BACK TO THE FUTURE

The Labour Party's centrist policies and politics have been identified as one of the principal reasons for its heavy election defeat. But what would a post-centrist Labour Party look like? Commentator Danyl Mclauchlan has argued for an 'alternative centrism' that looks suspiciously like discredited Third Way politics. 

IN THE AFTERMATH of the Labour Party's heavy election defeat the conversation within Labour circles has turned to what Labour has to do in order to rebuild itself and revive its political fortunes. 

Some of that conversation has focused on Labour's centrism. On election night, former leader David Cunliffe perhaps delivered the first criticism when he commented that Labour's centrism had failed to deliver on the commitments that it had made to the electorate. He observed that it had been a mistake by Hopkins to try and hold on to centrist voters that had gravitated to Labour in 2020, rather than shore up its left-wing base. 

'It was not a winning strategy.' said Cunliffe.

That view was echoed a few weeks later by former foreign minister Nanaia Mahuta. She told TVNZ's Q+A that Labour had took 'too centrist a position' going into the election. In what was obviously a criticism of Chris Hipkins, she said that the decision to reject a wealth tax had been wrong. 

But the seeds for Labour's eventual defeat were sown during its first term by former leader Jacinda Ardern, now ensconced away at Harvard University. Her conservative politics betrayed the lofty progressive aspirations she outlined during Labour's 2017 election campaign. If it had not been for the intervention of the Covid pandemic Labour could well have been defeated in 2020.

As it was, Ardern's sudden resignation delivered Chris Hipkins a hospital pass that left him vulnerable to being steamrollered by his political opponents. Nevertheless, his centrist politics - similar to that of Ardern's - did not help matters. At a time when the electorate was demanding change, Hipkins presented himself as a leader of a political party offering little more than more of the same. And he was, inevitably, booted out of office.

Now Labour has to try and pick up the pieces. If its centrist politics has been identified as an obstacle in the way of election success, then what would a post-centrist Labour Party look like? 

That question has been reflected on by commentator Danyl Mclauchlan. If New Zealand could be described as having a popular political theorist, then McLauchlan would be that political theorist. He is something of a favourite within liberal circles and his work is widely published, with some of articles even described as 'milestones'. Although what they are 'milestones' to is another question entirely. Perhaps the reason why he is popular with Labour liberals is that he seems to offer a progressive way forward for the Labour Party but which doesn't actually involve it having to overcome the status quo. It doesn't have to get its hands dirty.

In 2016 Mclauchlan wrote that all people want is a political and economic system that works for everybody; 'a just and fair criminal justice system; free markets that aren’t manifestly rigged; functional housing markets, fair labour markets.'

Some seven years later, this remains Mclauchlan's view. He now describes his kinder, socially aware version of capitalism as 'alt centrism'. In a recent article he outlined what would be contained in an alt centrist manifesto. It includes 'a high-quality public sector', and 'competitive free markets.'

It's hardly revolutionary and some readers may conclude that they've come across this kind of stuff before, and they would be right. What McLauchlan describes as 'alt centrism' is little more than rebooted Third Way politics. This is a politics that aspired to a centrist alternative route between socialism and free market capitalism. But under its principal architects, UK Prime Minister Tony Blair and US President Bill Clinton, it became little more than the ideological justification for the imposition of a neoliberalism we are still grappling with today. But Blair and Clinton justified it as a progressive politics appropriate to the modern world.

It's not entirely surprising that Third Way politics should still appeal to McLauchlan because it offers a vision of the future where nothing will change, because the End of History has arrived. He writes: 

'New Zealand is a liberal-democratic-free market-social welfare state – Francis Fukuyama’s End of History model. But – as Fukuyama pointed out – all of the institutions that make the model work are vulnerable to oligarchic capture.'

Because he's not a socialist, Mclauchlan cannot conceive of anything other than an eternal 'liberal-democratic-free market-social welfare state'. It is the job of an enlightened political elite, says Mclauchlan, to ensure that the economic model works for everybody. The paternalism of such a politics is clear; it will be imposed from above by a political elite on a working class that will have little say in proceedings.

What Mclauchlan fails to grasp is because things are the way they are, they cannot stay the way they are. The question to be addressed is how widespread support for economic and political change can be transformed into a movement that is capable of effecting a real challenge to the power relations that characterise local capitalism. In short, we have to aspire to a politics that is for the many, not the few. The working class remains the central actor.

But Danyl McLauchlan, whether he realises it or not, is an adherent of what another popular political theorist, the UK'S Mark Fisher, defined as capitalist realism - the idea that it is easier to imagine the end of the world than the end of capitalism.  Dissatisfaction with the political and economic status quo is widespread and will only intensify in the future. Tinkering with that status quo, as Mclauchlan conceives, will do little to revive Labour's fortunes. As I proposed in 2016, it's perhaps time to start 'articulating a new progressive politics that is independent of the Labour Party.'