NEW ZEALAND'S CRISIS OF POLITICAL LEGITIMACY

 

The latest The Post / Freshwater Strategy poll puts Labour on 34 percent support and National on 31 percent. It's yet another poll in a long series of differing polls that indicate that the two main parliamentary parties are each struggling to command the support of a third of the electorate that still votes.  

THE CRISIS of political legitimacy in New Zealand should be impossible to ignore. But the fact that it is a crisis of legitimacy means that the political establishment and its media cheerleaders prefer not to talk about it. 

For decades, the two main parties—Labour and National—have traded places in government, each promising renewal, each delivering more of the same. Yet today, neither can command the support of more than a third of the electorate. Poll after poll shows Labour hovering around 30 percent, National scarcely better, and both bleeding support to minor parties that themselves are constrained by the logic of coalition. This is not a sign of a healthy democracy. It is a symptom of exhaustion. It is the symptom of a political system that has narrowed its horizons to the management of neoliberal orthodoxy while the public faces a cost-of-living crisis, stagnant wages, an under-resourced health and welfare sector, and a housing market that has become a cruel joke.

The obvious fact is that Labour, in opposition, should be surging. The economy is in dire straits: inflation has eroded household budgets, rents and mortgages are crushing, and public services are stretched to breaking point. National, presiding over this mess, ought to be deeply vulnerable. Yet Labour’s lead, if it exists at all, is marginal. 

The reason is simple: voters do not believe Labour offers a genuine alternative. Having governed for six years before being turfed out, Labour’s record is one of timidity, broken promises, and a refusal to confront entrenched wealth and power. Its leadership continues to speak the language of fiscal responsibility and market discipline, as though these were universal truths rather than ideological commitments. And its supporters continue to hold up the centrist politics of former Labour Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern as something the country should aspire to. In doing so, Labour has signalled to the electorate that nothing fundamental will change if it becomes the government in 2026.

The Greens, in theory, should be the left alternative. Co-leader Chloe Swarbrick has spoken often about climate justice, inequality, and the need for systemic change. Yet the Green Party are hamstrung by their own positioning. Everyone knows that the Greens, if they grow their vote, will enter coalition with Labour. Indeed, co-leader Marama Davidson has made that clear.

That knowledge blunts their appeal. A vote for the Greens is not a vote for rupture, but for a slightly greener, slightly more progressive version of Labour’s managerialism. Their radical rhetoric is undermined by the reality of coalition politics, where bold policies are traded away in the name of 'responsible government.' The result is that the Greens cannot break through the ceiling of around 10–12 percent support, no matter how dire the circumstances. (Davidson also did the Green Party no favours by claiming that the Green's time in the Ardern-led Labour Government had been a resounding success).

 
So the electorate is in a state of malaise. The two main parties are locked in a race to the bottom, each incapable of inspiring more than a third of voters. The minor parties nibble at the edges, but none can credibly claim to offer a transformative alternative. The public, sensing this, responds with apathy. Turnout stagnates, enthusiasm wanes, and politics becomes a grim ritual rather than a site of hope. The continuation of neoliberalism—privatisation by stealth, austerity dressed up as prudence, the subordination of public need to private profit—marches on, regardless of which party holds office.

Contrast this with developments in Britain, where a new left party has emerged under the leadership of Zarah Sultana and Jeremy Corbyn. Whatever its internal tensions, the very fact of its existence signals something important: a refusal to accept that politics must be confined to the narrow spectrum of the neoliberal consensus. Sultana has been clear that the new formation must be a socialist party, rooted in the struggles of working people, committed to redistribution, public ownership, and ecological survival. In a new column for Tribune she writes:

'The challenges we face are immense: the far-right on the rise, climate breakdown, collapsing living standards, public services gutted to the bone, a housing system rigged against us, and a government enabling genocide in Palestine. Tinkering at the edges won’t cut it. We need to fundamentally reshape society from the ground up.

'That means building a new kind of party: explicitly socialist, radically democratic, rooted in a mass movement, unashamedly class-based, and on the side of working-class people'

Within days of the announcement of a new left-wing party, hundreds of thousands had signed up, hungry for an alternative to Keir Starmer’s hollowed-out Labour and the reactionary politics of the Conservatives and Reform UK. That level of enthusiasm is telling. It shows that when a credible left alternative is offered, people respond.

New Zealand lacks such a vehicle. The Maori Party has carved out a space, but its focus is on tino rangatiratanga and Indigenous rights, not on building a broad socialist movement. The Greens are trapped in Labour’s orbit. And Labour itself has long since abandoned any pretence of socialism, preferring to manage capitalism more 'kindly' while leaving its structures intact. The result is a vacuum. The anger and frustration of ordinary people—those locked out of housing, those watching their wages stagnate while corporate profits soar—has no adequate political expression. Some drift to New Zealand First, others to ACT, but these are protest votes, not vehicles for transformation.

The tragedy is that the conditions for a breakthrough are present. The economic crisis is real, the disillusionment with the old parties palpable. What is missing is organisation: a party willing to say openly that neoliberalism has failed, that the market cannot deliver justice, that public ownership and democratic control are necessary. A party that refuses to enter coalition with Labour on Labour’s terms, and instead insists on building power from below. Without such a force, the cycle will repeat: National mismanages the economy, Labour promises change, Labour governs timidly, disillusionment sets in, National returns. Meanwhile, inequality deepens, climate targets are missed, and the social fabric frays. And more and more people become disengaged from politics. The number of people who don't vote continues to rise. 

The emergence of a new left party in Britain should be a wake-up call. It demonstrates that the stranglehold of neoliberalism can be broken, that the electorate is not inherently conservative, that people will rally to a banner of socialism if it is raised with conviction. New Zealand’s left must learn this lesson. To continue pinning hopes on Labour or on a Labour-Green coalition is to accept permanent disappointment. To break the cycle requires courage: the courage to build something new, to name the system as the problem, and to fight for a politics that puts people before profit.

Until then, the polls will continue to tell the same story: two main parties, each stuck around 30 percent, each incapable of inspiring the majority. A politics of managed decline, where the only certainty is that neoliberalism endures. The public deserves better. The question is whether anyone will rise to the challenge of offering it.  Unfortunately, with the  general election lithe more than a year away, that doesn't appear likely.