JACINDA ARDERN : STUCK IN THE MIDDLE

New Zealand-based socialist and writer Huw Morgan has written in the British media that Jacinda Ardern and Labour's political strategy is irreconcilable with radical change. He's right.

IN AN ARTICLE published by the UK'S Novara Media, Huw Morgan asks the crucially relevant question: What is the point of Jacinda Ardern? But if you asked a typical Labour Party member or supporter that question right now they would almost certainly reply her purpose is to win the general election. Electoralism is where its at. As long as Labour leads in the polls they are happy.

But they are also happy enough to sweep under the carpet the many transgressions of the first-term Labour Government. The very same Labour faithful who were quick to attack the economic performance of the National -led government have seemingly lost their voices. The fact that economic inequality has actually widened under the Labour-led government is of little concern. The fact that New Zealand's housing crisis has only deepened under Jacinda Ardern's leadership is also something to conveniently ignore. And when the climate crisis is only deepening and expanding, Labour's faithful aren't going to say anything about Ardern's dismally inadequate policy target of so-called carbon neutrality by 2050 - even though she said in 2017 that climate change was the nuclear- free issue of her generation. We'll just put all that inconvenient stuff aside for now...

Of course Labour supporters would argue that, in an election campaign, you most attenuate the positive and eliminate the negative. The difficulty with this argument is the cone of silence descended on the liberal milieu that circles Labour as soon as Jacinda Ardern first walked into the Prime Minister's office. There have even been outrageous claims made that criticising Ardern is next to treasonous. I've had several comments of this flavour fired at me, casting aspersions - I'm being polite - on my socialist politics. We don't seem to have moved on from the days when Rob Muldoon's supporters accused his critics of 'not being proper New Zealanders'.

The Labour-aligned left (which, yes, is increasingly a contradiction in terms) haven't covered themselves with glory either. Any criticism of Jacinda Ardern and Labour has all the force of being slapped with a wet bus ticket because it always arrives back at the point where it first started: supporting Labour. Because, in the end, Labour is always preferable to National, Jacinda is always preferable to Judith. But if you have lost your job or  you are lining up to receive a food parcel because rocketing rents are eating what money you do have, there's zero incentive to believe that life is so much better under a Labour Government. Well, maybe it is for some - the rich - but 'lesser evilism' doesn't put food on the table for the increasing number of people struggling to keep their heads above water.

While those of us who ascribe to proper socialist politics aren't 'lesser evil' snake oil merchants, some journalists in the mainstream media have also put most of our so-called 'progressive commentators' to shame. I'm not sure if that's because the Labour-aligned left is getting more conservative or the mainstream media is getting a little bit more edgy. Maybe its both.

Bernard Hickey of Newsroom has been impressive in the way he has dispassionately demonstrated how the economic policies of the Labour-led Government have advantaged those at the top end of the town while Labour's traditional supporters have received next to nothing.

Similarly Andrea Vance wrote a scorching commentary on the state of New Zealand politics just recently. She commented :

'The scale of the problems we face is distressing. For the next few weeks, the party leaders will indulge us in a charade where they tour the country, pretending to have solutions. It’s a hollow ritual, because for all their partisan sniping, the two major parties do not differ in any meaningful way.'

While I have problems with the assumption that Jacinda Ardern's leadership has been inspirational - rather than just doing the job she gets paid a lot of money to do - I think Huw Morgan is right in his conclusion that Ardern's leadership and her personal empathy masks what he describes as 'neoliberalism incarnate':

'...one takes personal responsibility for child poverty while charging poverty-stricken families for emergency housing. Absent a theory of change, we’re left with focus-grouped policies that feign progress while leaving the status quo untouched.'

What is tragic is that in a time when the coronavirus pandemic has exposed the inequalities and injustices of a failing economic system, Jacinda Ardern and Labour have nothing more to offer than more of the same. We're in a moment when we need transformational politics from an economic perspective and a climate perspective, but Jacinda Ardern and Labour have chosen to ignore that. Morgan writes : 'What is so frustrating for those of us on the left is that Ardern has the support and charisma to make good on her promise of 'transformational government' – she just won’t.

If Labour do win the general election, then the question posed by Huw Morgan will become more pressing. The coming months will only see us confronted by increasingly desperate times and if Jacinda Ardern's entire modus operandi is just to continue to manage the status quo then the backlash, when it comes, will be severe. Something has to give...