Just Left

An economic vision worth fighting for

I am liking the narrative that Labour's key economic spokespeople have been advancing in the past few weeks.

David Parker got it right in a release from last week:

“A zero budget is what you get when you fail. We all know what happened in the aftermath of the last ‘zero budget’ – there were two credit downgrades and a greater than anticipated increase in debt.

“Bill English’s solution to his government’s failure to rebalance the economy away from speculation and into export-led growth is to cross his fingers and hope that the ‘austerity fairy’ will provide.

He is completely right. The winds of change are coming on macroeconomic policy. The Austerity Experiment has failed, but New Zealand's policy is to tighten incredibly fast. It will cost us jobs and growth, and ultimately steal hope from people who need it the most.

I have also been impressed with a speech that economic development spokesperson David Cunliffe gave on the weekend, available here.

Labour MPs need to do a lot more of what Cunliffe does with this speech: articulate what Labour's principles and values are, and be passionate in explaining why that turns out a vision and a plan for a much better country than what we have today.

I'd be delighted if we could get to the point where every Labour MP, candidate and activist was as articulate on this stuff as DC is. The speech is worth a read. Here are some bits that caught my eye:

This is the first of a series of speeches on economic development. I am going to start with the basics – why the invisible hand of the market failed us and why we need a clear and distinct Labour view on economics; why you can’t cut and sell your way out of an economic hole; and what a Labour economic development plan should contain. We need to be clear about the context before we can go on the policy journey.

I want to be clear from the outset that this speech represents my own views and does not pretend to represent overall Labour policy. All policies are being reviewed in the post-election period.

This is a nice way to set out some issues without committing the party to new policy.  We are reflecting and reviewing but we can't do that in a vacuum: it has to be part of a conversation where we chuck ideas and thoughts out, and see what people think of them.

However, by the 1980s, the New Zealand economic system had grown clumsy and slow. Most people agreed that it was in need of reform. That's what most people wanted, economic reform. That is, they wanted the existing system, but they wanted it to function more smoothly, more efficiently and more fairly. They did not want it replaced with a system that simply handed over most of the wealth and power to rich people.

Yet, that’s what happened, and to our eternal shame, the Labour Party was the party that introduced many of the so-called economic reforms that have proved so disastrous.

The National Government that followed it took the experiment further; with the ‘Mother of All Budgets’ that savaged social services, more privatization and deregulation, and the odious Employment Contracts Act that set us on the path of becoming a low wage economy.

This is, to me, a nice summation by a senior Labour MP of why so many of us were uncomfortable with the legacy of the fourth Labour government in economic terms. It's clear, crisp and makes sense.

So how do these rogues [the self-interested neoliberal supporters who mainly gained personally from it, often through the media] get away with it?

The answer is twofold: on one hand, the news media has been a solid supporter of neo-liberalism.

Did you know, for example, that British Labour Prime Minister Tony Blair, regularly lunched with Rupert Murdoch, the far-right media boss? Tony, apparently, used to test which policies would be acceptable to Murdoch.

Thus we have a far-right media boss influencing the policies of what was supposed to be the party of the people. It’s shameful.

The second reason these rogues get away with it is because, as the Tony Blair example shows so clearly, the opposition parties, which are supposed to be the solution, too often become part of the problem.

When the right-wing party says that it’s going to cut your leg off, voters want the left-wing party to say that it’s not going to cut your leg off. Voters don't want to be told that the left-wing party is also going to cut your leg off, but cut it off a bit lower down and give you some anesthetic.

I think that’s a major reason that nearly one million voters deserted us at the last election. It wasn’t because we failed to communicate our policies. Quite the opposite. Those voters saw that our policies – with the exception of asset sales – were mostly the same as National’s. So we can’t really be surprised at the result.

This is interesting and important.  I don't quite agree with David's characterisation of our policies as being largely the same as National's, but I do think that the voters mostly thought so.  Some of our most important policy initiatives last term were out too late to get through to voters, or were poorly communicated (or both). The perception of similarity was clear - I got as all other candidates got, the word that "you guys are all the same".

Fact is we aren't, but the perception people have is what shapes their votes.

So then David focuses on his Economic Development stuff in how to proceed:

So where to from here? Let’s be absolutely clear – New Zealand cannot cut and sell its way to National’s so-called “brighter future”.

New Zealand cannot simply milk more cows and hope that commodity prices stay up.

Nor can we pretend that mining national parks won’t destroy our precious global brand.

National has no new ideas and no credible plan. It has laundry lists of actions, many of which take us in the wrong direction.

The reason is that they still fundamentally believe that some combination of the “invisible hand” of free markets, and the “sleight of hand’ of dirty deals with casinos, dotcoms, film and media magnates, and telcos, will do the job.

The good news, if you can call it good news, is that the economic myths that drove the world into this current mess are starting to unravel.

He is right. The debate is turning towards growth and away from austerity. Doing more of what led us into the crisis and what is keeping growth and jobs down is not the solution.

He ends the speech with a sound reassertion that Labour's agenda to make the economy fairer and more productive is one that is in the interests of almost all New Zealanders, and that we can make the changes if we have a well-organised progressive Labour party at the core of the next government.

Some of the details won't be agreeable to all, but the political purpose of the speech is well conceived and well executed: reminding people of our purpose as a party and who we are here for.

Let's see more of this, from David Cunliffe, David Parker, David Shearer, the whole front bench, the whole caucus and beyond.  We aren't going to get people across our values unless we actually talk about them, and apply them to the things that really worry people.

 

Learning from the Greens

Green politics is coming of age, and the NZ story is a part of that.

Post-industrial electorates with a high degree of material prosperity and security are experimenting with the idea that the environment might, sometimes, be more important than the insatiable desires of humanity.

With the rise of a wide range of environmental concerns, and a still-broad attachment to progressive values of fairness and justice, there is space in politics for a party focused on Green - and green - issues.

The New Zealand Greens have been a prime example of a party taking the opportunity presented by these changed circumstances and making a success of exploiting it. What lesson does their success present for Labour?

First the project. From my outsider point of view, it looks like the Greens made a conscious decision in the middle of the 2000s to do some things differently. In particular, they:

• consciously decided to become a bigger party, by expanding the range of people they sought support from.
• moderated their policy ask, to make it accessible for more voters.
• changed their message and branding, to be less scary to their opponents and more open to potential supporters.
• completely renewed their caucus and leadership over a few elections, such that in 2012 there are no overlaps with the caucus of 1999-2002.
• developed and maintained a slick and effective political operation at parliament and in the country, to let them implement the changes well.

Most important, seems to me, is the lesson about a project. The Greens knew their politics could not attract more voters, so they changed their look and their substance. That has succeeded. Their high vote in 2011 was not just caused by Labour weakness: it was in part (and probably mostly) a result of Green strength.

(I won't canvass the longer term risks to the Greens of that, it isn't relevant to the main argument of this post.)

So what lesson does this provide for Labour?

There are the easy ones about getting branding and communications right, and running an effective political operation. We know we have to do this, and progress is being made.

The bigger and harder lesson in my view is about the project.

Labour has to renew its governing project to win more support and change (build a new) New Zealand. It needs to do this because New Zealand has changed since our Labour project was last re-tooled, which was in the mid 1990s.

The specific area for change is the environment.

Labour has adjusted well to the growing diversity of New Zealand society. Our party structures acknowledge and respect that diversity of identity and occupation, making us potentially the most open and inclusive party for the huge variety of people who are New Zealanders today.

But that structure is not matched by our political practice.

Too many Kiwis don't think Labour is the party for them.

Too often, people think we are interested in or obsessed with the concerns of 'fringe' groups, and that as a result we aren't interested in 'the mainstream'.

That has to change.

The foundation of that change is us saying, admitting, that we recognize that people sometimes feel like that about us.

But that isn't enough — not at all enough.

We have to turn our focus onto our values. Labour values are widely shared across New Zealand society. Our problems come when people think we don't stand up for them, and don't live up to them.

So they have to be front and centre. Only when they are, only we proudly and honestly state them and how they apply to New Zealand today, can we build a broader base of support.

But that isn't enough either.

New Zealand society hasn't only become more diverse.

Over the past thirty years, our economic debate in this country had become a weird alien disaster zone. Deep frozen in extreme financial globalization, if you want a partly up front label. The consequences have been low growth, low productivity, indifferent jobs, and rampant inequality.

But that's not all either. In the past 30 years, concern about the environment has exploded. No rational person now thinks the environment doesn't matter. The opposite: there is dawning understanding that our society and economy are parts of the environment.

If the environment goes bung, we are all stuffed. In every respect. Economy? Society? All broken, all gone.

Labour's project has gone some way towards addressing the need for a post-neo liberal economic agenda. More work is needed.

It has gone much less far and needs far more work in truly dealing with the challenge of environmental guardianship that all serious governing parties now need to have at their core.

That's the lesson - the challenge - the threat, of the Greens.

If we do not adjust our politics to tackle these challenges, we will be left in the dust of history.

If that happens, we will have nobody to blame but ourselves. The fate of the Liberals shows what happens if we fail. Political parties have to combine values and programme to tackle the real challenges facing their country.

So the lesson is: take note of the real needs of our society.

Needs, not wants: analysis based on New Zealand as it *is*, not as we hope or fear it might be.

Build a programme and a politics based on our Labour values that matches those needs to real change.

Build the party organisation that can deliver the campaigns and ideas and engagement so we can have the chance to do it.

Easy eh? ;-)

Polls move slowly

Following last night's poll on tVNZ, there's only one thing politicos need to remember.

Unless an event has absolutely shocking cut through in a way that surprises and upsets large masses of voters...

One week doesn't change a government's level of support.

Nor does a month.

National would need months of work like this to suffer significantly in the polls.

Easy to forget in the day to day rush.