GENERAL ELECTION 2020 : NEVER HAS SO LITTLE BEEN PROMISED TO SO MANY

At a time of a coronavirus-induced economic crisis, never has an election campaign promised so little for so many.

ALTHOUGH I KNEW it was coming, it still has been a hugely dispiriting election campaign. I'm been doing my best to avoid it. Never has so little been promised for so many by so many politicians. We're the ultimate losers.

Outflanked on the right by Labour, National has had little option but to wrestle with Labour for the centre ground and the argument would of normally revolved around nothing more than administrative disagreements about who would be the better manager of the free market economy. I say normally because this election campaign is occurring in the midst of a global pandemic and an economy sliding inexorably into a recession that will dwarf the aftermath of the 2008 financial crash. But on the back of her high profile management of the lockdown Jacinda Ardern has the kind of celebrity status that no politician, never mind Judith Collins, was ever going to compete with. If ever there was an election of spectacle, this is it.

But there's an entire media infrastructure built around an general election and the journalists have got to have something to write and talk about. But its been an exercise in diminishing returns and they are now reduced to talking about Judith Collins and her off-the-cuff views on obesity. And, as ever, the results of the of the opinion polls loom ever larger in the media chit-chat. At least they give TV3's Tova O'Brien something to get excited about.

At least there is no media speculation about whether Ardern is pregnant again. Not.  

In the absence of any substantial policy differences between Labour and National, the Green's proposed wealth tax has also loomed large in the last days of the campaign. But there has been something of a contrivance about this. The Green's, still in danger of being kicked out of Parliament, are peddling the wealth tax for all its worth  simply as a point of difference with Labour. But its really a non-starter from the off. Given co-leader James Shaw's insistence that the Green's are a 'responsible' political party with 'priorities' rather than 'bottom lines', we just know that the wealth tax will be prioritised away if the Green's find themselves with the opportunity of going into coalition with Labour.

Its perhaps a sign of the desperate times we live in that some of the people I follow in the social media have opted to vote for the Green's. This is largely, I think, because they want to prevent Labour from being able to govern alone. Yes, we've sunk to this. Former Green MP Sue Bradford says she voted for her former party because she's hoping that the Green's will do well enough to get a few new - and more left wing- MP's into Parliament. I have enormous respect for Sue, but I think she's grasping at straws.

Of course back in 2018 Sue wrote a paper outlining the case for a new progressive party and the thrust of her argument remains true today. The fact that the 'a little bit more to the right' politics of David Seymour and ACT are polling well, suggests there is a desire abroad for something that isn't the centrism of Labour and National.

There's no reason why there could not have been a progressive party on the national landscape, campaigning on a progressive manifesto - perhaps based on the Green New Deal - and there's no reason to say it would not have attracted popular support. Even if it didn't win any seats it would have provided the electoral foundation for another push in 2023.

But the Labour-aligned left possesses the depressing propensity for scoring own goals and its deep seated conservatism combined with its concrete organisational ties with Labour means the development of such a party remains ever stymied. There's always, apparently, a reason not to support such a party, always an argument to retreat to the so-called 'lesser evilism' of Labour. But as the economic crisis deepens this 'lesser evilism' will only lead to further evil in the shape of economic policies that will benefit the few at the expense of the many. The bitter irony is that many of the folk flocking for a selfie with Jacinda Ardern will also be the victims of the new austerity.