While some wish to be apologists for the Green Party and defend their alienating middle class woke virtue signalling, the simple reality is that the Greens have repeatedly blundered strategically and are no longer the only option for progressive voters yearning for the Transformative Change sold to us in 2017 by Jacinda.
Did you all know that when Marama went into her negotiating meeting with Jacinda in 2020, all she had written down on her notepad were two words, ‘Why not’?
That was their ‘negotiating’ tactic, to get on their knees and beg ‘why not’.
By taking on the empty baubles of vacant Ministerships, all the Greens did was provide political camouflage to their political incrementalism as the planet burns!
Imagine if the Greens had spent the last 3 years OUTSIDE the shadow of the Government and had been able to attack Labour each week from the Left, they would be 15% right now!
The Greens are all lovely people, but aren’t ruthless enough in politics. Sure, misuse a pronoun, get Te Reo pronunciation wrong, suggest female comedians aren’t funny or claim Mommy Bloggers are over rated and they’ll slash your throat while they make you watch them hurt your pets, but when it come to the bear pit of politics, they have all the offensive capacity of slow growing moss.
They walked into this problem because their strategy team are clowns. This is why I fear they have lost all political relevancy EVEN IF they are in a position to finally influence Labour post 2023 election as a full and equal partner of a new Government, I have serious doubts they could do anything beyond basic bitch low hanging fruit identity politics tomfoolery.
I do not believe they have the intellectual capacity to game out a radical economic adaptation plan to prepare us for the economic recession, climate change and structural inequality.
The current Green Party see the enemy as every heteronormative white cis male, they don’t see it as capitalism. The problem for the Greens is Patriarchy and Colonialism not neoliberal free market economics.
The Greens chose the baubles of vacant Ministerships over fighting a Labour Party that didn’t need them and then acted surprised when they get welded to that incrementalism and damned for it by the activists.
As the Greens stall in the Polls, the wider political question is will the class Left ride to the aid of the Greens in 2023 they way they did in 2017?
In 2017, as the implosion of Metiria’s confession of taking a benefit she wasn’t entitled to (without actually sorting it out and paying it) self mutilated the Greens, Chris Trotter and the Class Left launched a campaign to save the Greens by Party voting for them.
It was enough to keep them above the 5% threshold.
Will the Class Left do that for the Greens this election as the Greens barely mange to poll above their 2020 result.
I think the answer is no.
The naked reality for genuinely progressive voters concerned with the horrific inequalities caused by neoliberal capitalism now is to force the Labour Party into being actually Left wing by a minor Party forcing them to.
Labour is still hostage to the exact same neoliberal straightjacket that National is and if we want to get Chippy and Grant to pass Real Left legislation, it will be by forcing them to do it.
The problem with the Greens is that they are so feckless that they will fuck up any post negotiation and flip flop around. Their entire strategy of taking vacant baubles in the form of powerless Ministerships tells us they are so incompetent they couldn’t get laid in a monkey brothel wearing banana costumes.
The woke are great when it is a Vegan Militant Cycling Mummy Blogger Free-the-nipple rallies or mob violence using the thugs veto to shut down gender critical feminists in public spaces, but not so good at challenging the neoliberal hegemonic structure.
Chloe will win Auckland Central and they will probably take Wellington Central as well, so even if they slip below 5%, there will be Green political representation, so the Class Left don’t need to ride to the Greens this election because they are getting in anyway PLUS they just don’t deserve it.
If the Class Left want real change this election, they should consider voting for the Maori Party.
The difference between the Greens and John Tamihere, is that when John Tamihere says he will take GST off food and tax the rich, you fucking know he is.
When the Greens say they’ll do something, most voters laugh.
JT is going to roll into that room, kick arse and take names. The Greens will have another police of paper reading ‘why not – EXCLAMATION MARK!’
Vote Green and get a 6 month hui where they can’t work out if they are Arthur or Martha and another 12month hui after that to decide which pronouns to use. Vote Maori Party and JT will have GST off food and taxing the rich in the first 100 days.
If we on the Left want real change, not the woke garbage the Greens have spent 3 years harvesting and not the incremental slow death of Labour’s caution, then a vote for the Māori Party to remove GST off food and tax the rich would do more to help the poorest and generate the revenue we need for our social and physical infrastructure than anything else.
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I was kind of hoping a post apocalyptic world world of over 2 degrees average warming would bring fourth a star trek styles economic boom. Guess we’ll just have to the expensive way instead andntax the rich. America cannstillnhold onto to the vague sense of superiority by having the sometimes richest man in the planet.
That’s okay the Maori party aren’t trying to end the symphony orchestra or anything else race based.
The NZSO is not race based! What a ridiculous thing to say!
However no Maaori’s have ever been in the NZSO. So basically a White Man’s Domain.
Agree Bomber but there is the pesky separatist policy that comes with it.
So where can I read the separatist policy that you say they have?
Why waste a vote on iether unless you realm want to live in a racist country with no business leaders .
What like now! If anyone considers themselves business leader, they are facing the wrong way. Don’t follow them for our good as well as your own.
Marama has to put on sunglasses when she opens her day-planner.
“The problem for the Greens is Patriarchy and Colonialism not neoliberal free market economics.”
It is much easier to think of oneself as noble for tilting at windmills rather than doing actual work or make use of $75M. The Green leadership engages in anti-politics where advancing anyone who is not heteronormatic-cis-white-male-righthanded-neurotypical-called-mike feels highly progressive but does nothing to address material wellbeing or challenge underlying neoliberal power.
I would consider voting TPM for their socio-economic and foreign policy, but they are not simply championing Māori issues (which I could also get behind), they frequently appear to do so from an intersectional viewpoint which suggests they are also wrapped up in woke ideology. Only it hasn’t consumed them yet as it has the Greens.
Yes. Neither oppose the neo-liberal reforms.
What Martyn calls the Class Left (genuine social democrats, other socialists, etc.) is almost entirely unorganised, and as a result the majority of the working class are unorganized — and so too the small-scale farmers.
The workers cannot be expected to simply support a (very divisive) nationalist party, which offers them barely anything.
Tamahere & Co. no longer support the Full Employment Policy. They do not oppose the abolition of the Award System and the right to strike. They do not oppose the abolition of import substitution. They do not oppose the mass privatisations. They do not oppose the mass union busting to end universal membership.
They support the sacking of miners and closure of vital mines/exploration. They support raising costs for farmers, and do not oppose the abolition of subsidies and guaranteed gate prices.
They do not oppose the mass closures of hospitals or transportation infrastructure. And they apparently have no plan to rebuild the many decimated industries.
So left has the power but done SFA but we should vote for them again at the election because they might get something done?
Even with the baubles they could still have negotiated. Her position should have been give me enough money to fix homelessness by the next election because we need to have something to hang a green hat on at the next election if not we walk away midterm because Labour won’t help us help the homeless. But if they had got the money they would have had to manage a homelessness fix which they don’t have competence to do.
Instead they can claim to have destroyed a strategic oil refinery asset and wrecked the future prospects of the NZ oil and gas industry and provided subsidies to $70,O00 Tesla owners.
I agree the Greens are useless and should have spent the last three years attacking Labour from the left (that’s what labour really really really really really hates)
But the Maori party? The voice of the left? Apart from their gst policy and their welfare policy there’s nothing left wing about them.
They are certainly not the alliance.
I’m increasingly looking at TOP wasted vote or not they have the better policies of all the parties and could work with either side to get them achieved rather than being welded to the identity politics brigade.
…when John Tamihere says he will take GST off food and tax the rich, you fucking know he is.
JT is going to roll into that [coalition negotiating] room, kick arse and take names.
But will he get the chance?
All this hinges on Labour staying ahead of National.
Never underestimate the angry revenge vote.
On top of Labour’s refusal to take GST off food, or raise taxes on the rich, (despite expert advice), plus the latest government supervised OCR increases, all enlarges the angry revenge vote.
Handing the election to National by feeding the angry vote, is fully in line with Chris Hipkins’ veiled threat delivered to the Maori Party to “be careful”.
Chris Hipkins has signaled to the Maori Party that he will never compromise on Labour’s commitment to neoliberal economics even if it means Labour losing.
Chris Trotter typified the modern neoliberal Labour Party this way;
“The Labour Party would rather keep control of the losing side, than lose control of the winning side.”
This is exactly the situation the Labour Party is facing now.
Everyone is saying Luxon will never win. But they said the same thing about Trump.
Never underestimate the angry vote.
Bernie Sanders was filling football stadiums with popular policies of free medicare for all and action on climate change, but rather than offend their corporate backers, sure of victory, the Democrats gave their supporters an unpopular candidate instead.
The Labour Party’s neoliberal mandarin’s determination to keep control of the losing side rather than lose control of the winning side, will see Labour lose the election to the angry vote.
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