WHAT HAS THE NEW ZEALAND LEFT GOT TO OFFER THIS ELECTION? NOTHING

'In the 2014 general election, nearly 730,000 of those enrolled to vote did not cast a ballot. For the first time in my life I was one of them. I could not see that any of the three parties of the ‘left’, Labour, Greens and Internet Mana, had any serious intention to begin to move us beyond capitalism and colonialism, especially given the deviant road Mana had taken in its alliance with Kim Dotcom. I totally rejected the notion that it was better to vote for a social democratic party than to cede the field to National. I did not trust that a new Labour-led government would do any better than they have in the past, where often enough the plight of the people whom I have worked with most of my life, unemployed workers, beneficiaries and their families, has been worsened rather than improved by a victorious Labour government.' Sue Bradford, ' Why We Need a New Left Wing Party'.

Three years ago Sue Bradford was calling for a new left party. Three years later, the New Zealand left still has got nothing to offer but the 'lesser evilism' of the Labour Party.

BACK IN 2017 former Green MP Sue Bradford wrote an article in which she outlined the case for a new left wing party. It was published in August and before the general election. The article opens: 'Those of us on the radical left in Aotearoa/New Zealand find ourselves in the middle of 2017 facing yet another general election in which no parliamentary party seriously champions a future which will start to move us beyond capitalism and the legacies of colonisation.'

Three years later and another election is upon us and exactly nothing has changed. 'The glaring organisational gap on the left of New Zealand politics', as Bradford puts it, remains just as glaring. In fact, in the midst of a economic crisis that has already far outstripped the impact of the 2008 financial crash, the need for a new left wing party has never been greater. And, of course, the world is also in the grips of a coronavirus pandemic.

While talk, on the left anyway, has been about preventing a return to pre-Covid-19 but worse, this election we will be confronted with a slate of political parties who have every intention of trying to rebuild the status quo. It's happening now with the Labour-led Government having already poured billions into the coffers of the corporate sector. The working class has received next to nothing. Its socialism for the rich, and capitalism for the rest of us. Commentator Bernard Hickey notes:

'It is a actually a 'K' shaped recovery.... The already rich are on the line heading upwards - getting rich because of a range of Government policies aimed at responding to Covid-19. Meanwhile, renters, beneficiaries and the working poor are getting poorer because their rents are rising, their incomes are falling and they have received barely any more direct help than they got before the pandemic....This has become the Covid-K recovery: fantastic for the rich and an awful repeat of the much talked about 1990-92 recession that Finance Minister Grant Robertson and Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern have said they want to avoid repeating.'

How much different would this general election be if there was an organised and national left wing party making its presence felt? Offering a viable economic alternative to neoliberalism, why couldn't such a party attract more than five percent of the vote? Perhaps it would be a party advocating a Green New Deal for New Zealand. Wouldn't that be attractive to the 180,000 New Zealanders who demonstrated last September, demanding more urgent action on climate change? Maybe some of the 700,000 folk who no longer vote may decide that this new party is worthy of their vote?

At the bare minimum, at least such a new left party would upset the cosy market-led narrative where Jacinda and Judith engage in polite conversation about whose got the best set of market policies. We don't want a seat at that table - we want to upend it.

But we have no such party and there are reasons for that. One of the principal reasons is that much of the New Zealand left, even now, remains loyal to the Labour Party and opposes the formation of such a party. This Labour Party has effectively been gutted of anything that even resembles its former social democratic traditions yet its supporters, despite all the historical evidence to the contrary, think the Labour Party is still a site for political struggle and progressive advancement.

Despite the growing level of desperation of a working class in crisis, the only response from the Labourites is that at least Labour is 'preferable' to National. Ten times out of ten, none of the defenders of 'lesser evilism' are lining up at Work and Income for an emergency grant or queuing for a food parcel at the food banks. They are all sitting in front of laptops in comfortable homes and union offices, preaching 'realism' and 'pragmatism'.

Three years ago Sue Bradford wrote:

'We must build a new kind of party, one that has not been seen in this country for a long time, if ever, capable of mobilising people and resources on a scale that can achieve a future far better than the one capital has mapped out for us and our children. To do this well will require bravery on all our parts, and a huge amount of sensitivity and care as well. It is important that we refrain from telling ourselves the task is too difficult. We can do it, and our time is now.'

Tragically much of the New Zealand left still isn't listening and the people who are paying the price for the left's inertia are the very people it claims to represent.