OPINION
As the opinion polls show Labour continuing to languish in the mid 20s, around 15 per cent behind the National party, we need to cast a glance at our old friend Machiavelli to understand why. Just as you ignore Adam Smith’s laws of economics at your peril (like Britain in the 1970s), the rules of politics Machiavelli wrote over 500 years ago are ignored at your peril also.
One of the things which Machiavelli warns about is threatening the “treasure” of the man in the street. Time and again Labour Governments have done this and always came a cropper. When the man in the street has his house equity or his superannuation money under threat then it is curtains for the government of the day; which is why National Governments never do this.
Suggestions of a capital gains tax – whereby the returns on your KiwiSaver of, say, nine per cent become six per cent – were stupid enough; suggestions of a wealth tax, and having Labour apparatchiks suggesting relatively ordinary people end up paying it, sent a wave of nausea coursing through the body of huge numbers of people. Furthermore, they dressed it up in typical Ardern fashion of suggesting if you don’t accept your $500,000 in your KiwiSaver account suddenly becoming $350,000 to feed the homeless, then you’re a big meanie who needs to be ashamed of himself.
Add to that the common sense of the average person – seemingly lacking in politicians and economists – who are able to join the dots and understand that “making houses more affordable” logically must mean that their house falls in value quite significantly. Labour politicians by contrast seem to think there is some ‘option three’ whereby your house maintains its value but other houses are ‘affordable’; no one actually taking part in day-to-day life was fooled.
But worse for the Labour Government was that those who don’t have all that much in their superannuation account or own a house have been seeing their “treasure” draining away in the last couple of years. There are an awful lot of people in this category out there who – as an example – used to eat a particular meal every Wednesday for dinner. Year in, year out it was on the menu from the time they were eight until adulthood. Until food price inflation hit 12 per cent. What had been a staple of their diet suddenly became unaffordable and they no longer eat that. A fairly basic meal is now a luxury.
Labour has taken away their favourite meal and blames everyone else but themselves. There was a brief period early last year when politicians could claim “supply chain issues” were to blame. But for the last 18 months that’s been a load of old cobblers. They took the ‘treasure’ (so to speak) of a favourite meal and – even more ludicrously – ended up blaming a weather event that took place…a year later!
So if you’re wondering why there will be a 20 per cent swing against the incumbent government, this is the main reason. There are other factors that comprise a mosaic of failure, but a government which takes away – or threatens to do so – the “treasure” of the man in the street is doomed. That they don’t care, that they privately despise the man in the street and that they suggest the man in the street is some moral degenerate, makes it even worse. Oh and start the clock for their defeat to be blamed on ‘racism’ rather than themselves.