Christopher Luxon has been criticised for constantly pointing out that the election is not about him, or about Chris Hipkins. This criticism came from the wonderful Tova OBrien, who was roundly rebuffed for her efforts by Chris Penk. In an amusing tweet, Penk pointed out that Tova was in no position to criticise anyone, as she had been such a poor breakfast radio host that she crashed a whole radio station.
Bruising, but true. She was employed to take the breakfast slot away from Mike Hosking. How did that work out, Tova?
Tova, of course, is an out-of-the-closet leftie and former confidante of Jacinda Ardern. My most piercing memory of her was when she was the political correspondent for TV3, and she would jump up and down on the spot in rapturous delight if National dropped even half a per cent in the polls. An unbiased political adviser she was not.
Well Tova, I agree with Luxon on this one. He is right. General elections in the Westminster system are not presidential campaigns. We vote for a party and its policies, not a particular individual and, in spite of some weak protestations to the contrary, you seem to have forgotten that.
Think about that. When discussing politics with friends or associates, you are most unlikely to say, “I am voting for Hipkins”, unless you reside in the Rimutaka electorate. Instead, you will say that you are voting Labour. We identify the party we support, rather than the leader of that party, whoever it may be.
Our next prime minister will not be the Commander-in-Chief of the armed forces. That honour belongs to King Charles III and his representative in New Zealand, the Governor-General. Our general election does not include a special vote for our favoured prime minister. We vote for a party, not an individual.
But the problem is that, since the late 1990s, there has been a world trend of electing ‘populist’ prime ministers, treating the PM almost as if he were a president himself. The first one to come to mind was Tony Blair – a slick public speaker who captured the imagination of a whole country…and left in disgrace some years later. He was followed in later years by Kevin Rudd, Justin Trudeau, and Emmanuelle Macron…most of them left-wing politicians who brought havoc to their respective countries once elected. We had our own ‘rock star’ politician, of course, in John Key, who was definitely populist, but not a left winger, and who left the country, at least financially, in a better state than he had found it.
The exception to this, of course, was Jacinda Ardern. Yes, she was certainly a populist prime minister…but she wasn’t elected by the people. Such are the pitfalls of a proportionally representative political system; you don’t always get the government you voted for.
And Jacinda was another populist prime minister to leave in disgrace. And I predict that Trudeau and Macron will not be far behind her.
I know that a lot of our readers are not particularly fond of Christopher Luxon; and yet, it is most likely that these same readers will cast their vote to make Luxon prime minister. In our political system, there is nothing very odd about that. Very few of our readers are likely to vote for a party on the left. Some will vote for NZ First, of course, but Winston has said he will not go into coalition with Labour, so most will be hoping that Winston will support a National-led Government, which means that a vote for Winston will still most likely result in Luxon being our next prime minister.
For the record, I am comfortable with that. I am not a huge fan of Luxon, but my mission is to get rid of the current government, by hook or by crook. We may lament the fact that Luxon personally, and National in general, have moved further to the left than we would like, but the corollary of this is that more younger voters have moved towards National – and that is one of the factors that is pushing the right-wing parties towards an election win in October.
Interestingly though, New Zealand is following a worldwide trend of voters shifting away from left-wing parties. While many people on the left of the political divide believe that socialist parties do more for the downtrodden in society, we have seen recently that this is no longer true.
Donald Trump was elected POTUS because he heard the voices of swathes of disenfranchised Americans, many of whom must have previously voted for Obama, but by 2016, felt as if they had been forgotten. Italy now has a centre-right government, with illegal immigration being a major issue in their country. And it looks as if we are heading that way too, with the trend of the polls showing a victory for the centre-right in October.
Hillary Clinton’s ‘deplorables’ comment showed how out of touch the Democrats were with the average American, but many left-wing parties these days are more elitist than those on the right, treating those at the lower end of society with disdain and contempt.
Truth is, the left-wing parties have taken things too far. In the Netherlands, the government was trying to force farmers, a major contributor to their economy, off the land, risking all in favour of ‘climate change’. Our current government is trying to go down the same path, which will beggar our economy, and give the government control over the food supply, which is, of course, what they want. No longer the parties of the working man, left-wing parties these days would make Lenin proud. Some are more equal than others indeed.
Luxon may not be a particularly inspiring politician, but he will make a much better prime minister than anyone on the left in this country. Our problems will take years to fix, but hopefully, the next government will make a start. It doesn’t matter that he is not particularly inspiring; personally, I prefer boring politicians. After what we have seen around the world in the last couple of decades, maybe a few less stellar politicians will do us all a favour.
Changing the government at this election is crucial. And it is not about Luxon at all.
