Capitalist
There has been a lot of discussion about the recent opinion polls. There has been lots of pontificating about the reasons for the collapse in support for the Labour Government. So-called political experts have mused as to whether it can be turned around. I think they all miss the point which is that we’ve all been here before. Twice.
The Labour party hasn’t been a viable party of ‘government’ since World War II, and in my lifetime it has struggled to gain even 40% of the votes. Lange and Clark barely made it; Rowling, Moore, Goff, and Cunliffe didn’t come close. Like their ALP counterpart in Australia, they have been kept alive by the Press Gallery all being Labour voters dutifully pretending it isn’t a rotting corpse on the TV news each night. The reality is quite different.
In my lifetime, prior to the unique 2020 election, the Labour party had received the percentage of the votes gained by Norman Kirk and Walter Nash, at the 5 elections they lost, on the grand total of a single occasion. National has managed it on 7 occasions. As I say folks, this is not a “party of government” but a glorified pressure group.
What we are seeing at the moment with Ardern has occurred twice before: a Labour prime minister
1. Secretly knowing their opponents are the “natural” governing party;
2. Feeling they are an interloper;
3. Feeling hopelessly out of their depth;
4. Elected on a “Big Lie” by the votes of a relative handful of naïve people;
5. Those people have quickly discovered why their parents – and grandparents before them – never voted Labour;
6. After a year and a half said Prime Minister has the “smell of death” about them;
7. Literally in the case of one of them!
Ardern is starting to look very much like David Lange in the autumn of 1989. Consider the parallels: things unravelling rapidly; crises on 4 or 5 fronts; misjudging public opinion; the “big lie” shown to be utter twaddle; heart no longer in it as the very people being hurt the most are those they sought to help the most.
Ardern won’t follow Clark who stayed the course only to (childishly) prevent Goff from becoming the Prime Minister. It’s David Lange she will imitate by not hanging around to face inevitable defeat and suffering the humiliation of questions about her, personally, being asked. No one could put themselves through a degrading post-election news conference being asked: “how do you blow the biggest mandate in history in just 3 years?” without ending up in the booby hatch. Such an experience would simply destroy the person involved (hint: because there is only one, logical, explanation).
Best to hand things over to Grant (Bill/Geoff/Mike) and let [them] carry the can when the inevitable defeat occurs. As compensation, they get included on the “List of former Prime Ministers of New Zealand” Wikipedia page. Nobody can recall who Bill Rowling’s Minister of Internal Affairs or Geoff Palmer’s or Mike Moore’s Minister of Transport was, but all three are former Prime Ministers for eternity.
I predicted quite some time ago that 4 months of Labour polling in the 34-35% range, by which time the concept of a 2023 change of government would have embedded itself in the public mind, would see Ardern quit. We’re in the home straight now folks (and Alf can discreetly start measuring up new curtains for Premier House).