LABOUR : SLOUCHING TO ELECTION DEFEAT

As we approach 2023, Labour is looking at its last year in office...

THE POLITICIANS head off on their summer holidays next week and for many Labour MP's they'll be wondering if they will still be MP's come this time next year. If the opinion polls are accurate then a fair old chunk of them are going to be chucked out of office. They might in the future be described as the anonymous 'Covid MPs', who owed their brief time in Parliament to the pandemic throwing up Labour a landslide election victory. 

But in these post-pandemic days Labour appears to be heading for an election defeat and the only question is how heavy that defeat will be. 

While Radio New Zealand managed to interpret this week's One News Kantor poll as Labour and National being 'locked in head-to-head battle', the poll saw National up one point to 38 percent and Labour down one point to 33 percent. RNZ also chose not to reflect on the fact that, according to this poll, Ardern's own personal popularity is now trailing that of her party. 'Jacindamania' is truly a thing of the past, gone the way of other temporary manias like the yo-yo craze.  

This week's Roy Morgan poll was especially devastating for Labour, although RNZ decided it wasn't newsworthy and didn't report it. It showed Labour dropping to just 25 percent, well behind National on 39 percent. In 2017 Andrew Little resigned as Labour leader after a series of poor poll results and the latest Colmar Brunton poll showing Labour on just 24 percent. Ardern has entered 'Andrew Little territory' and questions about her continued leadership will surely continue to arise as the economy sinks further into the mire next year. 

The failure of Labour to be the truly transformative government that Ardern promised during her 2017 election campaign has sown the seeds for Labour's election defeat next year. Instead of reversing the social destruction of neoliberalism Labour has kept its foot on the pedal. While it has been boom times for New Zealand's economic elite, it has also meant growing homelessness and growing lines at the food banks. New Zealand has never been more of an unequal society than it is now. This is not what Ardern promised in 2017 when she declared that eliminating poverty would be one of her government's priorities. 

But in 2023 the only argument that Labour supporters have for its re-election is that it isn't National. Labour supporters inevitably turn to 'lesser evilism' when the going gets tough for their party. Unable to credibly present Labour as a progressive alternative to National -because it isn't - everything is reduced to one end-game equation : if you don't support us, you are supporting the other side. For the many folk struggling to make ends meet and many failing, the obvious rejoinder is: 'And your point is?' 

But such is their conceit Labour supporters think they have earned the status as being the only plausible bulwark against the National 'menace'. And those of us on the authentic left that doesn't harbour impostors like corporate lobbyists Neale Jones and Clint Smith, are still described as 'extremists and 'ultraleftists' who couldn't possibly win an election. 

The problem for Labour is that after two terms of it busily protecting the status quo and crapping on the very people it still claims to represent, a whole lot of folk will next year give it the middle digit. The rest of us won't vote, dreaming of the day when a new political party emerges that truly represents our interests.