The NZ Labour Party – a tale of two lists – Broadchurch vs Pure Temple

Lizzie Marvelly’s weekly column and ongoing 7000 part expose on why men are shit is out and this week Lizzie takes aim at middle class male privilege by highlighting the musings of political debutant Rohan Lord…

“I’m white, middle class, male and I couldn’t really see a long term future within the party,” he told Guyon Espiner.

“I think they – rightly so – want a cross-representation of all parts of the community, whether you’re Polynesian, Māori, women, ethnic, and I think it’s got to such a stage where if you’re not within the establishment and they want the – rightly so – fifty-fifty women/male within caucus, that it would take such a long time to penetrate the upper levels of the party. That’s just my view.”

For Lizzie, Lord’s comments are part of a wider cultural narrative of the failings of middle class men to appreciate they have all the privilege and power and as such should just shut up…

The thing that astonishes me is the implication. In my view in order for Lord’s claims to have merit, he’d have to demonstrate that some of the candidates ahead of him are there only as tokenistic quota-fillers.

By evoking gender and race as potential factors in why he wasn’t placed higher, Lord has conjured the veiled insinuation that perhaps some of the “Polynesian, Māori, women, ethnic” people ahead of him on the list are there because of their gender or race and might not deserve to be there as much as he believes that he does.

…I like Lizzie, she’s a mix of middle class University feminism with whatever is trending on Twitter, but what astounds me is that throughout her latest diatribe on the failings of middle class men to appreciate their privilege, she seemed to have missed out one fairly glaring counter point.

Sue Moroney.

If Lord standing down because he was 72nd on a list of 72 is evidence of male privilege gone mad, what was Sue Moroney’s decision to stand down with a ranking in the 30s?

Such a pointed comparison tends to make the cultural narrative Lizzie is attempting to champion look a tad less righteous.

When a male complains about his list ranking of 72 it’s evidence of male privilege, when a female complains about her list ranking in the 30s she’s a feminist hero???

I see.

I suppose me pointing out this pretty blatant and obvious flaw also makes me sexist? I’m assuming double standards only apply if you have a penis.

What the real story here is not Lord’s white male privilege,  it is Labour Party political incompetence.

Lord should never have been brought into the fold if he didn’t understand the dynamics at play.

Of course the Labour Party as a political expression of working people understands and acknowledges the hegemonic structures within society, of course they should actively promote candidates who are left out of those power hegemonies – Women, Maori, LGBTQ community, Pacifica, Youth, Disabled, Migrant – all deserve promotion into the Labour list over and above those who have benefitted from that hegemony.

Where that process has fallen over is in the execution of that list.

Lord having no idea of how the List dynamics worked, Sue Moroney being blindsided by a demotion, Willie Jackson being promised one thing and delivered something else, Maori not appearing in the top 15 at all, Sunny Kaushal storming off because he felt the Party was anti-immigration because he didn’t have a high enough ranking – these all occurred within the List process and they occurred because the oversight required to smooth all  those ruffled feathers didn’t exist.

This is a political management problem, not evidence of white middle class privilege run amok.

I do agree with Lizzie however that there is a wider cultural narrative occurring on the Left, but not in the way she defines it.

There is a very clear fight within the left between Broadchurch and Pure Temple. We saw this erupt over the nominations of Willie Jackson and Greg O’Connor as part of Labour’s ‘Broadchurch’ strategy. The idea is to bring working class men with Labour rather than make them feel ostracised by the latest micro aggression trends in Twitter culture. This strategy ran hard up against Pure Temple supporters who only want members who conform to all parts of the latest dominant cultural group think.

This struggle between class and identity politics has replaced the ‘left-right’ dividing line on the Left because economically most of the established left have capitulated to free market neoliberal globalisation.

It’s a fight that is brutal, for criticising the 400 Labour Youth who signed a letter to destabilise Andrew Little’s leadership in February and for suggesting Poto William’s decision to put out a press release via a PR company was also damaging Labour’s chances at the ballot box, Wellington Political Blog Werewolf posted a blog claiming that for my sexist attitudes in calling these identitarians out for their tactics that I deserved to be kidnapped, assaulted and then sexually tortured.

Sexually tortured.

Classy.

Meanwhile the wider electorate who don’t have the time to appreciate the nuances of uber liberal identity politics only see more bickering, more disunity and for those white middle class males who Labour needs to win over to change the Government in September, a ‘you’re not welcome’ sign because Lord wasn’t briefed properly when he stood.

Political mismanagement and the ability to turn potential voters into the enemy, this is what the Labour List fiasco was all about, turning it into a white male middle class privilege run amok narrative however manages to only reinforce those negative impressions to the wider electorate.