UK weekly election round up

It was a less-than-inspiring week in Britain’s general election campaign, with highlights (perhaps lowlights) including:

• a formulaic leaders debate between PM Rishi Sunak and challenger Keir Starmer, enlivened only by Sunak repeatedly accusing Starmer of plotting a huge tax rise, and Starmer taking an age (in political terms) to repudiate;
• Sunak’s dodging out early from D-Day commemorations to give a political interview.  Bad enough as a blunder, but it’s suggested that he or his team might actually have thought this was a good idea; and  
• debate over the possibility of the newish Reform party displacing the Conservative party on the right of the political spectrum (see here for example).

This last would certainly be significant.

Modern elections are supposed to be choreographed and disciplined – but not in Britain

British PM Rishi Sunak seems to have surprised everyone with last week’s announcement of a snap poll.  Perhaps even himself, to judge by his surprisingly upbeat mood.

Labour leader Keir Starmer’s troubles have probably cheered him up a bit, with the spotlight coming onto Starmer’s efforts to purge some of Labour’s harder-left MPs.  He will also be hoping more voters twig to the mathematical implausibility of the Labour party’s plans to deliver net-zero targets and also save consumers £93 billion (the magic ingredient is more state ownership – who would have thought of that?). 

But Rishi has also had his moments.  

Earning The Huia Feather.

Māori land remains in the hands of Non-Māori. The broken promises of the Treaty remain broken. The mana of the tangata whenua languishes under racist neglect. The right to wear the huia feather remains as elusive as ever. Perhaps these three transformations are beyond the power of a Pakeha Labour leader to accomplish?

• Chris Trotter writes –

THE NEW ZEALAND LABOUR PARTY is 108 years old. By a wide margin, that makes it this country’s longest-lived political party. In all those 108 years, however, Labour has never given itself anything other than Pakeha leadership.

In spite of its claim to be the historical custodians of New Zealand’s progressive traditions, on the question of race Labour has allowed itself to be outstripped by all the other political parties currently represented in Parliament.

UK election a foregone conclusion? That’s why it’s interesting

With a crushing 20-plus point lead in the opinion polls, all the signs are that Labour leader Keir Starmer will be the PM after the general election on 4 July, called by Conservative incumbent Rishi Sunak yesterday.

The stars are aligned for Starmer.  Rival progressives are in abeyance: the Liberal-Democrat party has lost the all-things-to-all-people shine that its name implies, while the Scottish Nationalists have coalesced into a residue of bitter personal opportunism.

He has only one problem.  The Conservatives have thoroughly tested his policies.  And they’re not working too well.

Leading Labour Off The Big Rock Candy Mountain.

Only Willie Jackson possesses the credentials to meld together a new Labour message that is, at one and the same moment, staunchly working-class, union-friendly, and which speaks to the hundreds-of-thousands of urban Māori untethered to the neo-tribal capitalist elites of the Iwi Leaders Forum.

• Chris Trotter writes – 

IT’S ONE OF THE LEFT’S favourite games. (And, quite possibly, one of the Right’s as well.) Imagining Aotearoa-New Zealand in “x” number of years.

Over the weekend (18-19/5/24) Labour’s leader, Chris Hipkins, opted for Aotearoa-New Zealand 2040 – the bi-centenary of the signing of the Treaty of Waitangi. In a lengthy speech, he described for the delegates to Labour’s Auckland Regional Conference a world in which all of their party’s policies have been brought to fruition. It’s an Aotearoa-New Zealand in which Labour’s political opponents have seen the error of their ways, and nobody is indelicate enough to offer the slightest objection to Labour’s plans.

Could Willie Jackson be the populist leader that Labour need?

• Bryce Edwards writes – 

Willie Jackson will participate in the prestigious Oxford Union debate on Thursday, following in David Lange’s footsteps. Coincidentally, Jackson has also followed Lange’s footsteps by living in his old home in South Auckland. And like Lange, Jackson might be the sort of loud-mouth scrapper who could take over the Labour leadership to defeat a national government.

The idea of Willie Jackson as leader of the Labour Party might seem far-fetched. After all, the former Alliance MP is probably the most leftwing in Labour’s caucus and often still comes across as the shock-jock talkback radio host and union leader he used to be. He’s bellicose and mongrel in his style, reflecting that he’s the only Labour MP without a university degree.

CHRIS TROTTER: The Hollow Party

Over the last year, the Labour Party has been shown to be intellectually and morally hollow

• Chris Trotter writes – 

Labour’s great good fortune, as New Zealand emerged from the worst of the neoliberal revolution, was to possess Helen Clark. It was Clark who engineered the installation of Mike Moore to “save the furniture” as Labour’s popularity plummeted in 1990. And, it was Clark who made sure that, when Moore failed (albeit narrowly) to win the 1993 general election, she would be the one to replace him.

Labour thus acquired a highly intelligent, politically savvy leader, steeped in the Labour tradition, but also fully acclimatised to the new ideological climate. She would remain Labour’s leader for the next 15 years – beating Harry Holland’s daunting tenure by one year!

CHRIS TROTTER: Nothing Left without Labour

There’s no point looking for red-hot chilli-peppers in a paddock planted with potatoes.

• Chris Trotter writes –

Editor of “The Daily Blog”, Martyn Bradbury, has posted his thoughts on how the Left might best rebuild its strength. As one of the very few media personalities capable of organising a live political exchange between genuine ideological opponents that does not immediately degenerate into a pointless shouting match, Bradbury’s thoughts on this subject merit serious consideration.

Having read his post, however, it is difficult to escape the conclusion that the sheer scale of the Left’s problems has decisively defeated Bradbury’s analytical powers.

ANANISH CHAUDHURI: Labour stuffed up; that’s why they lost – deal with it

• Ananish Chaudhuri writes – 

With power about to change hands, I see more and more commentary about how this election was somehow unfair. There was Rob Campbell, Chancellor of AUT, pontificating in the Herald that this election was “bought”. Then more recently David Williams of Newsroom weighed in about the influence of the Taxpayers’ Union and its anonymous donors.

The list is long. I find it bizarre that people who continually denigrate Donald Trump for his false claim about the stolen election (and Trump is lying, even he knows it and three of his lawyers have admitted this in pleading guilty in Georgia) are perfectly happy to claim that the election was stolen when their side loses.

CHRIS TROTTER: Losing the Working Class

• Chris Trotter writes – 

I ALWAYS WONDERED what it would take to detach the New Zealand working class from Labour. Not all of the working-class, obviously, but enough to strip the party of the demographic heft that, for more than a century, has made it a decisive electoral player. Now I know, but it took a fair few wrong guesses before I got there.

On paper, it should have been Rogernomics. After such a comprehensive betrayal of Labour’s working-class base it seemed impossible that all but the most mindless loyalists would continue to vote for the party. It was the conviction that underpinned Jim Anderton’s creation of the NewLabour Party – give the ordinary working-class voter an honest social-democratic party to vote for and Labour’s electoral base would shift en masse..