John Campbell: When will Hipkins stop drifting and start leading?

John Campbell’s powerful post last week is still resonating.

John doesn’t write ‘opin’ he writes ‘analysis’, and this is the real reason the Right want too censor him on TVNZ because they fear his ability to critique and challenge their political direction.

Where the bloody hell is Labour, what do they stand for and how is the Left going to fight back against the this hard right racist climate denying beneficiary bashing Government?

National’s vile and naked self interest for Big Tobacco, Gun Lobbyists and wealthy landlords is only matched by Chris Luxon’s sense of entitlement!

Winston keeps going deeper and deeper into the AntiVaxx Conspiracy Swamp Kingdom for support.

ACTS race war inducing hate bait has the kinda twang that honkey loves to do the cracker two step to. This country has a large chunk who want to cement into place 19th Century Privilege by overturning the legal ruling that bound the Crown and Māori into partnership to give meaning to the Treaty.

It’s disingenuous and plays to the worst and most reactive angels of our nature.

Doesn’t this headline sum it up?

Austerity for us.

Crayfish for them!

This is what we have become in barely 100 days.

That such malice has political representation demands a reflection on how the Left have driven people into this intellectual malaise.

So what the hell does Labour, the Greens and Māori Party do?

Labour:

Labour won’t budge in the Polls until voters some actual policy that meets their realities.

When Labour dumped the wealth tax that would have seen everyone get $10 000 tax free, voters intellectually saw no reason to vote Labour.

When Labour dumped the Capital Gains Tax and locked into place the privilege of the mega landlords, voters intellectually saw no reason to vote Labour.

When all Labour had to offer was GST off your bananas, voters intellectually saw no reason to vote Labour.

Labour either reset the agenda by holding a ‘Rebuilding Aotearoa New Zealand’ weekend overseen by Labour that brings forward the best minds in NZ to give their ideas on how to move forward or Labour don’t look like they have learnt anything.

Chippy needs to meet and hear some of the best progressive visionaries NZ has.

Māori Legal Expert Annette Sykes – No one can give insight into the righteous anger of Māoridom like Annette can.

Documentary Film Maker Bryan Bruce – knows more about free market capitalism and poverty than the Reserve Bank Governor.

Economics Professor Tim Hazeldean – Has actual economic solutions.

Visionary Revolutionary Max Harris – His vision for a Ministry of Green Works is ahead of its time.

Greenpeace director Russel Norman – His insight and oversight on how we move to a sustainable economy is essential.

Child Poverty Action Group and Auckland Action Against Poverty – They are at the coal face of child poverty and their advice are the only ones that matter.

CTUs Craig Renney – His leadership from the CTU on economic issues has been unparalleled.

If Chippy can’t organise a reset and present Labour policy that pushes for Left Universalism and Economic Justice, then all eyes turn to Kieran McAnulty to step up as a challenger to his Leadership.

It’s as naked and as obvious as that.

Chippy either generates a reset or he gets crushed in the gravity of Labour”s failures.

What does NZ Labour stand for because we have a Party that is more right wing than the British Tory Party!

 

Greens:

The UK Labour anti-semitism smear by Jack Tame and Chris Trotter aside, her race to become the co-leader of the Greens continues apace.

I first met Chloe in 2016 during her Auckland Mayoralty campaign where she came a remarkable third and even from that moment she was unique.

I’ve had the privilege of speaking with Chloe on many occasions and she is without a doubt the real deal.

Her intellect to connect policy to the end impact on people is remarkable.

Her criticism of bad policy is always precision targeted.

Her understanding of how the neoliberal economic hegemonic structure is built for the powerful is fundamental to her intellectual confidence.

She is one of the most intelligent MPs we have in the House right now, she’s so good, I’d argue she’s smarter than David Seymour, and I consider Seymour almost as smart as David Parker!

I don’t think the question has ever been ‘can’ Chloe become co leader, it’s ‘should’ Chloe become co leader.

Because let’s be clear about what she just called out and what will amass against her.

I’ve spoken at length with Chloe about ideas and politics and it is abundantly clear to me that she is without ego in this. She is a TRUE believer because she’s smart enough to see how the policy intersects with real people. She has an intellectual confidence because she really is a researched radical.

She sure as Christ ain’t in this to tinker at the edges.

You fight the negative populism of Trump with the positive populism of Bernie Sanders.

You promise truly free education, truly free health, truly free public transport.

It’s Left universalism that lifts all people funded by the richest amongst us.

To have that fight demands a Green Party reset in terms of tactics and strategy.

No more hugs. It’s time to fight bare knuckle and that means a total over haul of the Green strategy team who have made some disastrous calls on tactics over the years.

Remember when the Greens gave their questions to National and won’t allowing barracking?

This pious bullshit doesn’t win fights and Chloe has just picked a fight with the most self interested of political blocks.

Incremental Labour and the entire Right wing establishment who benefit from our rigged under regulated capitalism.

Stop calling it the Wealth Tax, call it the 1% Tax because we are aiming to tax the richest.

An entire raft of new taxes aimed at the speculators and the Banks and the rich need to be brought on board to lower working peoples taxes AND fund the social and physical infrastructure upgrade required.

Chloe knows this.

She is about actual fundamental solutions, not the tinkering and by doing so, she has bought an enormous fight with the venal right and self loathing left.

If Chloe is truly going to lead a revolution at the ballot box, if she is truly going to look at breaking and re-setting the neoliberal economic hegemony, then every single one of us who has ever voted left have an obligation to swing in behind her leadership, sign up and become a member and throw every ounce of effort into building the Greens into the dominant new political force for the Left.

She is the last chance of the Left having a leader who will actually reset the crooked foundations and make the fight finally worthwhile for many who are just getting by.

Chloe is the Jacinda we wish Jacinda was.

Now is the time for all good people to come to the aid of their country.

Māori Party:

They are currently playing full blown Nationalism with calls for a seperate Parliament, Prison system, seperate etc etc etc.

It’s like they want to hand ammunition to the Right and allow them to call Māori ‘separatist’.

This desire to virtue signal Māori Nationalism will be great for gaining another 2% for them, total crap at winning the majority. They are simply seeking to place unattainable Nationalistic goals before pragmatically working together.

Rawiri ‘s demand for Māori to have seperate trade deals opens the spectre to Corporate Iwi cutting deals with China for access to water. That would feel like Treason.

Too much hat, not enough head.

The Māori Party need to focus less on separatism and more on working together because it will require working together to beat this hard right racist climate denying Government.

The shockwave of naked racism that emboldened so much race baiting this election highlights how the Right wil always use Māori as a political punching bag for votes.

As New Zealand faces the absurdity of a referendum to redefine the principles of the Treaty and after disbanding the Māori Health Authority, the question for the Left is how to work together strategically and tactically to stop the Right from winning by race baiting.

I believe the answer lies in our existing MMP system and requires a new Rātana alliance.

The Rātana movement into politics in 1923 helped seal gains for Māori and Pakeha with Michael Savage in 1936.

Savage was gifted a potato, a broken gold watch, a pounamu hei-tiki, and a huia feather as symbols of the new alliance.

The potato represented loss of Māori land and means of sustenance, the broken watch represented the broken promises of the Treaty of Waitangi, and the pounamu represented the mana of the Māori people, if Savage was able to restore those 3, he would earn the right to wear the huia feather.

It is time for Labour to earn the right to wear that feather.

What was fascinating about the Māori electorates this election was how tactical Māori voters were, once again proving why they are one of the smartest tactical voters each and every election.

Overwhelmingly Māori in the Māori electorates voted Labour Party vote and Māori Patry candidate vote and this has generated the focus on the power of the MMP Overhang the Māori Electorates generate.

If there was a Rātana 2, the Labour Party and Māori Party could strategically work together and push a tactical voting plan that calls for voters in the Māori electorate to all give their candidate vote to the Māori Party candidate and their Party vote to Labour.

This would end up creating up to 7 overhang seats in the Parliament which would cement an enormous block that could (with support from the Greens) become an unbeatable tactic that would ensure victory.

If this new alliance could demand better material conditions for those on the socio-economic bottom, working class aspirations and Māori aspirations could combine to finally deliver the promise to Rātana made in 1936.

If Labour want to wear that huia feather, they must rethink their MMP tactics and strategy.

If Māori Party want to contribute and work together, they need to dump the separatism.

Conclusion:

Comrades.

As much as we are collectively shocked and horrified at the brutal right wing draconian madness that is being rammed through Parliament with bugger all over sight, can I assure you all, it’s about to get waaaaaaaaay worse once the lobbyists have fleshed their election talking points into actual policy.

I do not think we are ready for this jelly.

There needs to be an urgent political summit of the Left to work out how we are going to collectively resist this.

We are seeing a new hard right racist Government who are politically assaulting the most vulnerable amongst us so they can give policy wins to their rich mates.

They are implementing an anti-Māori, anti-renter, anti-environment, anti-worker, anti-beneficiary agenda and to challenge them will demand a united front.

Pushing 13000 children into poverty, 8000 tobacco deaths and taking thousands from disabled beneficiaries just so National can afford their tax cuts for rich landlords is an obscenity we should all be ashamed of.

This Government isn’t even 4 months old and the level of protest at the extreme nature of their agenda actually offends many peoples egalitarian sensibilities.

We are a fair people, what National, ACT and NZFirst have all agreed to is extreme and nasty.

Kiwis aren’t extreme or nasty. Some are, they vote ACT and NZ First, but National voters will be aghast at what they’ve seen so far.

This is the time for the political Left to walk away from woke pure temple politics and embrace Broadchurch class solidarity.

Our under funded social infrastructure, our ‘me first’ consumerism, our 30 years of neoliberal mythology, our disconnection from one another, our untreated pain, our lack of hope from grinding poverty in a first world country, our damaged masculinity, the intergenerational consequences of colonialism, our unspoken rage culture, our inability to express emotion beyond anger – all of this demands questions we don’t want to hear as a society.

The Right look for recruits, the Left look for traitors.

If we don’t provide people with Hope that there is a better way of being for us all, if we don’t provide vision that actually addresses the material well being of our voters, if we aren’t prepared to debate the expansion of State Capacity by taxing the megawealthy and funding the climate change adaptation,  if we don’t do all that, this hard right racist Government will win again.

 

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