Over the last century, the Labour Party has always amounted to nothing more than a huge con game, but now the game is up. One unfortunate aspect of life, in the sense it’s taken about a century, is elections don’t happen very often and nor do Labour Governments. To make the con game seem ‘real’ Labour introduced a number of unnecessary measures – the welfare state, the public health system, state housing etc. Once the great depression was safely behind us a mixture of foolishness and political cowardice hasn’t abolished these things since.
This opened the door to Labour always having something else up their sleeve. Invariably these were theoretical, impossible-to-disprove, contentions (of the “240,000 hungry children” variety). So whenever we endured a Labour Government the experience was disastrous, but the rabble who remained after 1949/60/75/90/08 were always able to claim they were victims of media bias or world events over which they had no control, or the party was hijacked, or some other vaguely plausible excuse – and “next time we’ll get it right”.
They managed to create a perception that there is a big red button sitting on the Prime Minister’s desk and a combination of nasty Tories and Roger Douglas meant it wasn’t pushed in order to make everything utopian.
By running this line, (something that has been happening since 1950), they were able to remain relevant and stage a comeback. They also were able to come up with leaders – Kirk, Lange, Moore, Clark and Ardern to oppose National Prime Ministers who were not particularly well-liked.
Now, however, the cupboard is bare. Hungry children? (it’s discredited), affordable housing? (discredited), redistribution of wealth? (ditto), “we’re for the workers” (discredited by the cost of living crisis), along with a long list of other things that Labour voters could be conned into thinking through the decades. There is literally nothing left. Nothing whatsoever they could say from 7:01 pm on October 14th onwards that anyone could take seriously, or that Prime Minister Luxon can’t hit for six in ten seconds flat.
Even the vague, undefinable notion of “being Labour” implying the brand – merely by existing – helps people and makes everyone better off is now discredited; shown up for the hollow con game it always was. Mike Moore always trotted this out instead of quitting the Labour Party (“is Mike Moore Labour?”); as if that by definition meant something incredibly virtuous.
There simply won’t be another Labour Government. Luxon, National and ACT need to start thinking in terms of governing New Zealand through into the 2040s rather than “reckon we can fluke three terms?” which is what often happens. By then there may be a centrist, new political party which has emerged; its leader having managed to live down youthful membership of the discredited Labour Party, and perhaps in with a shot.
In Queensland and South Australia, there have been conservative governments which governed for decades; we are about to see the same thing happen here in New Zealand.
