Labour List – Winners, Losers + Predictions
Labour’s Party List is out and it’s a fascinating insight into the state of play inside our largest Left Wing Party. With them plummeting 7.5% in the latest Roy Morgan Poll, Labour will be praying RM isn’t the start of a similar trend in the other polling.
They have waited and waited and waited to release policy and expectations are so high they risk doing another ‘GST off fresh fruit and vegetables’ style underwhelming policy meltdown.
Labour’s idea of bold reform is announcing it loudly, consulting on it quietly, and then cancelling it politely.
They didn’t lose voters to the right – they just bored them into wandering off!
Labour campaigns like a protest movement, governs like a risk-averse consultancy, and explains itself like a hostage video.
Labour kept saying “transformational change” – turns out they meant transforming enthusiasm into apathy.
Their legacy is impressive: they managed to disappoint both the left and the people who were worried they might actually do something.
Their communication strategy is:
Step 1 — Announce something big
Step 2 — Walk it back
Step 3 — Act surprised people noticed
There are of course political Winners and Losers:
WINNERS
Wellington Mandarins – The Wellington Mandarins who scream incrementalism so that the Professional Managerial Class Labour now represents can promise their consultancies Labour won’t spook the economic horses are of course the greatest winners. Never before have so many middle class Wellingtonians done so much to undermine the aspirations of the working classes.
The Māori Caucus – They are Chippy loyalists and have strengthened their hand by uplifting their faction. Arena Williams needs way more love though.
A new left hope? – With Max Harris placed at 29, there has never been a more important moment to vote Labour. Getting Max inside Labour would be worth all their incremental nothings.
High Flyers – Vanushi Walters who used to do the Amnesty International slots on Channel Z Talkback is worth the hype. Chris Flatt is a good bugger trade unionist, Sophie Handford is real talent and Rakesh Naidoo is gloriously Indian AND a Cop.
NZs Got Talent? – After her singing, Ayesha Verrall in the top 10 is remarkable. Amazing Minister for Health, worst Karaoke team member ever.
LOSERS
The NZ First faction – Those who want to cut a deal with NZ First while ignoring TPM have all slowly and quietly been demoted.
NZCTU – The way Craig Renney has been treated is a real slap in the face to the NZCTU.
No Dr Love – Gary Payinda deserved a far higher ranking
Greg O’Conner -. Poor Greg, I am fond of him but Labour is now No Country for old white men.
PREDICTIONS
Why is Helen White so high on the List?
Honestly. Why?
Look, I don’t turn to Labour for the Marxist utopia.
I’m not looking for socialism from Labour, just basic regulated capitalism.
Their incrementalism does all our heads in, watching them win an unprecedented MMP majority and do fucking nothing with it will always kill us.
Watching them win the Covid War and lose the Covid Peace by refusing to build beyond the old inequalities broke our hearts, but here’s the naked reality.
Labour are good honest people and after the crony capitalism and venal corruption of the last Government, that is the best we can hope for.
When those doors close, Chippy will make decisions for all of us, not his donor mates.
There can be no change of Government without Labour, and they deserve our support to do that.
The really progressive policy won’t come from Labour this election, it will come when Greens + TPM negotiating with Labour after the election.
Oh and Michael Woodhouse will win back his electorate. He’s a good bugger.
I guess if they get back on the treasury benches when we have real poverty, real climate crisis and a real fuel crisis – and just about forgot to mention, a geopolitical upheaval, just to resort back to 3rd way neoliberalism and incrementalism, then they are toast along with the rest of us.
“The Māori Caucus – They are Chippy loyalists and have strengthened their hand by uplifting their faction. Arena Williams needs way more love though ”
The Māori caucus is its own worst enemy.
Kissing Hipkins feet will do nothing for the dire economic outcomes that directly harm tangata whenua.
” Labour’s Party List is out and it’s a fascinating insight into the state of play inside our largest Left Wing Party..
If the NZLP is our largest left wing party then we are screwed.
Would a left wing party leave out Craig Rennie while leaving White on a high list place ? That sends a clear message that the same government thrown out in 2023 is STILL the same party with the same people.
Would one of our most Iconic powerful Trade Unions cut their affiliation with NZLP and give it to The Alliance because they are the only party with a real working class set of polices that if in a position to negotiate unlike the Greens will not allow themselves to be bullied by our center neoliberals. Same goes for TMP.
This from Gordon Campbell
“Chris Hipkins is testing the patience (and allegiance) of every centre- left voter. We may be now only a few months out from the election, yet Labour is continuing to refuse to say where it stands on a wide range of important issues. It is now claiming a need to see this week’s Budget numbers before putting forward its own agenda. That’s absurd.
For the past two and half years, Labour has been claiming it cannot take any positions on the key issues facing New Zealanders. Now it has plucked out of the air an alleged need to first see what the coalition government is proposing in its last Budget before the election. This is putting the cart before the horse. Is Labour so afraid of its own policies – and so fearful of its inability to defend them – that it has to keep its agenda under wraps until the very last minute ?
Would a sincere major left wing party propose a governing alliance with the Nasty Natz just to keep the cruel anti worker anti democratic party in power because they might be “good people ” ?
Would a major left wing party do the following ?
This is extraordinary even by Labour’s standards. For years the party has drifted steadily rightward, shedding any pretence of being a vehicle for transformative change. But Hipkins’ comments mark a new stage in that evolution. Or should that be devolution? Labour is no longer simply timid or risk-averse; it is now openly positioning itself as a partner to National in the management of the very system that is immiserating its own base. The differences between the two parties on economic policy have shrunk to the point of near-irrelevance. What separates them is not ideology but emphasis: Labour promises to feel your pain while National promises to ignore it. But both promise to keep the system exactly as it is.
This leaves voters with a bleak choice. On the one hand, a National Party committed to deepening the market-driven policies that have already failed. On the other, a Labour Party that has abandoned even the pretence of offering an alternative. The result is a political landscape in which the major parties are converging, not diverging. And Hipkins’ bipartisan overture only accelerates that convergence. If Labour is already signalling its willingness to work hand-in-glove with National, then what exactly is the point of voting Labour at all?
https://nzagainstthecurrent.blogspot.com/2026/05/vote-labour-for-labour-national-alliance.html
https://werewolf.co.nz/2026/05/gordon-campbell-on-labours-vanishing-act/
Im hoping this (and many other decisions that have told us Labour is no longer a left leaning party) will send voters our way (Alliance).
Just reregistered with the electoral commission. No small feat in a couple of months. Watch this space.
Fantastic news re union affiliation. This is the start of the Alliance providing many of our people with a clear working class agenda. Victor spoke well on the Bradbury Group. I hope the Alliance can lead the recovery in centre left politics that we are seeing in the UK and the States. It can and will happen here.
The NZ Labour party is replicating the UK Labour party strategy – this requires allowing the center-right the space and time to define the economic narrative and then offer a ‘better’ version of this narrative to the electorate.
We’ll cut government spending and meet a surplus but it will be better when we do it. We’ll maintain insufficient levels of taxation so that major infrastructure projects can never be undertaken in NZ but it will be much better when we do it.
We’ll avoid standing up against racism even better than the National party avoided doing it.
This is kind of democracy at work – the talk radio version of democracy.
The losers are men. Where the hell are they?
Craig Rennie (51) and Gary Payinda (49) should have been in assured spots. New to parliament, ok, but really Chris. You are wasting talent by letting women take over most of the top spots.
Venushi Walters, Ayesha Verrill, Barbara Edmonds definitely in high places but there are a few there which look very DEI and not much else.
Some have had a go and proved they aren’t very talented. I’m sure they mean well but they don’t come across as competent. Many have dropped but why weren’t they replaced by people who may have actual talent judging by their performances outside parliament.
I’m the first to say let a woman have a go at a job if she wants to. She can’t be any worse than a man, but this is hard to take. We need about even numbers in the first 25 places.
Male voters will look at this list and say you must be joking. This is a woman’s coffee group. Let’s hope they don’t actually look at the list.
Why do you assume that every minority appointment is a DEI?
Didn’t say that. I said there appear to be people near the top who haven’t done much to secure their positions. They’ve had a chance, been there a few years, but not a lot to show for it, so why are they there?
I don’t think Hipkins should be there either as you’ll see if you have read any of my old comments. He’s had his chance and not done much. A great disappointment.
Kieran McAnulty will be the last white man in the Labour caucus at some point in the near future.
Mat and you have given a sound description of the faults in the Labour party list. The overwhelming impression I get from them is that they have not learnt any lessons from their past and that the protest vote against the current government will get them elected so no need to have any policy.
Keiran McNulty should be replacing Chippy, he’s got charisma and the common touch. I’ve seen Barbara Edmonds speak, she has a terrifying grasp of detail and knows how to apply it. She needs to be very visible and high on the list.
Got to say I’ve been pretty disappointed with Greg O’ Conner’s time in parliament. He was meant to be our ‘great white hope’ in the Police portfolio, someone with the street cred to go up against Mitchell but he’ll only be remembered for mouthing off at Jacinda a few times in the COVID years and getting caught speeding on multiple occasions. Time for him to take a parliamentary pension along with his Police one and fade off in to the sunset…
The photo is terrible.
Grfeg O’Conner has been the most ineffectual Labour MP in their team. probably just sitting there cozily awaiting his retirement. And oh, he was a horrible deputy speaker, needed to take a leaf out of Brownlee’s playbook and be as biased as hell toward Labour.
Craig Rennie should have been at number three .
Hopefully those in his electorate will be strategic and vote for him whilst giving the Party vote to the Greens and they’ll get 2 MP’s!
“Their incrementalism does all our heads in, watching them win an unprecedented MMP majority and do fucking nothing with it ”
Right of centre people gave Labour that majority. They were like – Covid, thanks for a pretty good job – hears a mandate, what else you got?
Labour could have implemented a war on homelessness and unemployment. Instead they submitted to the centralise-decentralise-recentralise bureacracy games in health, water, education. Deck chairs.
Could have done so much to prove the Left has the answers to the countries problems. Instead Hipkins imposed a do not rock the boat policy ans lead the party to defeat and is set to continue his legacy