Political analysis and commentary shaping the progressive debate in Aotearoa New Zealand, focused on power, policy, and accountability.
Tony Blair`s dismissal of Labour`s election chances was entirely misplaced. Jeremy Corbyn increased Labour`s vote share by more than any leader since 1945. Labour received more votes in England than in Tony Blair`s landslide win of 1997. The success of Labour`s campaign slogan `For the many not the few` retrospectively exposed the vacuity of Tony Blair`s `third way` ideology.
On 16 June last year, then-Finance Minister, Bill English attributed our growth to “other sectors” of the economy;
At the time of writing, we are perhaps a mere forty-eight hours after the results of the UK’s General Election came in. And already, it seems like an entire Amazonian forest of trees, and a fairly literal Black Sea of ink have already been spilled in attempting to make sense of what has happened.
It is bad for the democratic process when government to fails to address such a clear injustice especially in this case when it poses little fiscal cost. But we don’t seem to know how to do sensible retirement policy any more.
New Zealand’s Labour Party is a neo-liberal, free market party with policies to match. If NZ Labour wins in September then income inequality and wealth inequality will continue to increase while the rest of us struggle to add that extra lining to the pockets of the idle rich.
The Tory base may be larger than Labour’s, but its vision of Britain’s future is limited, backward-looking and profoundly hostile to all claims of social solidarity and progress. By contrast, the Corbyn-led Labour Party’s radical manifesto, and its direct campaigning style, has drawn tens-of-thousands of young and formerly disillusioned voters into the thrilling business of pursuing political, economic and social change.
Corbyn and the left now need their mandate to clean house within the Labour Party to ensure the loyalty of all MPs to the new left-wing party programme. It is probable a number will simply retire and take job offer from their big business mates rather than be part of a Corbyn-led party. Others may want to start another centrist Blairite type party. But it is the absolute democratic right of members to go through a selection process for MPs before the next election.
While the New Zealand campaign and success with the nuclear-free legislation was tremendously inspirational for the Pacific and globally, it should not be forgotten that some small Pacific countries and communities were actually ahead of the game.
UK Labour did fantastically well in Thursday’s general election, despite Jeremy Corbyn being painted as an “unelectable” leftist by the media commentariat – and even by most of his Labour colleagues. Labour’s advance was not really a surprise. As I wrote in my Daily Blog post a year and a half ago, Corbyn’s “Keynesian policies are considerably more popular than the austerity championed by Cameron and the Labour right.”
National’s “grand plans” for 220 new social and transitional places remains woefully short of the 1,138 houses that National sold off to IHC’s Accessible Properties at the end of March. It is also unclear what is meant by ” transitional places”. Are these actual houses? Or motel units, à la Auckland-style;