brand really bullet-proof? Good for 5 percent of the Party Vote – no matter what?

I don’t think so.

What keeps the Green Party in the electoral game is a widespread misapprehension that, at its heart, the Greens are the same rather quirky but highly principled outfit that impressed itself so deeply on the imagination of New Zealanders in the first five years of the twenty-first century. The most obvious historical comparison is with the pre-Rogernomics Labour Party. So great was the political momentum generated by the First Labour Government under Michael Joseph Savage (1935-1940) that the party was able to win four more elections on the strength of it. But, as Labour demonstrated in 1984, parties can change. And the Greens have changed – a lot.

What the Greens are slowly but surely turning into was always there in the political movement they inherited from the Values Party. When push comes to shove, the Greens, like the majority of the Values Party membership before them, will always break in the direction of the middle-class idealism out of which both parties were born. Logically, Greens should be socialists: if this planet’s a corporation, it’s a corpse. In reality, however, the Greens are social-liberals. How else to explain the fact that the party secures the bulk of its support from the well-heeled professionals inhabiting the nation’s leafier suburbs – and their children?

For those history buffs out there, the other exemplars of the social-liberal dynamic at the heart of middle-class progressive movements are the Suffragettes. Like the Greens, the Women’s Social and Political Union (WSPU) embraced the cause of social-justice (a necessary indulgence if it was to enlist the support of working-class women) but at the outbreak of World War I its leaders were quick to jettison the WSPU’s socialist wing. A deal was struck with Lloyd George, the firebrand politician poised to become the UK’s next prime minister. The WSPU would back the war effort, and in return, at the war’s end, women (or, at least, women of means over 30 years of age) would be enfranchised. As proof of their patriotism, middle-class Suffragettes took to the streets handing out white feathers (tokens of cowardice) to young men not in uniform.

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“Deeds Not Words” – the WSPU’s motto – was always open to multiple interpretations!

The Values Party broke apart over the question of whether or not environmentalism was a cause that could be embraced meaningfully by the working-class. Between 1975 and 1978, the socialist faction of the Values Party did its best to supply a positive answer. Values’ 1978 election manifesto was an unabashedly radical socialist document. The electors, however, had other priorities. From 5 percent of the popular vote in 1975, the Values Party’s share was more than halved to just 2.41 percent. Within months, middle-class social liberalism was back in the saddle. This time, the voters’ judgement was even harsher. In 1981, and again in 1984, Values received barely 0.2 percent percent of the popular vote. The party was over.

Values rebirth as The Greens in 1989 represented the conscientized middle-class’ deep distress at Neoliberalism’s ruthless dismantling of the New Zealand welfare state, along with its unwavering promotion of the “free” market. Even more than Values, the Greens “got” that capitalism was killing the planet. As an internationally successful political movement, the Greens’ electability was based on the growing public understanding that the “old parties”, spawned by the exploitative industrial societies capitalism had created, no longer possessed the imagination necessary to rescue life on earth. Their message was encapsulated in the slogan: “The Greens are not of the Left, the Greens are not of the Right, the Greens are in front.”

But, in order to remain “in front” the Green brand had to fulfil two absolutely crucial obligations. It had to base its policies on the findings of science, and, it had to repudiate neoliberal capitalism and all its works. So long as Green parties did this, they went from strength to strength. Consistent failure to honour these obligations, however, rendered them acutely vulnerable to electoral annihilation.

It is becoming increasingly clear to green-oriented voters in 2023 that the Green Party is no longer as faithful to science as it was in the early 2000s, and that it is much more willing to compromise with the neoliberal order. Perhaps in an attempt to compensate for these two, critical, failures, the party has embraced a particularly volatile and uncompromising form of social-liberalism. One which a great many green voters find deeply offensive and alienating.

In sharp contrast to the leadership of Jeanette Fitzsimons and Rod Donald, who, respectively, embodied the movement’s fidelity to science and its duty to challenge the economic status quo, the leadership of James Shaw and Marama Davidson would seem to embody constant compromise with the Powers That Be, accompanied by a wholesale rejection of rationality itself. As election day approaches, it is becoming increasingly difficult to construct a rationale for remaining loyal to the off-putting political force that the Greens are turning into.

The brute psephological fact, amply demonstrated by the fate of Values, is that no political party has a core vote below which it cannot fall. The moment small-g green voters feel that a vote for the Greens is no longer a meaningful act of faith in the planet’s future, the party will be over. Ultimately, it is not the members who make or break a political party, but the reaction of the voters watching them.

Those engaged in finalising the Greens’ Party List for the 2023 general election would be wise to remember that.

120 COMMENTS

  1. Green is a marketing label, like filters on cigarettes make them healthier, type label. They are nothing more than an extreme urban social liberal authoritarian political group. And hey, their MP’s get well paid, for what no one can say!

    But there are just enough university students both current and aging with causes to champion and submissive white cis males taking both their kids to nowhere on their cargo bikes, from those leafy suburbs who can’t wait to misinterpret what its like to be poor and why, to want to intervene deeply in all our lives with the wrong solutions, who think these fools are the answer, to help them scrape back in. I’m truly sorry to say.

  2. Green stands for the colour Green, not sure what this current Green Party stands for, our waterways have gotten worse under this Woke Labour/Green Government, Crime is out of Control, the Banks and the Supermarkets are rogering us in places where the sun does not shine, meanwhile Labour and the Greens sit there twiddling their thumbs and debating issues such as Gender Identity ????

  3. Green stands for the colour Green, not sure what this current Green Party stands for, our waterways have gotten worse under this Woke Labour/Green Government, Crime is out of Control, the Banks and the Supermarkets are rogering us in places where the sun does not shine, meanwhile Labour and the Greens sit there twiddling their thumbs and debating issues such as Gender Identity ????

  4. Green stands for the colour Green, not sure what this current Green Party stands for, our waterways have gotten worse under this Woke Labour/Green Government, Crime is out of Control, the Banks and the Supermarkets are rogering us in places where the sun does not shine, meanwhile Labour and the Greens sit there twiddling their thumbs and debating issues such as Gender Identity ????

    • Climate Change isn’t something that can be talked in the streets. It has to be talked in the board room. Nationalise energy.

  5. After six years in power these are the Green’s so called achievements.
    Destroy strategically vital national oil refinery.
    Kill off oil exploration
    Subsidise rich people’s new car purchases
    Go down gender id rabbit hole

  6. Green type parties always kill themselves by identity politics and pushing in ‘an identity’ and unwisely being more interested in the identity than the ability of the person who they push into positions of power, who do not deserve it and are not democratically elected by their constituents. Invariably they eventually betray all the principles of the party by supporting the opposition for personal gain or becoming a example of gross uselessness or petty bullying.

    Alamein Kopu
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alamein_Kopu

    We are just seeing history repeating with Marama, Kerekere and an assorted rag tag of unelectable individuals who are gamed to be high on Green party lists, that nobody has even heard of, many of them don’t even seem to have much interest in NZ or NZers, let alone the environment, biological woman, equal rights and so forth. (Equal rights is not giving transgender men, more rights than woman nor is it demanding a capital gains tax, but Maori landowners are exempt).

  7. Stupidity, lack of democracy, lack of science, lack of fairness, lack of free speech, misogyny and woke fake victimhood being pushed through the back door (by woke lawyers and the rise of the rabid ‘equality’ advisor) without any mandate from the people – getting the push back now. Gross stupidity exposed!

    Gone be the woke Greens.

    Austin Killips: Transgender cyclist’s win prompts fresh criticism
    https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/austin-killips-transgender-cyclist-s-win-prompts-fresh-criticism-vhwcvp9ls

    Obsession with hate crime has warped policing
    Stella Creasy’s shocking treatment shows how feelings now take priority over fairness and facts
    https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/obsession-with-hate-crime-has-warped-policing-vrgrcqxcl

    Trans activists face action from university after blocking film again
    https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/trans-activists-face-action-from-university-after-blocking-film-again-drt9xlb8f

    JK Rowling backs Joanna Cherry MP after comedy club blocks show
    Edinburgh Fringe’s biggest venue, The Stand, has been warned that cancellation could be illegal
    https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/jk-rowling-mp-joanna-cherry-edinburgh-fringe-comedy-club-2023-jc5jgppsc

    “Cherry, 57, is a barrister and chairwoman of Westminster’s human rights committee. She has defied the party’s leadership with her stand against legislation which would allow trans people to legally change their sex through self-identification on the grounds that it could undermine women’s rights.

    She told Times Radio today that she supported equal rights for trans people but that there needed to be safeguards to avoid cases such as that of Isla Bryson, the double rapist who was going to be put in a women’s prison until the decision was reversed after a public outcry.”

    Bud Light’s woke marketing exec roasted as company loses billions after partnership with trans influencer
    https://www.foxnews.com/media/bud-lights-woke-marketing-exec-roasted-company-loses-billions-partnership-trans-influencer

    When Nike pays male turned female influencers to sell bras, – underpaid woman athletes are seeing red as woman not only never got equal pay, they now are expected to play 2nd fiddle to promotions using former men and winning in sports to former men!

    Just waiting for the next abuse in care, lawsuits regarding the puberty blockers going berserk in NZ by dangerous and enabled woke policy!

    Jan Rivers: Questions mount around the use of puberty blockers for children
    https://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/jan-rivers-questions-mount-around-the-use-of-puberty-blockers-for-children/JVKMNIUYUVBXDPCFPYSNZ34RWE/

  8. Many Voters know something of the MMP voting system. That is why I will likely vote Green again regardless of who is in charge of the GP this year–while preferring Chloe. Just as sheep shaggers and tractor/ute fans the country over vote their way consistently. Though I guess with Groundswell etc. there is extra volatility this year. I may vote Te Pāti Māori too, just as previously Internet Mana got the tick.

    A party that rejected Sue Bradford as leader surely showed its class outlook years ago. But nonetheless the Green brand is strong enough, despite what pundits and tory public self pleasurers on blogs may say.

    Labour and National, (not necessarily ACT) and the rats and mice parties claim to represent all New Zealanders–but it is the bourgeois Parliament–essentially class collaboration in action as per most democracies.

    Never say never in politics perhaps, exhibit A being Winstons lot not currently in Parliament (again).

  10. They have become a truly shameful party. Deeply embedded in gender ideology.

    Marama Davidson, The Minister of Violence Prevention failing to condemn the violence against women at Albert Park. Bleating on about loving her trans whanau like a cult member, when asked about the violence against women.

    I could go on about their appalling record, but anyone paying attention will be aware of it.

    I hope they crumble. We need adults in parliament

    • Anker. 100%. “We need adults in Parliament.” 200%. Public abandoning of biological women. 200.5% Kerekere persistently appearing like an under-grad campus protestor.

    • You protect and support wife beaters and those who opposes birth control, and want to return women to the kitchen.

      • WTF. And that’s in a good way. You support militant Labour ideas back to the time of men striking in the street for more pay for working the coal seams. But needing a dedicated religious sweated-labour advocate to lift the pay and conditions of the seamstresses back in the early days. Poor women and solo mothers carry on the humanity race, but one wonders why they bother.

  11. I vote for them because they are the closest thing to a left wing party in NZ and the only one that sincerely attempts to take action on climate change seriously.
    But if a genuine left wing party materialised it will be where my vote will then go.

  12. Once Where Warriors is a feminist fairy tale they tell little girls who they are in compitition with because woman over 30 years old are undesirable. No dude wants to deal with something like you.

  14. Brings to mind Terry Pratchett’s book ‘Only You Can Save Mankind’ – If not you, then who else?’
    Twelve-year-old Johnny receives a pirate edition of the new video game Only You Can Save Mankind from his friend Wobbler. However, he has not been playing for long when the ScreeWee Empire surrenders to him.

    The thing is that the ScreeWee in the game actually exist – they ‘come out’ to Johnny from being just blips in a computer game to others. They see in him someone who can understand and aid them in breaking through the barrage and barriers that prevent them from returning deep in computer space to their home planet as intact ‘manned’ vehicles. Johnny gives them that opportunity
    “Only You Can Save Mankind” by Terry Pratchett MuggleNet
    https://blog.mugglenet.com › 2018/01 › book-review-…
    Johnny is doing quite well at it until, just before he fires the kill-shot at the alien mothership, a message comes on his screen: WE WANT TO TALK. There’s …

    Perhaps we can find a parallel in real life. Would Johnny be more likely to be found in the Greens or where?

  16. Is it time to take the dive at last, do we bungee-jump into right wing destruction. National and Axe (Acts) sort of torture of kicking you till you are down, which shows that you are pathetic and so deserve to be kicked more. Labour almost there so do we take a big breath and some pain-killers and face our fears.

    Is the choice? – National/Axe destruction or Laboured distraction (where they practice subterfuge while they shaft you). What’s the anagram of smug?

  18. Is it “Game Over” for the Greens?

    A better question might be, is it game over for the climate?

    The offset King

    A Fonterra staff member was asked to help shape a crucial climate policy. Why? It’s unclear
    Eloise Gibson
    05:00, Apr 29 2023

    https://www.stuff.co.nz/environment/climate-news/131886679/a-fonterra-staff-member-was-asked-to-help-shape-a-crucial-climate-policy-why-its-unclear

    “….the 2020 briefing shows the design team at the ministry wanted to start ‘low key’ consultation with a wider group, including NGOs, Māori, foresters, Government agencies and polluters who buy New Zealand carbon credits under the Emissions Trading Scheme.
    Shaw said no – telling the ministry to wait until after the 2020 election before consulting wider. As of April 2023, the ministry confirmed to Stuff that those wider discussions still hadn’t happened.

    James Shaw said “no” he didn’t want any wider group including NGOs, but is quite happy to have our biggest polluter on the policy setting body.
    No wonder the Ministry for climate change headed by Shaw favours offsets rather than cutting our emissions.

    Many of these groups are deeply worried about the strategy of buying offsets, including their cost and environmental integrity. The ministry had hoped to soothe their fears by bringing them into discussions, the briefing shows.

    What’s wrong with this guy? Is he worried the NGOs would show him up?

    Game over for the Greens?
    If it is, there is one person to blame.

  19. That’s the issue sometimes for the greens on a whole – they think it is a ‘Game’.

  20. Verse 1:
    Goodbye to the Green Party, who promised so much more
    Divisive in their ways, we couldn’t ignore
    The environment’s in peril, but they failed to act
    Climate change is looming, it’s a stubborn fact

    Chorus:
    And it seems to me you lived your time
    In vain pursuits, with no regard for the signs
    You burned out long before your legend ever will
    We’ll miss your voice, but not the promises unfulfilled

    Verse 2:
    The future’s uncertain, and our planet’s at stake
    But their actions were few, and their progress was fake
    We need a voice that’s strong, to speak for the earth
    Someone who’ll stand for nature, for all it’s worth

    Chorus:
    And it seems to me you lived your time
    In vain pursuits, with no regard for the signs
    You burned out long before your legend ever will
    We’ll miss your voice, but not the promises unfulfilled

    Bridge:
    Oh, the world is watching, as the climate changes fast
    We need leaders who will act, before it’s all in the past
    Farewell to the Green Party, it’s time to move on
    The future’s in our hands, it’s up to us to carry on

    Chorus:
    And it seems to me you lived your time
    In vain pursuits, with no regard for the signs
    You burned out long before your legend ever will
    We’ll miss your voice, but not the promises unfulfilled

    Outro:
    Goodbye to the Green Party, we bid you adieu
    The world is waiting, for leaders who will pursue
    The cause of the planet, and the fight against time
    Let’s work together, for a future that’s sublime.

    • The greatest successes for the Green Party, (or any opposition small party for that matter), has come when they have tied political activism and parliamentary activism together.
      Unfortunately this lesson of history has been lost by the modern Green Party, which instead of using all means at their disposal to put pressure on the Labour Government to actually do something about climate change or the environment, the Green Party MPs have wasted this current term in government playing footsie with the National Party in an attempt to get “Consensus over climate action”. Consensus with National, the party of farmers and business (New Zealand’s biggest polluters), was never ever going to happen.

      National’s leader Christopher Luxon agrees with James Shaw there is a need for bipartisanship: legislation all parties can agree on, to make it long-standing…..
      …..He [James Shaw] is acutely aware bipartisanship often ends up meaning ‘watering down’.

      https://www.rnz.co.nz/news/national/484507/climate-change-minister-s-legislative-balancing-act-after-gabrielle

      “….. he may have a consensus with the right wing – the right wing love him.” Catherine Delahunty

      https://www.rnz.co.nz/news/political/471549/green-party-s-james-shaw-confirms-he-will-run-as-co-leader-again

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