Leading National to the Left?

It is a testimony to the success of Labour’s time in government so far that National’s new leadership duo have started their leadership by following in Labour’s footsteps.

An endorsement of Nuclear Free.

A focus on the environment and concern for climate change. 

A new respect for Maoridom.

A ditching of Don Brash a much of what he stood for. 

These are strides – rhetorical, yes, but strides all the same – towards the centre left of politics. So I have no concerns about calling this change precisely what it is: a strategic victory for Labour and for social democratic politics.

As I spend so much bandwidth saying last year, a Don Brash-led National government would have been an intolerably damaging one, for New Zealand’s economy and its society. Now Brash has been shown the door, the danger for the country’s future is lessened.

Not eliminated - nobody who witnessed 1990 can be confident of anything the National Party says - but lessened.

We can, hopefully, now begin to turn our attention to a more normal kind of politics. Key/English will proclaim their youth and freshness; Clark and Cullen will proclaim their experience and vigour.

What matters most, and what will mainly determine the outcome of that leadership contest when it arrives at the polls, is the capacity of the major parties to build coalitions of support around the policy agendas they seek to implement, after 2008.

The challenge for Labour is simple. The government’s activities in the past seven years have seen the building of a solid foundation for future change. Coming into the next election, Labour has to build on and go far beyond what has been achieved so far. The siren calls of conservatism and gradualism are not ones that hold any attraction for a Labour party and government which has nowhere near fulfilled the promise of our politics and vision for the country’s future.

Terraine-wise, the agenda is already there. Housing affordability and quality. Wages and household incomes. Health service quality and accessibility. New Zealand’s independent foreign policy. Education from early childhood to industry training. A criminal justice system that does its job. Dealing with climate change in a manner that develops our future economic prospects.

National’s task is harder. Whatever it does to come onto Labour’s ground further than the positioning so far, will leave it with activists and funders who will grow steadily more alarmed at the diversion from the neoliberal dream that such shifts represent. National’s trying to be on the move to a liberal conservative party once more, and that will not please many of its biggest backers. As I noted in my previous post, underneath the rhetoric there's still the same old National Party -- unless or until we see evidence to the contrary (and may that day be far away!).

So it has to manage that gap, while also trying to undermine confidence in Labour’s leadership team and at the same time promoting sensible policies that are truly in the interests of the whole country.

It’ll be interesting indeed to see how that works out for them. A new, fresh National leader has been anointed by the media once before. His name was Bill English. Look what happened to him, and you see a lesson for Key.

Key won’t repeat the English mistake, of underestimating Helen Clark. That does not mean he has it in him to beat her, though. Helen Clark’s enduring vision and competence are the single biggest roadblock to a National election victory, regardless of who that party’s leader is. They know it, thus the horrendous attacks of recent years.

Key will try the softly softly line. “You were the future, once” was Cameron’s most cutting remark to Tony Blair. His essential response was “Yeah, I was a cad once, and I have learned.” Key will try to present the Labour team as behind the game and not addressing the country’s future but rather its past.

Given the failure of National’s previous strategy, this is the only one Key has to hand. I don’t think it will work, but it is the right one to try. The old aphorism that governments lose elections still holds true. Helen Clark said so in her speech to the Labour conference last month (as if we needed reminding).

Strategic victories – knocking out National’s hardest right – often leave the tactical situation trickier, especially in politics. I think Labour should relish the chance to fight a positive campaign in 2008 based on taking the country forward, in line with Kiwi values, against a National Party whose heart is not really in the moderate line they have started to peddle. Lots of water to go under the bridge, but that is where it lies from the perspective of a couple weeks offshore.

And now to read Hager’s book...

Comments

[tim barclay]

You job will be much more difficult. More vigor from Clark and Cullen?? Clark/Cullen seem to find it impossible to put together a workable public policy on anything. Take the stadium - what a process that was. But there is much else to criticise. Clark and Cullen are clever politicans but 25 years on the public tit has taought them how to scrub up for the 24 hour news-cycle and not much else.

[Aj]

Key has a lot of work ahead of him to prove he is not a one-trick pony. So far he's the great flip-flopper. "I wasn't the environment spokesman so I could not voice my opinions on climate change" [and when he did voice opinions he agreed with the deniers]
But I am confident he will be lesson in how far a few slogans and and pleasant looks will take a leader.

[tim barclay]

Aj it is a formula Labour Parties have employed with great political success in the State Governments in Australia and of course Tony Blair. And he has not put a foot wrong so far. A very different politician to Don Brash don't you think. Much much much more skillful.

[Peter McK]

I have enormous respect for Dr Don Brash - yet he had his faults - mostly being too honest - he tried to explain things too much - but he brought National from 27 MPs to 48 (are those numbers correct). Compare to Clark who is an expert liar and gets away with it because she is an expert at carefully crafted answers.

But Don had many victories over Labour and led and controlled the debate (in a somewhat clumsy manner) for the past three years on issues he wanted to put forward – and the country wanted debated. And when Labour were threatened by those policies - no matter that they had to hold their nose - they did u-turns and adopted them.

Examples are many but I include the Maori and the Treaty, tax, surpluses, and the big one - Labours $800,000 election fraud and corruption. - and with support from very competent national party members such as Key, English, Ryall, Power, Rich, Collins, among others, Labour have also been on the back foot on health, corrections, education and most other portfolios. National are somewhere between 13% and 6% ahead in the polls. Don’t forget that Jordan Brash as much as you have been obsessed with him has made National a power to be reckoned with and sometimes at night I can hear the screams from the Beehive over where I live in Wellington. Dr Don has bowed out with grace and that is what I would expect from him. He leaves the party up in the polls, in excellent spirit, and confident of winning the next election.

The National party leadership was sorted by Lunchtime - no doubt to the horror of Labour, the leader and deputy leader were anointed (Labour wanted a three week shit fight no so are disappointed) the whole National caucus is behind the formidable leader and deputy. The look good and have wooed the media for a week. Hagers book of stolen emails off the parliamentary server by a labour party stooge is no yesterdays fish and chip paper – (that story is yet to break but I think labour are going to be very embarrassed when the truth of what happened hits MSM)

Labour's attempt to build themselves a monument on the Auckland waterfront has been an unmitigated disaster. They have scandals and corruption in the form of panty-boy and field still to deal with. The election is about 21 months away.

Columnists in the main papers are taking about the Key/ English team only in the most glowing way.

Labour are in their third term and looking tired and past it.

Labour are way behind in the polls and it is now only going to get worse. Key / English will grab a substantial number of voters who would not support National so long as Brash was the leader (but when you are 47% then that may not be a huge issue). Yes National may bleed a few voters to Act (like me) - but they will be more than compensated by the voters they will pick up from Labour.

To me as a blue team supporter it is all looking very good. Cullen will make snide comments about Keys wealth, but the country will remember he is a boy from a state house - Cullen thinks he is a traitor for that - but it will not do Cullen any favours to be nasty about the very likeable John Key - It will simply show Cullen up for the nasty piece of work he really is, and turn more people off Labour than ever before as their desperation becomes self destructive.

I am going to enjoy the next few years watching Labour squirm and then in 2008 get dumped down the sewer where they will wallow for a very long time.

Thanks by the way to be able to make a long post on your blog. I started typing and then it was this long. The freedom to do so is important and I do appreciate it.

[James Patterson]

Similarly to you, I think that the National Party's new found 'centrism' is just a cynical electoral ploy.

James Patterson
http://social-democratic-voice.blogspot.com/

[libertyscott]

"liberal conservative party once more" that makes absolutely no sense.

However, with MMP all this means is that National will shed votes to ACT (which will grow) while it attracts votes from Labour. I wouldn't call it a cynical electoral ploy, it is no more that than when Labour carefully groomed itself for 1999 by helping to get Anderton to shut down some of the shrillest leftwing voices from the Alliance. There is a lot of room to move in the centre, but Labour and National always straddle the boundaries (and need to, because their core supporters are out there not near the middle) - the key is how broad the appeal. Labour moved away from Maori voters last time (Foreshore and Seabed), costing them some, but calculated to appeal to working class non-Maori voters (and knowing the Maori Party would never go with Brash led National).

The game has changed now, National knows it can always rely on ACT so has shed that vote once more, and is now courting the middle ground to at least avoid the Greens and Maori Party supporting Labour. The Maori Party may be easier for the Nats to buy off than the Greens (who are instinctively socialist with a green badge). All Labour can do is move into National's ground with tax cuts, it has nothing else to offer that isn't about cannibalising the Green/Maori vote, and cannibalising the Green vote could prove fatal to the Greens.

[tim barclay]

Everything is in the mix now. There are a lot of small business people who are Green supporters. I am surprised how many they are. That is good territory for National to cannabalise. And of course women voters will be strongly attracted to Key and English. This myth that women voters only vote for women is rubbish. In any case Labour is still run by a boys club - no women look like taking one major portfolio in that party if ever - with the exception of maryanne street - which women would vote for her. So Labour have problems and the gay/union official/school teacher mix the party has does not look like a long term Government to me compared with National.

[Rob Davies]

It's a bit hard for Labour to continually renew itself in government. Continuity and stability (critical elements for any successful government) and renewal are mutually exclusive most of the time, so calls from Tories expecting rejuvination and accusing Labour of becoming 'stale' are a little hollow.

Clark hasn't become an 'expert liar' at all. That's an invention of right-wing idle minds. Throwing terms like 'corruption' about your cot is meaningless, particularly in light of New Zealand's recent ascent to the top of Transparency International's anti-corruption index.

Key and English's golden period will come to an end soon as policy differences between the recently enlarged Tory caucus come to the fore. It's really only a matter of time...

[toms]

The problem for National is that a good 10-15% of their support is very soft. The only way they can poll is down. The core National vote is about 4% less than Labour's, causing all sorts of coalition formation problems for any National leader. After all, a government of, say, UF, NZF, ACT and National where National has 2-4 or so seats less than Labour would be difficult in the extreme. And don't fool yourself that the MP would ever back a National government - one look at where Maori voters put their party vote option should tell Tariana that backing National in any way would be suicide.

All Labour has to do is ensure its core vote of around 38-42% is rock solid. Policy formation should be towards ensuring this outcome. With the advent of Key, the right vote will again splinter. Expect anything up to 12% of the right vote to "waste" or on parties that don't make the threshold or to simply not vote.

[sagenz]

Peter McK - more details please. by email if necessary. I had concluded that the emails could not have come from a recipient as there were too many permutations. Therefore they must have been taken by someone within the iS community with wide system access that worked around the standard user security. someone smart enough to nick Dr Brash emails from a mail server would be smart enough to drop that information onto a portable hard drive in a difficult to trace way. take a copy of a backup and delete the log. that is where a security review should go. the security review of Dr Brash laptop is just arse covering red herring. either that or someone hacked his wireless network and synchronised his email archive.

But it is reasonably obvious whoever nicked it was a labour supporter and when the truth outs they are going to look mighty bad.

[Oliver]

Jordan,

This is not the strategic victory you think. National have won the most strategic voctories recently. Mike Moore outlined a few of them in the NZ Herald the other day but they're pretty clear to see. Whenever NAtional got traction Labour u-turned: on the fart tax, on the carbon tax, needs before race, more cops.

National started to focus on climate change before Labour. Labour's record on this issue has been abismal. During Labour's time in office to date NZ's emissions have grown faster then the US's and Australia's and coal has come to generate a greater percentage of our energy as the government's policies have blocked developments in hydro and geothermal generation. The Bluegreen discussion documents predate Helen's speeches on the issue.

Despite all your fussing and attempts to distract people away from the debates that were more important in terms of day to day lives the National Party Policy towards nuclear ships was clear at the 2005 election: no change without a referendum.

Whenever a society tries to function with key concerns being declared too sacred to debate it runs into trouble, that is what Brash blew open. Labour's handling of the treaty process and putting race before needs was causing a level of resentment to simmer and there was no manner for this to be acknowledged or debated. Society is always better off when everything is allowed to be debated.

[Nicholas O'Kane]

Lets take a look at some facts here.
"An endorsement of Nuclear Free." This happened in 1990, not now. National spent 9 years in government during the 1990s with no changes to the nuclear free policy. Even if National had won the last election. and held a referenda on this issue (which they weren't planning to do so) it is likely the nuclear free side would have won. The idea the nuclear free policy was under thereat was just scare tactics, unless you genuinely believe most New Zealanders don't like being nuclear free.
"A focus on the environment and concern for climate change." Your right about this one.
"A new respect for Maoridom." Possibly, the rheotic indicates this. Again with the climate change it is when actual policy is released that we can see for sure.
"a Don Brash-led National government would have been an intolerably damaging one, for New Zealand’s economy and its society." So tax cuts out of government surpluses and one law for all would have intolerably damaged New Zealands economy and society.
To your credit Jordan at least you say a few positive things about National.

[ROTFLMFAO]

"yet he had his faults - mostly being too honest"

that should keep a smile on my face for the weekend...

[Kent Parker]

Brash sneaked into National leadership by one vote, Key's vote by all accounts, apparently, so he lead a fractured team. His survival since the election has largely been due to the friction between the opposing Key-English factions and the unresolved issue of his succession. For a year he has been largely redundant and so, too the policies that he represented.

If, like me, you see the likes of Bill English and his team being the part of the natural political succession, then Brash becomes some kind of an interloper who was embedded, with the help of wads of cash, into a failure torn National party that was weak and vulnerable. Now that National has returned to strength the natural succession is back and politics is back to 'normal'.

[Oliver]

Nicholas O'Kane,

Were you in Averill House from '96-'98?

[tim barclay]

I think politics is back to normal. Labour only become government when there is a problem in the National Party.

[TIC]

National will win because as time goes on, Labour's unregurgitated socialist agenda becomes more and more obvious, more and more ugly.

This Labour government is the most anti business anti freedom government we have seen for 20 years in this country.

[Razorlight]

It may well be "Welcome back ACT". With National's obvious leap back to the centre there is between 5 and 10 % of the electorate who will not be happy. Big Business, small government, ending race based policies etc. Act must be happy at this moment.

I believe any votes National lose to ACT will be compensated by centre voters who were scared of Brash's agenda.

ACT may need a more charismatic leader but I can see NAtional ACT picking up 45% of the vote in 08...probably enough to get home.

[GeniusNZ]

I don’t think the brash agenda was all that scary to centre voters. After all they flooded towards him after ignoring the very un-scary bill English.
Key factors were
1) Low unemployment (leads to contentment)
2) Targeted election bribes (e.g. WFF)
3) National seemed to have no policies
4) Pledge card (pledge cards are excellent tools)
5) As toms said labour genuinely has a bigger set of core voters - and worse yet those voters are not fringe voters.

I'm predicting not enough of these variables will change by next election.
Key will be vulnerable to national's no policy strategy because he gives the impression he is a guy who might screw you. But at the same time not enough of that sort of impression for you to be comfortable with it (he is the rat as opposed to the snake in the 'survivor' lexicon and rats are easier to hate).

I don’t think key can change enough in the party to win and to move the debate away from the grounds on which he is vulnerable (maybe he will surprise me, but I'm seldom surprised by people).

low unemployment, Hollow, rat, no policy, election bribes and the demise of middle parties... = labour victory

However that does rest on the assumption that labour will take full advantage of the weaknesses. I think their attitude to the pledge card scandal showed they too can make huge strategy errors. AND it requires the economy to stay in reasonable shape.

[Insolent Prick]

I think John Key has some very real challenges ahead, particularly around reducing the massive waste in the public sector, providing a rational tax reduction framework funded by the enormous surpluses, and starting an honest debate--which Labour has resiled from--about what services the government can reasonably provide over the next fifty years.

Labour's biggest failure in government has been to suppress voters' personal aspirations for success. Working for families is an utter disaster. It was a last-minute election bribe of a scale that beats Muldoon on a bad day. When middle-class taxpayers are effectively paying 80 cents marginal tax on every additional dollar they earn, of course they aren't going to be more productive. Labour used this bribe to sacrifice productivity improvement over the next ten years. The original welfare state was designed to assist those who could not help themselves. Working for families prevents vast tracts of New Zealand from helping themselves.

Key has the guts to confront these issues. Labour doesn't have the balls to admit that they've created them, let alone come up with solutions.

[Mark]

And Labour lurches to the right yesterday with Union bashing.

http://www.stuff.co.nz/stuff/0,2106,3888426a11,00.html

[kiwi_donkey]

Labour are going to find it very hard to campaign on kiwi values with Philip Field and David Benson Pope sitting there.