Winning an election in a recession is very difficult and Labour failed to cope with that context. It was a recession due to international factors (most of our inflation is imported – supply chain disruption, Ukraine war, greedflation) and almost nothing to do with domestic economic mismanagement at home. But a few features stand out in this context. There was a lower voter turn out which indicates a dispiriting of the poorer parts of the electorate to get out and vote, i.e. their party was in power and things aren’t getting financially better so why bother voting as it doesn’t seem to make a difference.
A low turnout can also be an indicator that a well run targeted negative campaign by the opposition has dispirited them to believe their party was not competent and was going to lose anyway. So why bother as they are going to lose anyway.
Also the recession reached well into the middle class, putting them under financial pressure through inflation. Labour only using the tools of neo-liberal economics could not use fiscal policies to relive that pressure because fiscal spending would lead to more inflation. So Labour looked powerless in the face of the ‘cost of living crisis’. Why vote for people who seemed to have no ideas? Labour seemed to walk right into this trap.
And of course as costs rise for the essentials, (banking, rent, groceries) there is less money available for discretionary spending. Large firms deliver the essentials so their profits are protected, which leaves small businesses who provide discretionary goods and services to carry the full burden of reduced consumer spending.
Small middle class businesses probably wouldn’t vote Labour; but their struggle and sense of abandonment and complaints about economic competence infected the wider community and public discourse. This was in part because many ordinary workers could see the businesses they worked in were struggling and they probably liked the people they worked for. So many working Labour voters would have begun to have doubts about Labour.
Of course with the recession the traditional ‘National in government model’ would have seen them slash some meaningless red tape, spent some of our money on a few key cases, or claimed a trade deal was going to bring relief. National would have grovelled and asked for ideas. None of these options were available for Labour not just because they are just fundamentally useless ideas but they would have been seen as useless, because these are not Labour voters. Labour had to find a new way to deal with the economic pinch but didn’t.
And the media has to report complaints from strong representative groups, e.g. business groups, farmers groups. Strong negative messaging was able to align with National’s strong negative messaging about Labour’s economic incompetence. None of which was required to be substantiated because the conditions of recession were perceived to validate it.
The campaign against Labour was ferocious. People were hyper; about the government not listening, co-governance, economic mismanagement because a deficit exists. This is the conservative play book to hype people up over perceptions. Media tend to pretend fairness to both sides by putting the comments out there and then reporting the response. But that is actually a tool to magnify lies. The media also has a duty to find the truth and not report lies, except as lies.
But at heart a government needs to be seen to respond, and Labour was not seen as responding. It needed to give as good as it got and it didn’t match the emotional intensity of National. Labour acted like they were chatting at the church fair.
But even the crises like cyclones were a chance to bring people together, removing divides; it didn’t work for Labour. Moves to negatively politicise these situations were strong and immediate. National politicians were often more quickly into damaged areas. Expectations of government intervention were hyped up in some communities; so Labour’s measured considered responses were tactically placed into a framework of inadequate; less than what National would do. National simply poisoned the ground by hyping people up and then moved on to let that fester.
But Labour never led these situations, or even try to frame them differently. It was a time to make demands, like behavioural changes that would support economic sustainability or climate change adaption, e.g. more land, water and native forest protections. A Prophet Jeremiah time for criticising the existing economic growth model, and criticise the central right wing idea of government as a brake on private enterprise (heal yourself- should have been a threat to get the above protections). Instead Labour allowed itself to be portrayed as the lumbering bureaucracy that is slow to do its duty and bail businesses out; so business could get back to making profit quickly.
Taking on the private enterprise model would have been controversial but that is exactly the platform Labour needed to push back on Nationals headlines and justifiy the real role of government in an ongoing sense. Not as a slow bureaucracy but working for the judicious long term protection of all New Zealand and our economic wellbeing.
And the spending pushed by National in these crises is now part of the deficit to ‘prove’ Labour’s economic mismanagement. Labour so often didn’t have fire in its belly to take on the media repeating the National lies. And it seemed that was because they saw themselves as working within the system as good sensible economic stewards rather than changing it. (The Greens are not much better on this but at least they went for the wealth tax).
And Labour did the same with co-Governance when the real issue was water reform and protecting water for the people. Labour needed to fight like hell, for that end. It needed to plan for and seek out debates with these issues head on with a focus on ratepayer costs. Instead of fighting the reaction, they watered down the reform benefits. The reform of media simply collapsed. It felt like they weren’t ready to fight a good fight.
Of course I’m being a little too harsh on Labour because it’s quite a financially poor party. They are the party with ambition for change but did they bite off more than they could chew? Or are politicians without strong organisational skills really the best groups to push through change? Yes, but there is more; it’s also about the deep pockets of the donor class that makes it difficult for Labour.
The rich will donate/pay for financial objectives that benefit them. The small businesses, to get their votes, are manipulated to think the neo-liberal model is the one that rewards their hard work. When actually an economy based on better redistribution of resources would give money to their potential local customers and then they would make profits. Small businesses are voting against their interests.
The economy was weaponised in this election to fight a political battle. In recessions in the past there was not always high inflation because there was no social welfare state and people simply could not pay. They slept rough and sometimes did not eat. Now large wealthy firms have pushed into essential services that used to be provided by government so they can ramp up prices on the expectation that the welfare state will pay the higher prices for poorer people. We know prices have been ramped up beyond costs because the CTU here and others overseas did the research on Greedflation. (Foolishly the CTU did not use the term Greedflation so their work is hard to find. A google search just brings up articles claiming to debunk greedflation is happening).
Labour needs to reinvent itself as it can’t protect working people by staying fully within the neo-liberal economic model. Inflation is now a political weapon to make it difficult for left governments to meet the needs of the people in anyway that threatens how the economy works to maximise profit for large businesses. Labour needs to rediscover the working peoples economy and adapt that to fight the forces of maximise profit that are ruining our economy and society.
Stephen – It would be easier to list what Labour did right…and that’s why Labour got smashed
Nathan. Actually address the points in the article.
EVERYTHING! Lol
Fuck’n everything!
Amen.
Well written piece which is right on so many points. I think basically Labour did not read the room. Subsidiaries for EV and heat pumps may help the planet but does little for the poor buying expensive groceries. Over promising and under delivering is a sure way to lose.
Labour can NO LONGER be trusted.
We need a NEW genuinely left wing party interested 99%-ONLY in raising the standards for the 75+% working class, and NOT be bought out by powerful interests to keep the staus quo by ‘tinkering’ with Clayton style activity.
Keriman – Thank you. Well stated
One word best describes your Post @ S.M. And that word is ‘Meh!’
You keep mentioning neo-liberalism as if it’s a common spoke in our wheels now. It isn’t. And it wasn’t. It was a crime committed, NOT a best intention that seemed like a good idea at the time in there soldiering away to it’s very little best for us and by us. Just ask graeme hart how neo-liberalism worked out for him at our expense?
Instead, rogers version of milton friedman’s neo-liberalism was a crime wave waiting to be activated. And every economy that was touched by neo-liberalism is in ruins, including ours.
You also mention business before agriculture. I fucking hate that. ” … And the media has to report complaints from strong representative groups, e.g., business groups, farmers groups.” Strong representative groups! The only thing strong about we farmers are are smells. We have zero strength. A wet white bread sandwich has more strength in it. We farmers couldn’t make a fist without diagrams and pictures drawn in crayon. When we’re sent an email we’re kept busy trying to figure out how to roll it up to whack flies with it. It’s not that we farmers are stupid, it’s just that we’re entirely ignored thus we’re ignorant so that we can be effortlessly exploited as we are. Despite your 30 or more years at IRD as an accountant you still fail to see that our farmers are our only business and everything else survives on the spillage as our money sloshes its way to the billionaires, millionaires and the foreign owned banks. Jesus man, why is that so hard for you to fathom?
roger douglas was a pig farmer, perhaps he still has connections to pigs recreationally? I don’t know.
What I do know is that he, or perhaps more aptly ‘it’ was Labour’s finance minister for two whole fucking terms before he launched neo-liberal economic principles on our dumb as fuck cocky heads while the townspeople went “Duuuuuuuuhhhhh…………rugby…….. beer……….. cigarettes………..gambling……..”
The biggest problem with Labour is a lack of public analysis or rather the lack of the ability for the public to analyise. What, went wrong? Who, went wrong? Why, went wrong? How, went wrong? And, for how much?
We farmers and our city brothers and sisters need an urgent and very,very, very public royal commission of inquiry immediately. Not this afternoon. Not tomorrow, next week, next month or next year but NOW! And fucking quick as possible. Before the bald deodorant seller, the pink arsed baboon mystery twerker and the faux-Maori professional malcontent sell us at the foreign slave markets AKA the Fed Reserve, then the stock markets, then the grave.
Labour’s dead. It’s in a ditch on the side a lonely country road with a knife in its back. National is a reverse-mutation of all good things about democratic principles. It’s lazy, greedy, crooked and puffed up on its self entitlements so it’s a perfect Club for the Ol Boys, aye boys? The shambles that’s MMP’s other parties are what are they? Costly? Yes. Ineffectual? Yes. Doing the same things while expecting different results? Yes. Are they for us therefore by us? No.
Chaff? Oh yes. Metaphor alert!
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chaff_(countermeasure)
Chaff, originally called Window[1] by the British and Düppel by the Second World War era German Luftwaffe (from the Berlin suburb where it was first developed), is a radar countermeasure in which aircraft or other targets spread a cloud of small, thin pieces of aluminium, metallized glass fibre or plastic, which either appears as a cluster of primary targets on radar screens or swamps the screen with multiple returns, in order to confuse and distract.
Working class? Doesn’t mean much these days unless you mean those working for wages, which is a pretty broad church now. Take away the 1%ers, the big landlords, real estate pimps, self employed business people doing ok, CEOs and middle management, the PMC, those at the top of their professions or on their way there, hell, anyone over or close to 100K annually, and whose left? Just those with minimal education on or close to minimum wages, or only able to work in part-time work, or artists and musicians working in the gig economy (and some seem to be doing ok, precarious as it is). Is that the working class now? The working poor. Probably not sufficient numbers to get Labour across the line.
But you’re right @ Keriman. Labour as it used to stand for is now simply out of touch. No use to the working poor. Very telling that some 22% eligible voters didn’t participate and they’re unlikely to be blue or pink. And I might add, social policies a touch too radical for most conservatives.
Stephen
I think you’ve already decided National has to go next time and they haven’t even started. What if NZ is doing well under the new govt? What if people are better off? What if the country carries less debt and makes more money? (Not making outside money is our single biggest problem, see Norway!) What if there is a general sense of well-being ? Will you praise them and vote for them? No! Will you call for a change back to Labour? Yes! Of course you will, because you are programmed.
As for your ‘Labour Loss’ analysis, in sporting terms, you have blamed the pitch. You have blamed the ref. You have blamed weather. You have blamed the laws. You have blamed the gear. And you blamed the sporting press and commentators. But you have not looked at or rated the players and the team of coaches! Bar one or two, the players were fucking useless and totally unqualified to play at this level, starting with their captain Ardern. They talked a big game. But they dropped the ball, they went missing in action, they didn’t tackle, they incurred penalties. They simply did not do their job. They were a third grade squad playing in a world cup, lead by Ardern, herself a mediocre player who never went past U21 level. Basically, the Labour ministers couldn’t manage a piss up in a brewery. The public understood in the end. Otherwise, how would you explain the utter pounding they got, even in even the staunchest Labour strongholds. I’m putting money down at the TAB: if NZ is even slightly ahead come the next election, Labour will have no chance whatsoever. It will just prove that our votes were not wasted on a totally inept govt, unlike last time. Man was that a waste time and a painful 6 years! Thank fuck it’s over.
https://www.kiwiblog.co.nz/2023/10/the_slaughter_in_labours_seats.html
Martyn, the Labour Party needs to be dissolved & a more Socialist, Leftist Party needs to re-emerge from the ashes that’s detached from the Neoliberal light version it is now & they need a return to Labour’s roots? These useless University trained Labour Politicians are feekless & hopeless! Jim Anderton, the true Labour Party Man once said when he founded his NewLabour Party that he hadn’t left the Labour Party, that the Labour Party had left him & this is how I felt as a Voter, I’ve voted for them all my Life but have been so disappointed in them that I split my votes this Time & many others did as well judging by the Election results with Labour’s Party vote & Electorate vote split? Jim resigned in protest over the Policies implemented by Roger Douglas, he was a Man of principle who fought all his Life for the poor & disadvantaged! I met Jim Anderton at a Film screening of the excellent NZ Doco film “Someone Elses Country” a damning indictment of Roger Douglas’s disastrous right wing, free market reforms & Neoliberal policy implementation while highjacking the Labour Party to experiment with deathcult crony capitalism which is what Neoliberalism is? This Video should have been required viewing prior to every Election cycle run on TV or Social Media to remind NZers of Right wing orthodoxy? Jim was a true NZ Patriot, he was my Hero that I was honoured to meet & he told me that Douglas used a phoney currency crisis as the excuse to privatise the Nation of its Public State assets & impose austerity on the NZ Public! This Country has never been the same since 1984 when this happened? If ever Labour needed a Man of Integrity & honor like Jim Anderton, it was in this Election? Labour’s fecklessness & lack of Political will & courage to implement Wealth Taxes, Financial services Taxes & Stamp duty, Inheritance taxes & a reduction of Tax for poor & middle class has led to its downfall! Geopolitically, Neoliberalism is dying, the Western Model of unregulated Free market Capitalism is in Economic collapse & every Western Nation’s economies that are linked to the US are in freefall? BRICS + is ushering in a new Multipolar World in which the Anglo Saxon nations are being relegated to the dustbin of History & NZ will join them! But conveniently, when all else fails, they take you to War & that is what we are witnessing in Ukraine & Israel, one big distraction from the massive & grave Financial situation that’s taking place overseas, unbeknownst to Citizens thanks to the corrupt duplicitous MSM! This Monetary Crisis caused by out of control Money printing & voodoo Economic Monetary & Tax policy like those of the National Party led by corrupt Politicians & Bankers is being covered up & disguised by War & via misdirection by the bread & circuses acts like the recent sporting events such as the RWC & ICC World Cups, all to divert the masses attention away from our real problems? This Election loss might be a blessing in disguise for Labour & the best one to lose because the National Party is going to be left holding a big sack of dogshit when it hits the Fan once this Economic Collapse begins within the next 3 yrs? Enjoy your Apocalypse NZ, the National Party will guarantee thats going to happen to you & yours, sooner, rather than later?
Wow antforce62, you speak a mixture of true reality re Labour and Jim Anderton and what happened in 1984 – what a great politician Jim was and what a shitshow Labour unleashed that, like you say, NZ has never recovered from. What about the Great Economic collapse that will begin in three years….more on that please, sounds a bit voodoo.
An uninspiring leader with an uninspiring campaign message, to put that nicely, left Labour exposed to whatever shyt the Natz wanted to throw their way. The average Kiwi is politically ignorant, I would say purposely so, therefore all that is needed to win is a decent (appealing) leader with a decent message/campaign.
Rogernomics *cough* Free Slave Agreement with the PRC *cough* Neoliberalism *cough*
“What did Labour do wrong?”
“Chris Hipkins ‘Captain’s Call’ cost Labour 5%” David Cunliffe
“There is no such thing as bad soldiers, only bad generals” Napoleon
Chippy won’t let go, he is pretty deluded as to his worth if you ask me and as a general he needs to admit fault and fuck off. He could take a page out of Little’s book but he has no humility.
200+ working groups and, as far as I see, no recommendations were ever implemented in full, or even near fully.
Labour wasted soooo much tax payers cash they should be prosecuted for treason lol
6 years of ‘over promised, under delivered’ is the main reason they got hammered at the election.
Drivel…
Great article Stephen, spot on!
It disappeared up its own arse.
They didn’t have eight million to spend on advertising.
Yep the election was bought by Lies dis and misinformation.
Along with bullshit promises they have no hope of getting done.
Too busy forming exponential committees who end up eating lobster and drinking booze in OZ, rather than helping Kiwis in NZ get decent jobs and real skills.
Toitū te Waiora CEO Donovan Clarke used work credit card for lobster, booze
https://www.nzherald.co.nz/business/public-sector-ceo-used-work-credit-card-for-lobster-booze/ZGIC6RMMWJEKLNMARWGF3VFJP4/
Advertise what? Failed policies? 100,00 houses? Excessive lockdowns? Drunk Ministers of Justice?
PIJF?
No ds, but Labour gave the MSM 110 million to ensure they got an easy ride for 6 years.
If National had given 110 million to media you would be apoplectic with rage….guess it’s seen differently when it’s ‘your side’ eh ds?
Big government providing “free” services are generally good for an economy because they leave more money in peoples pockets to pay for other things, and this boosts economic activity. and when it comes to paying for government services taxation is better because it can be be made progressive while user pays cannot be. Galbraith made the point in his book, The Affluent Society, that as a country becomes wealthier it devotes more of its GDP to the services provided by the state.
Too many excuses. Labour did this to themselves. They had a mandate for change and plenty of cash and for various reasons they made an absolute mess of it. The right has now been handed an opportunity and, unlike Labour, one assumes that they’ll know exactly what to do with it. The left should be apoplectic with rage.
Hen do you seriously think big business was going to let the Labour government win again. There has been a concerted effort from the right wing media and big money to get their puppets into power. We all know John Key is pulling the Luxon strings. Not sure how a Labour MP can win his seat but not the party vote. Personally I think Labour seriously should get back to their roots because trying to be nice to everyone obviously didn’t work. NZ voters are truly thick if they think they voted for change, they actually voted for the past and thats really sad for our children and grandchildren.
Spot on, so true Queeny. I wonder how Nats will cope with the one after another crisis Labour had to that must have had an impact on policies., weak tho they turned out to be.
As for John Key, why was he allowed to say anything political considering his current role at ANZ.
There are various scenarios as to what could happen, after the final election tally in November. One scenario could be that Winston engages in coalition negotiations with National and Act, and finds that they have policies such as letting back foreign property investors, and putting up the age of super, that are grating. That he and his MP’s, are only offered paper tiger roles, with any true power entrenched with National and Act, and NZFirst only offered the crumbs.
Causing negotiations to make difficult progress, and Winston who has a long memory, recalling that even though he originated in National, it’s actually Labour who have always respected him better.
Meanwhile his number two, Shane Jones, uses back channel discussions with his old colleagues in Labour, who offer Winston a killer mafia deal – the one he cannot refuse. With Winston offered the baubles of prime ministership, and all NZFirst MP’s having ministerial positions, and the Greens and Maori party agreeing to confidence and supply only, and MaCanulty as deputy PM. How is that for legacy?
The upside for NZFirst, would be that they would be running the country in a big way, and have more power, than they will probably ever have the opportunity for again. And with such a high profile, arguably a greater chance of being voted back in, than previously. And even the possibility of them going with Labour, would give them more bargaining power, as in business you have more power in negotiation, if you can have the option of walking away.
The upside for the greens, is that they would be in a position to maintain their hard fought climate initiatives.
The upside for Labour is that they would keep a foothold in govt, and by the next election many of the headwinds that went against them this time, stemming from high inflation, will have dissipated. And Hipkin’s who said he would never form a govt with NZFirst, was probably headed out the door at some stage anyway.
The upside for voters is that they would see a genuinely different govt, instead of the major policies of the two big middle parties, which are all very similar, there would now be genuine difference.
Yes something along these lines, maybe not the wholesale give everything to NZF would be needed. For anything to happen along these lines Chippy has to go, but he won’t step down and his compadres will want to keep him. There needs to be wholesale bloodletting in Labour and they need to wake the fuck up quick smart. I am rooting for Willy Jackson as leader, anyone else is business as usual and that clearly didn’t work.
Padlocked polling stations don’t help.
In a word, housing.
The single biggest issue impoverishing New Zealanders, and Labour didn’t even make a dent in it.
Then throw in the deeply unpopular identity politics and their goose was utterly cooked.
Even by a charisma-free austerity acolyte like Luxon.
Luxon turned out to be not as charisma- free as Chippy on the campaign trail, apparently. You can’t fix the housing crisis overnight and Labour was doing the biggest build of state housing underway. National sold off state houses, and left people on the street.
Truth hurts, but ignorance hurts more in the long term.
All those that created Labour policy and helped with the Labour election and woke policy strategy should be sacked before they spin more lies on why with their help and spin, Labour are at near 50% less party vote in only 3 years.
Chris Trotter, called it.
Chris Trotter gives his assessment of PM & Labour leader Chris Hipkins’ weekend speech on which political parties he will & won’t work with
https://www.interest.co.nz/public-policy/123980/chris-trotter-gives-his-assessment-pm-labour-leader-chris-hipkins-weekend
Bryce Edwards also called out unpopular woke policy that was set to spiral Labour down such as 3 waters and co-governance ideology.
Labour did not listen to any voice but the woke in their cult like devotion to a cause that spread more hate and disunity than anything the right could ever dream up in their wildest dreams.
Even Auckland museum has had to apologise for lighting blue for the victims of the terror attack. Huge disconnect with what people think is terror and what woke think is terror. We are seeing alarming visions of violence that is being enabled and not condemned by woke against woman and ‘out’ groups, while pushing their own (often extreme versions) on who has the right gender, race, religions and actions.
I feel like Labour should just close their doors and give up – they thought they weren’t going to win in 2017 and didn’t have a plan, 2020 delivered a majority but they didn’t know how to use it for economic justice and they look like they weren’t even trying in 2023. It really is very sad to watch (even as someone who doesn’t vote for them).
They’ve inherited the rules from Helen Clarke’s government about not doing anything dramatic in case they get punished by the markets/big business. They haven’t worked out that the was around that is to build a popular movement to back them up – or maybe they have and they’re not comfortable mixing with working class people who are the ones who would benefit from such a move.
Or maybe it’s just that they don’t care about economic justice that much because they did use their majority to push through on issues like co governance – but then they didn’t front that issue properly either.
They just seem like a bunch of sooks.
Where to start…
https://laboursfailures.com/
https://www.scoop.co.nz/stories/HL2310/S00007/bryce-edwards-ten-reasons-labours-support-has-halved.htm
I got to the end of the 2nd senctence.
Winning an election in a recession is very difficult and Labour failed to cope with that context. It was a recession due to international factors (most of our inflation is imported – supply chain disruption, Ukraine war, greedflation) and almost nothing to do with domestic economic mismanagement at home
You have a very selective memory if you’ve forgotten about the reserve bankster lowing interest rates to all time lows.
And if you think that had no effect on inflation, you are truly delusional.
They didn’t listen to the electorate and do as they were told to do, as our representatives. We are the captains and no one else! Do as you’re told or move along.
If labor is ever become relevant again it has to rediscover its roots in the working class and poor parts of society. EG the 75% as mentioned above.
They didn’t vote labor as they felt betrayed by labor.
The country is not currently in a recession, and technically never was. There are a lot of reasons Labour lost, but fundamentally they have lost track of what they stand for. A centre left party who cannot compose and campaign on basic redistributive measures (eg CGT/WT) are not worthy of the name.
From what I can gather, NatCCP had around 7 times the total donations to campaign with in comparison to Labour’s total. That considerable disparity had to play a part in the end result. It also is skewing our democracy. But since when did NatCCP really care about fairness and the genuine democratic process. It is all about achieving power by any means.
Sir Creepy’s legacy is testimony to that.
Luxon will be no different.
Horse shit. The recession was almost exclusively of Labour’s making.
Shut down the economy, kicked people out of work for not “complying”.
Its a shame we didn’t have our own guy fawkes moment, but successful.
I want what he’s having
Unfortunately money is the biggest talker in NZ, while the Nats are bankrolled by the wealthiest in the country with the most to gain its pretty hard to fight,
There was miliions spent to spread misinformation and negative advertising and the Media didnt bother to investigate or call it out the Left might as well give up.
Might backfire.though….what the hell is Mike Hosking and his rabid talk back listeners going to bitch about now they’ve got their precious Party back in Govt
Generally labours mps came across as an unlikeable bunch at the personal level, on top of woke nonsense they spouted and loosing 5 cabinet members as result of questionable behaviour. Just ask no drama, Sharma
Labour did nothing wrong. Because what they did gor 3 years was pretty much nothing except piss away time, goodwill, unassailable control of parliament and billions of dollars in red herring projects instead of shepherding their big idea projects through.
They were immature, incompetent and indecisive and it showed when they had no idea what they were doing for 90 percent of the campaign. If I did that at work I would have been through warnings verbal and written for inompetence.
Question: how many working class tax payers can afford a brand new electric car to receive the EV subsidies?
And that sums up Labour right there.
Exactly.
pretend socialists. unionist proles who are reliant on the bourgeoisie for their existence. no better than peasants who fight for their lord barons because to exist outside on their own is tooooooo scary.
Labour initiated and helped build the monster that is the NZ neoliberal economy.
In the same manner as the US Republicans are in thrall to Trump, all political parties in NZ are in thrall to NZ’s owners and controllers: the Banks and foreign multinational corporations. These groups are not doing business here in order to help us.
The rest of the show is all charade.
Labours problems can easily be traced back to the 2017 election. After Winston anointed Jacinda, to most peoples surprise, it quickly became obvious that Labour had spend the last 9 years in opposition doing crosswords and picking their nose, certainly not planning ahead or even appeared to have thought about some freaky arsed situation like exactly what happened. So they started on the back foot with no real plan on how to go forward. Then they all got blinded by stardust which caused a bad case of arrogance and the fumbling began. Add to that the semi secret democracy trashing agenda which has annoyed the fuck out a many and as they say, the rest is history.
Now lets see if the Nats have been thinking ahead or sitting there just picking their nose for the last 6 years.
Good call. I guess we’ll find out what the Nats/Act/?NZF? coalition delivers and for whom.
Hipkins/Hopekins was seduced by his high polling when he took over as prefered P.M…all downhill from then with his Capt’s calls.Sidelined senior ministers Robertson and Parker,and when the polls turned came up with …too little..too late.
What did Labour do wrong?
The problem is that Labour did not do anything. All the targets it set for itself were unmet save decreasing the prison population and we are all enjoying increased crime. Ardern is the worst PM in living memory other than Muldoon. Unfortunately Chippy took the poisoned chalice.
Spot on Virgil Maro it not so much what Labour did but more what they didn’t do.
If you look at their lineup of ministers it’s embarrassing, not mention they lost 5 or 6 along the way,including their leader.Add to that Andrew Little who has since quit and l believe there are more resignations to come.
The credible Ministers Parker and Robertson were let down by Chippies “Captains call.”
The Labour Party needs to regroup and redefine itself. The biggest concern for them is they have no one who looks like a leader in waiting.
Is he gone yet?
Given Labours track record on transformation I doubt they can transform their own party to avoid further political defeats.
Stephen; what a waste of electricity typing up that nonsense.
Your analysis seems like it’s come directly from within the Labour Party.
No self responsibility, totally deluded.
My prediction, Labour will never go above 30% again. Ever.
The party has too many intellectual lightweights.
They will continue to be cannibalised by the Greens and TPM who are both further left. It will be difficult to get these votes back, without inspirational leadership and a solid base of capable MP’s.
Huge amount of work to be done…
Labour spent $55000000 on the media for this election and still lost. They should as for our money back !
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