CAN A NEW LEFT WING PARTY EMERGE IN NEW ZEALAND?

Former UK Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn and former Labour MP Zarah Sultana have announced the formation of a new left-wing party. Even though it has yet to be formally launched, it has already attracted over 650,000 subscribers. Could something similar occur in New Zealand?


THE OPINION POLLS indicate that neither Labour nor National have been able to carve out any significant electoral advantage over each other and will be relying on the support of the minor parties to form a government.

What the polls also say is that Labour or National are only able to command the support of, at best, a third of the electorate each. The August 11 News Verian poll had National on 34 percent support and Labour on 33 percent. It's indicative of the state that we're in that the present deputy Prime Minister leads a party that commands little more than seven percent support in the polls, while he has a favourability rating of an equally mere four percent. Welcome to our 'representative democracy'. 

Given that both Labour and National's support consists largely of people who will vote Labour or National regardless, it does indicate that the level of disillusionment with our present set of parliamentary parties is very high. That's also underlined by the reality that a significant number of people no longer vote. In the 2020 general election, 655,094 enrolled electors did not cast a vote, representing 18.46% of the electoral roll. In the 2023 general election, the number of non-voters rose to 829,396, equivalent to 22.49% of those enrolled. They have simply given up on a representative democracy that fails to give voice to their concerns.

For over four decades people have been denied an alternative to neoliberalism and its looking increasingly likely we will be denied an alternative at the 2025 general election as well. It seems clear that Labour leader Chris Hipkins has no intention of abandoning centrism and overturning the neoliberal applecart. 

The fear is that the Green Party, which is offering an alternative, will end up making a deal with Labour just to be in government. This does not suggest there will be the 'radical transformation' that Green Party co-leader Chloe Swarbrick talks about.

So there is no sense of momentum or excitement building as the general election draws closer, nor is there likely to be. Instead, there's more a dark sense of ennui; a feeling of dissatisfaction and frustration with the political and economic status quo with nothing on the horizon that suggests real change is coming. 

In stark contrast, a political alternative to the status quo is beginning to emerge in Britain. Jeremy Corbyn and Zara Sultana's new left party which has yet to be formally launched, already has over 650,000 subscribers. Former Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn says that '650,000 people don’t sign up to a new project for no reason. They sign up because they have had enough.' He told Tribune: 

'You look at the problems facing society today: food banks are a major feature of life for thousands of people. Tenants in private sector flats are spending well over half their take-home pay. There’s massive levels of stress for people of all ages. When a government comes into office promising things will change, and then nothing does, something has to give. This energy has been pent up for a while, given that none of these issues are new. Successive governments have refused to do anything about them. That is going to have a consequence — they are reaping what they have sowed.

'Announcing the party’s website was like watching a dam break. People who had been denied a real alternative suddenly had something to sign up to. They had a reason to hope. We set out a fairly skeletal political vision, based on foundational principles of equality and peace. We included public ownership, wealth taxes, investment in council housing, and support for Palestine. We did not need to lay out a more detailed vision, not least because that will be decided by members, but because people could see the kind of direction of travel we stood for. That was a direction of travel they’ve been denied for so long: one that seeks to redistribute wealth and power.'

Zarah Sultana says that the goal of the new party is to 'change politics forever. That’s what I owe to my community and to my class. Now’s the moment.'

Have we arrived at that moment in New Zealand? Is a new left wing political party a possibility here?

The collapse in voter turnout and the cynicism toward both major parties point to a vacuum. Millions of New Zealanders are unrepresented: renters crushed by housing costs, workers in insecure jobs, the unemployed barely able to survive, Maori communities still battling the legacies of land theft, young people, especially, facing the damaging consequences of climate change. 

These are constituencies that do not see themselves in Labour’s cautious centrism or National’s free market fundamentalism. The Greens occupy part of that space, but, despite Chloe Swarbrick's best efforts, it looks that they may be forced to operate within coalition constraints that blunts the Green's radical edge. We can well imagine Labour throwing the Green's a few policy 'lollipops' in order to appease the left, but the Green Party will still end up being the electoral ally of a fundamentally right-wing Labour Party.

What’s missing, and it's been missing for years, is a political party that can fuse climate justice, economic democracy, and social equality into a coherent electoral force — unapologetically socialist and grassroots-led. 

The British experience underlines that new left parties can emerge rapidly in moments of political disillusionment when they ground themselves in movements rather than parliamentary careers. Unfortunately, there is no drive for such a political party in New Zealand. We're expected to believe, again, the claims of Labour supporters that the next Labour Government will be different, and it won't be a defender of the political and economic status quo. But we know that isn't true.

Labour is not coming back as a progressive political party. It has made its peace with a system that promotes the interests of capital at the expense of the working class. Those who cling to the hope that it can somehow be resurrected as a progressive vehicle are clinging to an illusion.