GREAT EXPECTATIONS

After promising both 'transformation' and 'change', the Labour Government has failed to deliver. What would Mike Moore think?

MANY YEARS AGO when I was a card-carrying member of the Labour Party and actually believed in a parliamentary road to socialism (yes, really), I was lectured to by Mike Moore MP. The occasion was a Saturday morning school fair and a friend and I were checking out the various stalls. Suddenly, out of nowhere it seemed, Mike Moore MP was standing in front of us.

Moore was at the school fair doing his civic duty as the local MP but I think he had grown tired of drinking cups of tea and pressing the flesh. He recognised us from some Labour Party meeting or other, and obviously thought that here was a ready-made sympathetic audience who would appreciate hearing his latest opinions. Mike Moore was never short of an opinion and, what's more, he was always keen to share his views with unsuspecting audiences.

I say it was a lecture because that's exactly what it was. I made the mistake of trying to contribute my own point of view and Mike told me not to interrupt while he was talking. Fair enough. After all, I was still wet behind the ears and Mike Moore was a Labour MP and I could obviously benefit greatly from his wisdom. That's the thing about social democratic politics - some people are always more equal than others.

I don't remember much of what Mike said that Saturday morning. But, for some reason,one thing did stick in my mind. I don't recall the context but Mike Moore MP wanted us to know that it was important for a government - any government - to manage public expectations of it. That was the term he used  - 'public expectations'. To cut Moore's long story short, what he meant is that a government should not -indeed, could not - promise more than it could or was prepared to deliver.  That's because when it failed to deliver on its promises there would be the inevitable public backlash when folk began to realise that their hopes and expectations had been dashed on the rocks of political opportunism and expediency.

What Moore had to say was hardly a revelation, but I can't help thinking that we are beginning to see the beginnings of such a backlash now. After committing Labour to 'transformation' and 'change' during its 2017 election campaign, Jacinda Ardern hasn't so much as rocked the boat but given it a polite and barely noticeable prod. It took Ardern less then one election term to go from committing herself to cutting child poverty by half to flatly rejecting the widespread community call for a substantial increase in benefits. So while her government has shovelled billions of dollars in the direction of the top end of town, the working class and the poor have been told there is nothing in the cupboard for them.

Ardern's proclamations about 'kindness' might of been intended to unite the nation - with Ardern  leading her 'team of five million' into a bright new future - but the level of poverty and inequality has only deepened and widened under her government and we have strayed into Orwellian territory where cruelty is indeed kindness.

Jacinda Ardern, I think, has wanted to be loved by all and the coronavirus pandemic and the Christchurch terrorist attack has allowed her office to depict her as the Prime Minister who both serves the masses and is adored by them. But, probably inevitably, the portrayal of Ardern as the progressive politician with a compassionate heart has only set the stage for her own unravelling. Many of the policies enacted by the Labour Government have firmly contradicted her carefully constructed political identity. Far from being the progressive and transparent government that Ardern promised  this Labour Government remains loyal to neoliberalism and 'the market'. Is it any surprise that Ardern's own personal popularity has dropped in recent times?

Jacinda Ardern once talked of doing politics differently but, for a whole lot of folk, the 'new politics' seems awfully like the old politics. Fortunately for Labour its only opposition is a National Party intent on wrestling it for the centre ground while the Green's are irretrievably compromised by the short-sighted political deal it made with Labour. The vast swathe of deserted territory to the left of Labour could be occupied by a new and progressive political party, offering a desperately needed alternative to the present market stodge. But it will remain unoccupied so long as much of what constitutes the left continues to pledge its loyalty to Labour. Unfortunately, that's something we can fully expect to continue right up to the next election and beyond and we deserve better.