HURRAH FOR CENTRISM!

'No left wing policies please, I'm Guy Williams.'

Supporters of the Labour -led government are claiming that the election defeat of UK Labour proves that the centrist policies of Jacinda Ardern government are the policies of 'a broadly popular and electable leader'.

PREDICTABLY, IT DIDN'T take long for supporters of the New Zealand Labour Party to claim that the devastating election defeat of the British Labour Party has 'proved' that the centrist direction of Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern's government is the correct and only path to take. The UK result was barely a few hours old when Jacinda's followers started opining in the social media that what was really needed to win an election was a Labour Party of the centrist 'broad church' variety.

That was the opinion of comedian Guy Williams and partner of Green MP Golriz Ghahraman. Somewhat confusedly dumping socialist Jeremy Corbyn into the same basket as corporate Democrat Hillary Clinton, Williams tweeted:

'If we’ve learned anything from Hillary Clinton, Bill Shorten, and now Jeremy Corbyn, it’s really important to have a broadly popular and electable leader. Shout out to NZ’s own Andrew Little for stepping aside for Jacinda. Your the real mvp.'

Guy Williams view was shared, often more coherently, by many other Jacinda Ardern followers. One Ardern fan even suggested that what Britain needed was a 'Blue Labour' like the New Zealand Labour Party. Blairism, briefly, raised its ugly head.

Apparently to be 'broadly popular and electable' you need to expunge all those annoying and unpalatable left wing policies that make you unpopular and unelectable. Policies like UK Labour's Green New Deal which is the greenest, most radical plan offered by a major party anywhere in the world. That's what we're talking about here and not the fact that Jacinda Ardern scrubs up better for the cover of women's magazines than someone like Andrew Little.

There is an obvious contradiction and one that has been evident throughout the first two years of the Labour-led government. While the liberal milieu that rotates around planet Jacinda are the first to express their concern abut the plight of the poor and the country's growing chasm of inequality, they are also the first to reject the kind of policies - such as those contained in UK Labour's manifesto - that would really tackle these problems and others. They reflect the comments of conservative Finance Minister Grant Robertson who once commented that Jeremy Corbyn's left wings policies 'would not necessarily work in New Zealand'. We're, apparently, doing so much better under Robertson's austerity regime which has consigned over 250,000 children to poverty.

The antagonism of Labour supporters to policies that were embraced by Labour pre-1984 is particularly evident in a general election year. While the more benign of Labour supporters will promote Labour as the 'lesser evil', others will be quick to dismiss its left wing critics as 'sectarian' and 'ultra leftist'. All that will be tolerated is a Labour Party that continues to tinker around the edges, but, in doing so, the followers of Jacinda Ardern can only be viewed as defenders of the political and economic status quo. Little wonder they have been so quick to dump on Jeremy Corbyn and UK Labour and a manifesto that really did offer an opportunity to build a Britain 'for the many, not the few' but, in doing so,  would have represented a threat to the interests of the economic and political elite. In the end what proved to be Labour's undoing was something called Brexit.