How Labour get snookered into being as progressive as a reluctant Michael Savage
If Labour are too timid and incremental then what’s the point voting?
If it’s just more tiny changes, we will go nowhere fast.
That’s why Labour NEEDS the Greens and Māori Party, it is only those two who are arguing for real impacts on the structure of neoliberal capitalism.
Labour need to be snookered into doing the right thing the exact same way Michael Savage was snookered into being the most progressive leader Labour ever had.
The left love Michael Joseph Savage. Every Labour MP who wishes to push their left wing credentials have photos of him hanging in every electorate office and Minister’s room.
Savage is lauded as the creator of the welfare state in the wake of the Great Depression.
He was swamped when he went into public as NZers gushed over how he had saved them all.
The most hilarious truth, provided by insights from John A Lee who served in Savage’s Cabinet paints a very different picture from the mythology the left have given Savage .
The truth is that Savage was incredibly centrist and not a radical at all. Backed up by the neoliberal Walter Nash and conservative manipulator Peter Fraser, Savage did all he could to stop transformative change, it was actually Savage’s Caucus who forced his hand repeatedly to be transformative.
The same strategy needs to be utilised by the Greens and Māori Party to force labour to do the things they truly want to do but are spooked by Treasury to attempt.
If the Greens and Māori Party forged an alliance going into the 2026 Election where they agree to work together to not only beat this hard right Government, but to ensure that whatever replaces it is actually focused on sustainably rebuilding our communities and making peoples lives materially better.
The Māori Party/Greens Alliance would:
- Agree to a united negotiating front in any deal with Labour
- Agree to a basic bottom line platform in any deal with Labour
- Agree to a MMP voting strategy that will be advanced for all electorates and promoted online for all Green and Māori Party voters to use as a per electorate voting guide.
A united voting front with Labour and a basic policy platform alongside active promotion of a voting strategy would snooker Labour, because who on earth are Labour going to cut a deal with?
NZF?
Not without support from the Greens and they wouldn’t because of the alliance with the MP.
It’s time the Left actually started using MMP to win the way the Right always have, and in the wake of the Government’s voter suppression act, we have to fight back!
It’s not enough to defeat this Government, what replaces it is as important as defeating it!
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The Greens and TPM can talk the big game in opposition but many of their ideas lack doability when put to the test. This has been the story for Greens around the World that once in power theyfall apart. You just need to look at how they faredin Australia.
Safe hands the current Coalition Government.
The current govt you voted for is a clown show Bob.
…About as safe as a slip fieldsman covered in grease…
Are suggesting electorate vote for Labour and party vote for Greens or TMP or the other way around? I can’t see Labour doing anything useful if they have a dominant party vote although maybe you know something I don’t.
IMO we ought to just vote for the buggers that in our opinion have the best policies and principles.
It’s better if everyone could just agree to doing that.
Strategic voting is a delusional fraud, it’s dishonest representation of your wishes and self-defeating in the long run, – look at how Labour rely on people “returning to the fold” and strategically voting for them in fear of letting National in, it means Labour never actually progress or change because they’re never forced to do so.
Seat vote green party vote Maori.
Fuck it lets get back to the future, start, ownership of our power grid, not grids, our grid, and lets get back to caring warmth
Yip..bring back the MED and The Ministry Of Works ..
They should never have been disbanded…Yet another example Neoliberal idiocy .
All Parties, do their dance how, jerry, our present vote.People say no on,if some do vote in our local control, used to be only home owners did why they did not pay rates, is not rent rates included voters allowed.
Question what, best get our people who them our people, us, register to vote, why our vote is this we got, register and vote, not a overnight succsses, and your vote may have been a suck, not to say, time and time vote changes.
Michael Joseph S had a hard life, and probably thought he did good getting any improvements for working men. His parents both emigrated to Oz to escape the Irish famines. He never married and looks a pernicketty little man, though according to wikipedia he was a boxer at one time and fit. But he was the youngest of eight children, his mother died when he was five, his father was probably a bit distant working and supporting the children. His sister and close brother died when he was hardly 20 and so it goes. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_Joseph_Savage
John A Lee was a bit of a bruiser, more stroppy. One needs to take note of what he did, Savage got the accolades as he oversaw so many good features of citizen support, and of course died soon after the sweeping housing changes. Which are just as important today – can we not keep a good plan going?
Greywarbler, their was no such thing as the Irish famine, it was the Great Starvation, why the english lairds sent most if not all outside their need crops to England. Those who worked the Laird!s land, had a better diet, all the veges meat all in most got boat sailed tay erngland, the patties got the blight, the Great Starvation, wis the English ladies and lairds taking al food live stock and else back tay england,
yES THE tATTIES had the blight, other crops taken away with live stock to mother england, so lets speak proper history, it wisny the Potato blight, it wiz the great starvation, the governing english did.
I’m not sure Labour are worth the effort frankly.
We’re headed for an old-school depression & Chippie & co are still pretending $1.70 off vege was generous.
No room for lip service – we need real change – reclamation of the stolen generators and overpaid salaries, the PPP ripoffs, and rigorous exemplary punishment for the traitors who have ruined our country – pour encourager les autres.
Non of our present offering from all sides, dare not dare, go to what time now, back to our future.
Ownership of our power grid the GOVERNMENT ELECT NOW AND FUTURE ,WHO WHAT GOVERNMENT US kIWI!S, ALL back as used to be, us one owner us.
Compulsory Unionism.
What all these others, who say this is a game changer,, look to the past for progression of our humanity, not today@!s look, to understanding profit and profit, look to our past humanity Nz.