'FOR ALL OF US': AN ELECTION SLOGAN DRAINED OF POLITICAL CONTENT

The Green Party has kicked class politics to the kerb. It wants to be the party of 'all of us'.  It is a slogan that means nothing because it is designed to offend no one. And it is a slogan that reflects a party unwilling to commit to the kind of politics—class politics, ecosocialist politics—that the moment demands.


THE GREEN PARTY'S  2026 election slogan, 'For All of Us,' has been described by one commentator as a deliberate echo of Jeremy Corbyn’s 'For the Many, Not the Few.' But the comparison collapses under even minimal scrutiny. Corbyn’s slogan emerged from a party openly campaigning on a socialist manifesto—one that named class power, confronted Britain’s corporate elite, and sought to materially improve the lives of workers. It was a slogan anchored in conflict: between labour and capital, between the wealthy few and the exploited majority. It meant something because it pointed to someone. It drew a line.

The Greens’ version does not. 'For All of Us' is a slogan drained of political content, a kind of moral wallpaper pasted over a party that has chosen, once again, to avoid the hard questions of class, power, and economic transformation. It gestures vaguely toward unity while refusing to name the forces that have fractured the country. It claims universality while sidestepping the reality that New Zealand’s wealth is concentrated in the hands of roughly 120 families who own close to 40 percent of the economy. Are they included in 'all of us'? Are the landlords, the property speculators, the corporate boards, the banks, the private equity firms—all of whom have benefited from decades of bipartisan wealth funnelling—part of this imagined collective? If so, then the slogan is not merely empty; it is dishonest.

This is the contradiction at the heart of the Greens’ campaign. Despite Chloe Swarbrick’s often sharp critiques of capitalism and neoliberalism, the party she co-leads is not a socialist party, nor does it behave like one. It does not centre working-class interests. It does not organise around class power. It does not challenge the economic architecture that has produced mass poverty, obscene wealth concentration, and a housing crisis that has become a generational catastrophe. Instead, it has settled into its familiar comfortable niche: progressive branding, climate rhetoric, and a politics that remains safely compatible with Labour’s managerialism.

The slogan reflects that choice. It is as class-free as Labour’s own vacuous 'Let’s Do This,' a phrase that promised transformation and delivered almost nothing. And the Greens seem determined to repeat the pattern. In the introduction to their newly released manifesto, they boast that their last stint in government produced more climate action than the previous three decades combined, secured record funding for biodiversity, and delivered the first national plan to eliminate family and sexual violence. These achievements are not only questionable, they are also not structural. They do not alter the distribution of power. They do not challenge the economic system that is driving us to ecological collapse. They are, in the end, managerial accomplishments, but not transformative.

The deeper problem is Labour itself. The party the Greens continue to treat as their natural governing partner has shown no interest in structural change. Its recent history is defined by managerialism, not movement-building; by incrementalism, not ambition. Labour has repeatedly refused to confront corporate power, wealth concentration, or the political economy behind the housing crisis. It has treated climate action as a branding exercise rather than a mandate for systemic overhaul. It has governed as though the status quo is the ceiling of political possibility. The result is a country where inequality has deepened, public services have deteriorated, and the political imagination has shrunk.

For the Greens to signal alignment with this project—especially now, when voters are actively searching for alternatives—erases the very distinctions that once made the party relevant. It suggests a party more interested in ministerial portfolios than in building a movement. Indeed in the introduction to its manifesto, the Greens state: 'A party vote for the Green Party puts more Green MPs and Ministers around the decision-making table.' And some fat ministerial salaries for its co-leaders and, maybe, one or two Green MPs.

All this suggests a party that has made peace with neoliberalism, provided it comes with a green veneer. It suggests a party that has decided that class politics are too risky, too confrontational, too unfashionable for the Wellington professional class that dominates its membership.

This is why the slogan matters. Not because slogans win elections, but because they reveal what a party believes it can say without consequence. 'For All of Us' is a slogan that refuses to name the crisis. It refuses to name the enemy. It refuses to name the working class. It refuses to name the wealthy elite who have captured the economy and shaped public policy for decades. It refuses to acknowledge that politics is not a neutral space where everyone’s interests can be harmonised, but a terrain of conflict where some interests must be confronted and defeated.

At a moment when inequality is rising, when climate breakdown is accelerating, when housing has become a mechanism of intergenerational exclusion, and when the political centre has collapsed into managerial drift, the Greens have chosen a slogan that could be used by any party, in any country, at any time. It is a slogan that means nothing because it is designed to offend no one. It is a slogan that reflects a party unwilling to commit to the kind of politics—class politics, ecosocialist politics—that the moment demands.

In the end, 'For All of Us' is not a promise. It is an evasion. And voters will see through it.