LABOUR IS IN A TAILSPIN AND A CRASH APPROACHES...

Labour's popularity has taken a nosedive but Jacinda Ardern still has a smile on her face, in public at least. 

'IS JACINDA ARDERN on drugs?' That's an interesting question someone posed on Facebook this week, puzzled by Ardern's cheerful public personae in the face of unrelenting bad news. This week the Roy Morgan poll for May delivered more bad tidings for her government: National polled at 40 percent (up 2.5 percent from April) with Labour well behind at 31.5 percent (down 2.5 percent).  This is the sixth Roy Morgan poll in a row that has suggested there will be a change of government next year. If Ardern is worried she hides it well. But its not surprising that conservative commentator Matthew Hooton should stir the pot this week, 'helpfully' suggesting that Labour may like to replace Ardern as leader before the next election. If Labour's polling numbers continue to go south, then Jacinda Ardern's leadership will come under increasing scrutiny but replacing one centrist with another centrist - in the form of Deputy leader Grant Robertson - is no solution either. 

While Labour was able to ride to an emphatic victory in 2020 on the back of the coronavirus pandemic, the next election will see it judged on its political and economic track record. But its objective to outflank National on the right with a mix of market liberalism and social liberalism is not resonating with the electorate. The problem for Labour is that its centrist defence of the status quo has hurt just too many people. While these have been boom times for the already wealthy, the level of economic hardship and insecurity has risen into the once economically comfortable middle class, Meanwhile, the poor and the working class are drowning.  As Bryce Edwards observed of Great Robertson's 2022 Budget it offered next to nothing for the working class and the poor but 'was well received by business'. 

But this I week I received in the mail a glossy, full-colour leaflet from Labour informing me that 'With Budget 2022, we're creating economic security for all'. I suspect this leaflet will annoy more people than it convinces. 

Perhaps Ardern's cheery demeanour-  in public at least - is based on the inability of both her and her government to front up to their own mistakes. Its decline isn't due apparently to its own failures but the madness and irrationality of others. This week I heard several Labour ministers again mindnumblingly blame the previous National government for many of the economic ills that have befallen the country today.

Labour's failure to recognise the growing signs of its own impending demise might help to explain why it continues to pursue such unpopular policies as 'Three Waters' and 'co-governance'. It displays a political recklessness that ignores that the centre is disintegrating in the face of an increasingly severe economic downturn. But Labour has nothing to offer but its own arrogant assumption that its still right even while its failed neoliberal policies are driving more and more people to the wall.