Third Term Temptations
THE THIRD TERM in Opposition is always the most dangerous. It’s the time when sticking to one’s principles is hardest, and when the blandishments of “professionals” promising easy victories are at their most persuasive. The prospect of another three years in opposition: of feeling powerless and useless; looms ahead of Opposition MPs like a prison sentence. They’ll do anything to escape. To win.
In 2016 Labour is in its third term of opposition, and it’s easy to imagine how desperately its caucus is looking for a way out. The party is heading into its hundredth year without a charismatic leader, shorn of just about all of the policies it campaigned on in the 2011 and 2014 elections; and as close to broke as any major party should ever be. What Labour needs is reinvigoration – reinvention even. Otherwise it risks being rejected by the electorate as too old and too irrelevant to make a difference. Yesterday’s party, filled with yesterday’s politicians.
Labour’s been here before – most recently in 1998. That, too, was the middle year of a National-led government’s third term, but it’s there that the similarities end. The government of Jenny Shipley was a government of rebels and turncoats and it was deeply unpopular. It was also a government made up of politicians elected under a radically new and different electoral system – MMP.
The Bolger-led National Government’s opponents had split their votes between three parties: Labour, NZ First and the Alliance; and most of them expected a government composed of all three. Winston Peters confounded those expectations by throwing in his lot with Bolger – a decision which inflicted near-fatal damage on his party. NZ First’s generosity notwithstanding, however, by December of 1997 Shipley had rolled Bolger and split Peter’s parliamentary ranks in two.
The Shipley Government never took. Lacking democratic legitimacy it was widely regarded as a political “dead man walking” towards the 1999 electoral gallows. It’s only hope of survival was the bitter enmity between Labour and the left-wing Alliance, led by Jim Anderton. If these two parties were to contest the 1999 election as rivals, and the Left presented to the voters as hopelessly divided, then there was a chance – a very slim chance – that National could come through the middle.
Would Labour risk it? Could Helen Clark beat Anderton’s Alliance into a poor third and win power in its own right? There were those in Labour’s caucus who believed it could, but following the Alliance’s surprisingly strong showing in the Taranaki-King Country by-election of May 1998 (Labour polled 17.53 percent to the Alliance’s 15.46 percent) Helen Clark opted to accept the olive branch offered by Anderton and publically announced Labour’s readiness to form a loose coalition government with the Alliance following the 1999 general election.
The rest, as they say, is history.
In 2016, is the Labour leader, Andrew Little, also faced with Clark’s 1998 predicament? Is he, too, confronted with the prospect of a National Party Government only too willing to repeat its propaganda victory of 2014, when the Labour/Green/NZ First/Mana opposition (not-to-mention Kim Dotcom) were successfully portrayed as a ship of fools, with everyone rowing in opposite directions? And, if so, does he really have any other option except to follow Clark’s 1998 example and announce Labour’s readiness to form a coalition government with the Greens in 2017?
That is certainly the option progressive New Zealanders are hoping Labour will take. Their not unreasonable assumption being that a coalition with the Greens will anchor Labour firmly on the Centre-Left, and decisively weaken the right-wing faction of Labour’s caucus. There are, however, a number of problems with this analysis.
First and foremost is the undeniable fact of the Prime Minister’s – and his government’s – still astonishing levels of popularity. John Key is no Jenny Shipley, and his government certainly isn’t cobbled together from rebels and turncoats. Far from being a “dead man walking”, Key’s government shows every sign of robust political health and is more than ready to make a successful bid for a fourth term. It’s a level of confidence that’s likely to keep National’s election war-chest full-to-overflowing (and Labour’s empty). It also serves as a warning to the all-important news media that, as things now stand, changing sides would not be a good idea.
In this gloomy context, the recent statements from Grant Robertson make bright and sunshiny sense. With his eyes not on 1998, but 1983, Robertson is readying the Labour Party for another bid to win the backing of big business. Like Roger Douglas before him, he is inviting his party to become, once again, New Zealand’s great political facilitator. Last time it was the Free Market Revolution of 1984-93 that Labour facilitated. This time it will be what the one-percenter luminaries gathering for the World Economic Forum at Davos are calling “The Fourth Industrial Revolution”.
It’s an extraordinarily clever move on Robertson’s part. The NZ Herald’s “Mood of the Boardroom” revealed that, while appreciated as a canny election-winner, Key is not regarded as the political and economic innovator New Zealand so desperately needs. With his radically innovative and politically transgressive “Future of Work” policy package, Robertson should be able to pass the hat around New Zealand’s major enterprises with every hope of collecting more than polite refusals.
Nor will he be alone. The Greens’ James Shaw is perfectly placed to act as Robertson’s seconder in the nation’s boardrooms. With his assurances that the Greens, too, are committed to developing a whole new political and economic paradigm – one equal to the enormous challenges of the 21st Century – the business community’s fears about the Greens can be sufficiently allayed to make the announcement, at Labour’s 100th annual conference, of a Red-Green Alliance something big business can welcome – rather than condemn.
Will it be enough to defeat the Third Term Blues? Possibly. But it will certainly be enough to render Labour electorally competitive in ways the New Zealand electorate has not seen for 18 – maybe even 33 – years.
“The party is heading into its hundredth year without a charismatic leader, shorn of just about all of the policies it campaigned on in the 2011 and 2014 elections; and as close to broke as any major party should ever be. What Labour needs is reinvigoration – reinvention even. Otherwise it risks being rejected by the electorate as too old and too irrelevant to make a difference. Yesterday’s party, filled with yesterday’s politicians.”.
And then, later on, Chris brings in Grant Robertson and his “Future of Work” discussions:
” The NZ Herald’s “Mood of the Boardroom” revealed that, while appreciated as a canny election-winner, Key is not regarded as the political and economic innovator New Zealand so desperately needs. With his radically innovative and politically transgressive “Future of Work” policy package, Robertson should be able to pass the hat around New Zealand’s major enterprises with every hope of collecting more than polite refusals.”
Well, while there must be a real focus on the future of work, and future of income, I think that Grant Robertson is, as he has been in the past, too much of a talker, and one who offers little real answers and solutions to the challenges of the future.
If Labour think the future of this country lies mainly in the mood of the boardrooms, we are screwed, truly screwed, as it has been those very boardrooms of business elite members, who have screwed us ordinary workers and citizens over and over again.
Look at the realities of a supermarket duopoly, where prices are basically set to get the maximum of returns out of consumers, and where competition is marginal. Supermarket prices here are higher than in many developed countries in Europe, where lamb and NZ grown produce is cheaper than here. Same applies to dairy products.
Look at building supplies, where we have other duopolies and monopolies, who screw us all over, to maximise turnover and profits, where consumers are ripped off. The list can go on, and we have business in NZ be the worst kind of citizen I can think of, they only offer refunds and some warranty cover, because the law forces them to do so. The rest is rip off and much BS.
NZ rich in sunshine and also wind is one of the low level investors in alternative energy generation, still now, why is that? Because of business and dominant players slowing the needed change. Farmers only started fencing their land so cattle and cows cannot piss into waterways as much as before, after reports on water quality showed appalling quality levels. Again, this government did as little as necessary or as what they got away with.
As for work we still have ways of employers forcing workers to accept unacceptable conditions, such as defacto zero hours. Work is done in China, Bangla Desh and Vietnam, to provide the goods that clothe us, that give us gadgets and computers we use daily, besides of other products. What about the working conditions of people there, does Labour care?
They do not, the majority of NZers do not care, and while they pay prices for a shirt at Farmers or so, the product even costs more than in USA or Europe, as dominant traders rip us off.
So go to hell with consulting the board room on the future of work and where Labour needs to head and get votes, that is the wrong place. What about that missing one million of lost and non voters?
Grant Robertson does not deliver any solutions and nor do Labour, or are they now going to accept a universal basic income as an idea?
They do not even talk of beneficiaries these days, a no go area, they are the untouchables, as the brainwashed, selfish middle class, who adore Key, have no time for them. So Labour follows suit to do what Nats have done, and ignores them as potential voters and clientele.
I fear there is little in the way of smart stuff coming from Labour, they cling to lost policies, to try and copy Nats in some ways, to get votes only from those that left them for selfish reasons and who now vote Nats.
If that is the future, go and get lost, I fear it would be better to give up on this hopeless place on earth and move overseas, where things are actually happening and being decided. They will not be decided in NZ boardrooms, in Wellington or in Labour’s offices or ca binet meetings, Labour are a lost cause in my view.
Thanksfor putting my thoughts into words Mike! You are spot on! If Labour want to survive they need a Corbyn but the current crop will wither and die and the faster the better.
Lol, you’ve only been back five minutes and already you’re feeding us nightmare scenarios.
Labour need to be shaken upside down and shaken!
Do they really know what time it is?
Perhaps there next election song should be this song? “Does anybody really know what time it is” circa ( Chicago Transit Authority circa 1970?)
Well, if they do get in, it seems they may inherit a country with ZERO DEBT, according to Karen Hudes:
https://s3.amazonaws.com/khudes/Twitter1.17.16.2.pdf
NZ’s debt was around a hundred billion last time I looked thanks to putting a dud banker in charge.
” Like Roger Douglas before him, he is inviting his party to – ” make a suicide pact with the ‘devil’, not the details. Sigh.
Labour needs an internal revolution to rid itself of the destructive neo lib ABC element, which is holding the party back. Once this is done, then Labour just might attract people with charisma, as well as MPs with the guts to return the party to its grass roots and original values.
Until then, Labour while continuing in its present modus operandi, giving NatzKEY a helping hand, will wallow in its own muck, going nowhere.
Labour need to show leadership as NZ First are and get into these type of debates, and not just sit as a lapdog for National!
Come on Andrew Little, get yourself fired up now for goodness sakes!
19th January 2016.
According to this Radio NZ report;
http://www.radionz.co.nz/national/programmes/checkpoint/audio/201783302/gov's-emissions-projections-far-exceed-paris-commitment
The National lead Government is now buying cheap carbon credits from failed economies like Ukraine to avoid taking proper environmental policies to reduce their promised emission targets they committed to in December 2015 at the historic Paris Climate change accord just last month.
Transport emissions are amongst the largest emitters according to a recent report from Ministry of Environment, and here we see national preparing to keep closing down regional rail services while growing truck freight emissions dramatically instead.
So to honour those commitments made in Paris, for instance the North Island East coast rail system be reopened & should be connected to all major ports!
This requires that a forward rail upgrading planning is now required and that a reopening of existing regional rail commence immediately, and not just toy with cheap carbon credits and undermine the climate.
If the National Party’s previous form is anything to go by a cobbled together half arse version of Robertsons idea, should he detail it, will be passed off as serious game changing policy which of course it won’t be, vis a vis Nationals failed housing/property policy. We can’t afford that failure.
Robertson is right to ask the questions but save the detail until it can’t be plagiarised.
I seriously doubt Labour MPs will offer us any policies which will deal with so called ‘Fourth Industrial Revolution’.
Today’s NZ Labour is more clunky and lethargic than it was in the 1970s. Just as social democracy exhausted itself towards the end of the 20th Century, so too has neoliberalism today.
Labour needs to undo the capitalist discourses that neoliberalism takes to the extremes, but a return to social democracy is not possible due to automation and technological advances. I doubt Little and Robertson can do that.
Can they offer a UBI that is at a level which will eliminate poverty? That is surely the first step. The worth of an individual shouldn’t be measured by their so called ‘productivity’ within a capitalist framework…sadly, the Left has forgotten this. The next step is to re-consider how we think of private property.
You have got to be kidding Fatty. The Neo-liberal agenda is set to run and run . (Less State control of everything , more corporate power, fewer taxes, less government-paid health, education, housing, welfare, less ability of governments to stop foreign buy-outs….). And you ain’t going to stop it from the opposition benches, no matter how righteous you criticisms may be.
“You have got to be kidding Fatty. The Neo-liberal agenda is set to run and run”
Perhaps, but only if our so called opposition also offers neoliberalism (as Labour have been doing). But even then, believing that neoliberalism is eternal shifts our economic system from ideology into theology. I think the reality is that neoliberalism will eat itself to death. That’s what the Fourth Industrial Revolution is about; the influence of automation and technology on capitalism.
“And you ain’t going to stop it from the opposition benches, no matter how righteous you criticisms may be.”
True, but don’t reduce my position to being on the opposition benches. I’m all for the Left taking political power, but only once it disentangles itself from neoliberalism. If the Left takes political power and continues neoliberalism, then how has neoliberalism been overcome?
That depends what you mean by neo-liberalism.
The neo-liberal project in my view, seeks to reduce the power of individual governments in favour of the wealthy and corporate interests, essentially.
This is not particularly a hallmark of Labour, or certainly not since the days of Roger Douglas.
This should not be confused with support for free trade. Free trade can be as easily justified as it can be vilified, depending on the framework you adopt. To support the free trade section of the TPP while rejecting the neo-liberal elements is not an inconsistent position.
Support for free trade may be criticized over the outcomes in diversity and for particular industries, but it also is often shown to increase economic activity. In general, this might be expected to increase individual incomes. Hence Labour’s support for these deals in principle. However the evidence for advantage on balance is rather inconclusive, so there is plenty of room for dispute. That dispute does’t need to include accusations of bad faith.
“The neo-liberal project in my view, seeks to reduce the power of individual governments in favour of the wealthy and corporate interests, essentially.”
That’s not how I’d describe neoliberalism. Governments often become bigger and more bloated under a neoliberal model. They direct everything towards the market. I prefer David Harvey’s or Loic Wacquant’s definitions. Wacquant’s claim that the government becomes larger under neoliberalism is very insightful.
“That dispute does’t need to include accusations of bad faith.”
Think of Labour’s welfare, housing, tertiary education, employment policies…there’s little daylight between Labour and National’s policies there. Maybe if they say it with a smile on their faces, we could call it ‘third way’.
I’m not saying Labour act in bad faith. They’re ideologically blinded by the market. They’re very honest about it – just read their policies and listen to them speak