D is for Democracy, Disfunction and Disorder

This post is being written as sort of a preface before I spend most of the coming year pointing out what I see is wrong with politics in New Zealand because it seems only fair that as bad as I may paint things to be here, they are far far worse elsewhere.

Currently two of the oldest and most established democracies in the world, the US and the UK (known from here on in as USUK) are in a bit of a state at the moment, and by “state” I mean the dumpster fire to end all dumpster fires.

In green and fragrant Aotearoa the biggest political bump on the horizon (at least for the chattering classes because child poverty, homelessness, the housing hernia, immigration issues, education and health and labor abuses don’t matter to them) is making sure that our cabinet has the right gender balance because god forbid we don’t have the right ratio of women and men.

In fact, I wouldn’t care if they were all women, if they were all competent, but when perennial incompetents like Clare Curran, and self-justifying bullies like Meka Whaitiri get in some how its clear that Labour is going to let the illusion take precedent over any particular reality.

So yes, they are gone but we still have Kelvin Davis, Phil Twyford and Ian Lees-Galloway despite their “problems” so the issue is that Labour (including Ardern herself) has a shortage of competent MPs/Ministers and is getting by on a combination of luck and half baked, piss poor, policy ideas which have deviated so much from their original intent (that being a re-set to NZs perilous state) to voter appeasing fiascos (like Kiwibuild) which are doing a lot to had an electoral cudgel to National.

But we are not here to take issue with these clowns, and the circus they now run, that will come later.

Right now, it’s time to point out that no matter how bad could be here, they are mucho worse over there. However, what we are seeing over there could very well happen here if we keep on the way we are going because the situation in USUK is just a more advanced symptom of the same disease we have here so its prudent to sound the warning, so to speak, lest we allow ourselves to succumb to the comfortable illusion that everything is alright here while we laugh at what’s happening over there.

And that’s just in whats left of the worlds functioning democracies, let alone what its like in corrupt and totalitarian s**tholes like Zimbabwe and China.

Currently Zimbabwe is experiencing killings in the street by security forces, a social media blackout an already fragile state teetering on the brink (again) of chaos as the new dictatorial government (lead by mass murdering monster “president” Emmerson Managawa* who was responsible for the murder of thousands as the head of Zimbabwe’s secret police) fails to bring the economy into any form of order after decades of mismanagement and corruption.

Meanwhile fun-loving China has decided to behave like the communist police state it really is by condemning a Canadian citizen to death for drug smuggling, after he was previously sentenced to 15 years jail, by re-trying him as a blatant means to bring pressure on Canada for arresting a top Huawei executive for extradition to the US which just shows what China will do if it does not get its way**.

But back to USUK, those at least are still democratic in form but not quite in function as both now have succumbed to infighting among political parties and the issues they face have no clear exit strategy and as such one may either say that this is simply the veneer of representative democracy fading away to expose the controlling elites bickering among themselves as their house of cards falls apart or (slightly less depressingly) our states shifting from true representative democracies to ones which are run by, and for, competing elites with elections as the legitimating mechanism and nothing else.

Either way its depressing but it seems that when faced by a crisis beyond their means to control (that crisis being that once you deal with the devil and start down the path to corruption and total power) you start to veer closer and closer to being a corrupt and failed state like Zimbabwe or a totalitarian nightmare like China and all the talk in the world can’t save you.

US: Go away, baiting!

Currently the US is now nearly a month into its government shutdown and I think Cracked.com has summed it up best with one of its many lists of things which show that people might grumble about “the government” but holly hell the alternative is a lot worse.

You know those far right, ACT party style, “minimal government” wet dreams that tools like David Seymour keeps on getting “excited” about? Well the US is now, in effect, in that state of affairs and it’s not pretty.

Seems all those government services that people take for granted, don’t know about or simply think are “not essential” are in fact very essential for a complex technological society like ours.

So, Seymour's ideological masturbation aside, the US is now locked into a paralytic state of stasis, in effect seeing how long it can hold its breath under water while Republicans and Democrats play chicken with each other over funding for Donald Trump’s wall.

Idiots or the naive might say its all Trumps fault but it takes two to tango and this is not the first-time politicians have played the brinkmanship game with government shutdowns. Yes, Trump has dialed it up to 11 but given that this was the core of his election policy (as limited as that was) he can’t be blamed for wanting to enact that for his voter base.

What he can be blamed for is the fact that building a wall around the US might make good sense ideologically and appeal to his supporters but it’s not going to actually solve any problems unless the problems are how to keep employed an army of wall builders and border guards.

And with the debate now down to the level of a high school feud as Nancy Pelosi and Trump are sniping at and c**k-blocking each other (as Pelosi blocks Trumps state ofthe Union speech so Trump cuts of Pelosi's travel to Afghanistan*3) you’re not looking at anything which we could call “representative” or even a functional democracy this is two spoilt rich kids fighting over a toy at day-care.

Its assumed that eventually a compromise will be reached but the damage will have been done and given that congress polls lower than the President its difficult to see the US going on for much longer because as the song says “somethings got to give”*4 and going without pay (or public services) for a month plus is going to do a  lot for arguments of political populists like Bernie Sanders and Alexandria Ocasio Cortez who will happily take over if given a chance.

Could they do better? Probably not but at this point I don’t think the public is interested in that and is more interested in the cathartic effect of watching the rich elites having the heads lopped off via the guillotine ala the French Revolution, which interestingly enough was brought about by circumstances similar to those we face today (political deadlock and the parasitic rich sponging off everyone else) than getting their government back up and running.

So, on a democratic scale of one to ten, one being all’s good functioning democracy and 10 being holly s**t-balls democratic failure, the US is now about a 7 or 8 with a nine not far off the longer the shutdown goes on. And even when its ends, because it will eventually, or if Trump gets impeached or removed (because that’s also a possibility) it’s hard to imagine the US going back to normal because what’s happening now is the new normal.

The US is not going to suddenly discover good behavior and responsible politics just because the shutdown ends or Trump is no longer President but instead this is it for them and living with it is the only option. Suddenly films like Idiocracy no longer seem like satirical comedy but rather as a documentary warning from the future.

UK: No democracy please, we're British*5

Meanwhile, if you have not been reading the news (and possibly living in a hole), you would, only marginally, be forgiven for thinking in jolly old England all was sunshine, lollipops and rainbows compared to its transatlantic cousin the US.

But nope, if you thought the UK was doing better then guess again sucker because if the state of the US could be described as a dumpster fire then the Brexit crisis is Dumpster Fire Deluxe.

Consider this, article 50, the clause that triggers the UK from the EU, has already been invoked and is now in progress. All that the UK can do now is negotiate the terms of the exit and its clear that the EU does not want the UK to leave because if they do it not only makes the EU weaker but could give other members ideas as well and no supranational state wants parts of its empire falling off as it weakens the whole enterprise, let alone major members of it (as the UK is).

Sure, the UK could go back to the drawing board but as CNN points out none of the four options that could develop under article 50 are really going to solve things so in the end the choices are: Brexit, crashing out of the EU (also known a s hard Brexit), having a second referendum or changing the government. Choose wisely young Padawan.

If the UK takes the Brexit path, it’s out of the EU come mind 2019, what happens after is anyone’s guess but there are disaster stories both ways if the UK does or it does not and having a second referendum may reverse the vote but that sets an incredibly dangerous precedent because if you can reverse one vote you can reverse any vote and what’s to say that it could go around again and again once that Pandora's box is opened.

But if there is a second vote and the Britain decide to stay in the EU then those who voted leave are unlikely to go quietly and this sets up something close to a civil war scenario with an intractable position and no clear middle ground.

What is clear is that the UK can’t be both in and out and like the US, political revolutionaries are getting ready to pounce, as Jeremy Corbyn has already forced the issue by calling for a general election to break the deadlock.

Of course Corbyn, once PM, may also want to bring other parts of his manifesto to the table which is fine by me but with an emphasis on massive wealth redistribution from the richest to the poorest I cant see many of London’s wealthy bankers being down with that but Brexit, like the government shutdown in the US, is just a symptom  and not the real cause of the disease that’s eating the UK from the inside out and so reversing the vote will be nothing but a cosmetic fix and simply split things even further.

And Theresa May is damned if she does and damned if she does not, she has survived a no confidence vote but that matters little in the grander scheme when her plan for an exit is not palatable to anyone. All Brexit has really done is expose the divide in the UK, just like Trump has in the US, and in doing so presented having a hand cut off or an eye poked out as the only choice to voters.

So, at this point, the UK reminds me of England on the eve of the 1640s civil war which split the nation between Royalists and Parliamentarians, Catholics and Protestants and Cavaliers

 and Round-heads in which the decent, unlike the American Civil war in the 1860s, was not a supremely violent struggle to the death between two economic and political systems set inside a supposedly democratic state but rather a political schism between sides over a range of issues, magnified by religious difference and where the sides were emergent democracy vrs the older monarchical order.

Thus, at some point, something has to happen and when it does one side or another will not be happy and so another phase of the disease will kick in and further unrest ensues, making the situation in essence loose/loose.

Meanwhile in Godzone: Don’t say it can’t happen here!

If the political antics and chaos of USUK is not enough to make you wonder the we have our cousins across the ditch and their own political turmoil to consider.

Still NZ compared to USUK is a lot more viable at this time and if a cabinet reshuffle is all that gets into the media then we may be just a bit better off, for now that is as we shall soon see that being slightly further up the democratic anthill may protect us from the rising floodwaters of crappy politics and politician’s for a while but we also have to deal with the survivors from lower down scrabbling their way up trying to take over what’s left (I’m looking at you Peter Theil and China).

Democracy has its moments to be sure and it is having a bad day worldwide at this time but if USUK is anything to go by the alternatives to good government and real representative democracy (or even direct democracy) are rule by corrupt elites, genocidal maniacs and places that we don’t even want to visit let alone live in.

So consider this post a means of making sure that what’s follows on this blog is always with the perspective of what’s going on elsewhere lest I be accused of complaining about nothing because its not the state of NZ per se that’s the issue with me but the direction our own democracy is going in that has me blogging and it’s a lot better to sound the alarm before the whole mess goes off the cliff than pick up the pieces and rebuild (if such a thing is even possible) at the bottom or like USUK try and do so while free falling downwards.

Vootie!

*-Who has family happily living in NZ because reasons.

**-And people wonder why the National Party acting as a quisling for China is such a threat to democracy here.

*3-Why she needs to go to Afghanistan anyway is anyone’s business but I suppose she needs a holiday

*4- Yes Fitzgerald’s sentiment is upbeat and positive but the sentiment remains the same but if you need something more suitably dark then the Beastie Boys have you covered.

*5-with apologies to Messrs Foot and Marriot

Jacinda or Judas: If Labour bows to pressure from businesses then this government is sunk!

All dogs might go to heaven but politicians always go to hell!

For me the honeymoon period with the Coalition government ended suddenly this week in the jarring screech of brakes as my political expectations slid off the road and crashed into the ditch of political reality.

My doubts had started with the recent budget, which was nothing more than Grant Robertson using the cancelled tax cuts to fund up big on various areas which needed it and in reality turned out to be little more than National-lite budget in a bright red wrapper. 

Then there has been the breaking of so many of Labours pre and post-election promises, so as not to spook the ever fragile business community, that has made the scales fall from my eyes.

Watered down immigration reforms, check; A housing policy which does not set aside housing for those who most need them but leaves it open to the market, check; Tax "reform" but no actual taxation increases on those who should be paying more (read corporate and the wealthy), Czech; One hundred million dollars for a rich man’s sport (the Americas Cup) but still dithering about how to fix the mess in Christchurch, cheque; an endless stream of money spent on pork barrel jobs for Labour cronies in all the new committees, Chek; employment law reforms on the odious “90 day trial period” law scaled back and now appointing Jim Bolger (the man who ushered the Employment Contracts Act into law) to the review committee (the political equivalent of asking the rapist to judge their own trial); and check, checky, McCheck, checkmate!

Add to this industries like Nurses and Teachers still underpaid and being offered pittance for work which is essential to the health and well being of our society and Jacinda’s bizarre protestations of ignorance when it’s clear that New Zealand’s relationship with the Five Eyes is under threat due to Chinese infiltration and interference* and I have decided that Jacinda and Labour are on the verge of selling out the hopes and expectations of most of the people that voted for her.

For Judas it was 30 pieces of silver while for Jacinda it is a half million dollars a year salary as PM plus all the money she gets to make selling photos of her and her baby to Womans Day.

And why am I suddenly so negative you ask?

The answer is simple. In the years leading up to the 2017 election there was strong stream of discussion on the many political blogs that I frequented (many left but some right), where the discussion often found itself coming round to the topic of “The Great Betrayal” of 1984 by the then Labour Government of David Lange and how any future Labour Government would have to do serious penance for this betrayal or suffer the consequences of a backlash from an electorate which was expecting Labour to start fixing the damage it helped usher in 30 years before and had now grown so acute (think housing, the environment, water, poverty and immigration) that these issues had metastasized into cancerous and toxic sores on the land that could no longer be ignored.

Not everyone agreed with the whole view but the mainstream perspectives were clear that the Great Betrayal had occurred at Labours bloody hands and on its watch and the damage was a generation of Neo-Liberal politics and economics which had gutted Aotearoa to the benefit of a wealthy few in the business community and any attendant political parasites (Richard Prebble always springs to mind when the topic of the Great Betrayal and the term “parasite” springs to mind) that had helped oversee the selling of New Zealand and the creation of Nu Ziland for their financial masters.

Thus if a future Labour government was to make good on atoning for this heinous act then the healing could only begin with rolling back most, if not all of the reforms it had helped bring in, but if it did not then the dark project that had been started by it in 1984 would be complete and Nu Ziland would prevail over New Zealand into our grim dark future.

Now fast forward a few years to early 2017; Labour is sunk in the polls and stuck with Andrew Little as leader while National under Bill English looked set to sweep into power for a fourth term, destroy any remaining vestiges of pre 1984 new Zealand in the process and bring about Nu Ziland at large. It was a doom struck time and the mood of any not on the National party train to “prosperity” was gloomy to say the least (see this post from me from that time for an idea).

Then a miracle occurred, Little bowed out of the leadership and relative political noob Jacinda Ardern stepped in and Labour started climbing in the polls on the strength of mostly the expectant mood of change her ascension had created.

Then, in a further political miracle, Labour was able to form a coalition government out of the election results and the National party inspired nightmare of pedophiles running the day-care was aborted in a frenzy of a post-election announcements about fixing the damage to NZ, from things like the housing hernia and child poverty, and giving capitalism a friendly face.

Rrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzpppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppp!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

No the above sentence is not a typo but the sound of the needle of reality scratching its way off the political record as the warm, soft and fuzzy tune (you can substitute the music for We are the World here for effect if you wish)of the post-election “we are going to fix things” Labour Coalition Government was hijacked by the grubby reality of a Labour government “talking loud and saying nothing” while playing much the same game as National did for nine years.

Put in simple terms, the fact is that in the age of FukYoo politix Labour has only one mandate from the public and that is to atone for the damage it helped cause from the Great Betrayal and if it cannot deliver on that then this will be a one (or maybe two if its lucky) term government which will backslide on any meaningful promises for change so long as it can remain in power but in the end will become mired in the toxic filth of its own defunct legacy.

And it’s become clear that Labour, as it is in 2018, is clearing thinking that the politics of the Third Way, as it was under Helen Clark in 1999 (or even 2008: when Labour had blown its mandate to rule by 2005 and had to cook up a deal with Winston Peters to maintain its political program) is still a viable option in the minds of the Labour brain trust.

This kind of thinking is 19 years and a bitter generation too late for the harsh realities of politics in a time of populist parties and political instability.

Ardern and Labour have clearly been watering down their plans and actions to accommodate the business community (the same community that was the direct beneficiary (pun intended) of the way the current labour and tax laws are structured) because Jacinda & Co would rather pander to this vested interest rather than take an honest attempt to cleanse the poison that has made this country so sick.

So while Judas Ardern and Labour are banking on a strategy of doing just enough to keep public opinion on side with some photos ops for Jacinda and baby to distract from the skulduggery going on behind the scenes they will be counting the blood money for their dirty deeds both past, present and future.

And this growing mood is not just me, there are rumbles in the public and the upcoming Northcote by-election may be an interesting (if somewhat distorted) barometer of the public feelings about how things are going, as if the current round of teacher and nurse pay disputes/strikes are anything to go by then Labour has not done enough to meet the expectations of those who voted for them (because not a single nurse or teacher I know or have met (bar one) has ever voted for National) in 2017.

The breakdown of public trust in Labour as government is not an impossible scenario. It’s not the one that National and Mike Hosking keep salivating over (because no one on the Left is really keen to let National back into power just yet) but keep in mind that a year ago Labour was 24% in the polls, with half its supporters defected to the Greens and stuck with an unpopular leader and the only noticeable shift on the Left side of the line since then was the rise of Jacinda Ardern and the deals which stitched up the coalition government so the ground under Jacinda's feet is less political bedrock and more shifting sand.

So if Jacinda can’t keep her end of the bargain with the public then don’t expect people to keep on supporting Labour as one of the salient features of FukYoo politics is the willingness of voters to punish parties they feel have betrayed them as well as indulge in self destructive political behaviors (ie voting for extremist parties in what I refer to as Joker politics) far more than staying loyal to any particular politician or political brand.

And while I am not planning to vote National just yet because I am disappointed in Labour reverting to their Champagne  Socialist habits so quickly (because I did not vote Labour in 2017) I won’t be giving Labour any more free passes on this blog so readers can expect me to turn the focus onto the current government just as much as I did on the previous.

Labours talk of a friendly face for Capitalism is now looking more like giving Capitalism a friendly face-lift; simply hiding the wrinkles, crow’s feet and that god ugly nose with a few nips and tucks with liberal injections of political botox to smooth everything out.

Of course the typical response from a Labour Acolyte (because there are still of few of them Left – geddit?) would be that expectations need to be managed and that all stakeholders need to be consulted.

However this is a load of super frosty bullock droppings as the entire theme of the Great Betrayal has been to accommodate business at the expense of the all other interests and stakeholders and the last nine years of National was such an extreme of pandering to the vested interests of the market that Labour playing anything less than the revolutionary march right through the Center and back to the Left is not going to fit the mood of the public.

And if that’s not enough Jacinda should take heed of the case of Ed Miliband, the young dashing and photogenic, middle ground, leader (sound like anyone we know) of Labour UK who found himself deposed by a faster moving and more in touch Jeremy Corbyn because Miliband's brand of same old third-way Labour did not match the mood of the party or its supporters, or even the public.

In such circumstances Jacinda is less than six months away from becoming Judas and if that occurs Labour is going to find out in a rather stinging way that not only will National look better and better to the public (and keep in mind they already poll higher than Labour at this point) as 2020 approaches but that the potential of coalition partners being peeled off (as in the case of NZ First) or neutralized (as in the case of the Greens) will be much more of a possibility than if it’s was actually doing something constructive and not just letting Jacinda flap her considerable gums and smile for photo ops.

Worse still (for her, not us) is the potential for a Labour NZ’s radical faction to find the Right (geddit?) candidate for the job and run Jacinda right off the throne, and don’t say it can’t happen because that’s what got Andrew Little elected (and deposed) as leader, and then genuinely tap into that revolutionary mood of the nation** to make the changes needed.

Then there is the case of places like Australia or Italy with their revolving door politics, parties and leadership changes and while Kiwis like to think that “it can’t happen here” they would be wrong as there is nothing, not even NZ’s legendary political apathy, to offset a groundswell of righteous (or riotous) public anger when the issues which have been simmering away for the last 30 years start to boil over in seething entrails of discontent.

So Labour is now on the verge of the post-election slump and while National won’t be making hay just yet, the dynamics of this Coalition government rely on keeping the coalition partners happy (something for a later post) and to prevent Jacinda from being seen by her supporters as just another traitorous, untrustworthy, scumbag politician who is out for herself (or far far worse hideously delusional and in thrall to business interests) as the only two thing that got Labour elected were a desire for genuine change (ie anyone but National) and the X-factor that Jacinda brought to the game.

Our pregnant PM has not yet left her mark on NZ politics and the specter of Norman Kirk and David Lange loom large over her as both men were willing to take steps, as radical as they were, to fix what they saw were problems with this country and Jacinda Ardern's statements about climate change remain nothing more than gentle farts of smug self congratulation until backed up by serious action.

However Jacinda Ardern has yet to do that*3 and even if she wishes to emulate one such as Helen Clark she is going to have to do more than get knocked up and wear fashionable clothes to parties.

Labour exists as government today on the fact that its not National far more than anything inherent in its own makeup, policies or personnel excepting the star factor that Jacinda has harnessed.

And while Labour is sure to be playing the longer game and planning to drop all sorts of lollies round about May 2020 that maybe too little too late if those lollies are little more than some crappy placebos for the crippling ills of this Nation.

So if I thrashed National for its corruption while it was in power I can sure as heck beat Labour for failing to make good for the Great Betrayal now it is in government.

Labour can’t micro manage away the cancers it helped create and the time for radical surgery is at hand. The prognosis is grim but the outcome really depends if the doctor’s name is Jacinda or Judas.

*-Although to be fair it was National that set the ball rolling with Judith Collins and Jin Yang but if Labour was genuine about addressing this threat it would be doing more but instead its doing pretty much what National did and that makes them as bad, if not worse than National.

**-I admit that with her current popularity its unlikely but in the age of Trump never say never.

*3-And Saying no to further offshore drilling does not count BUT some action over fuel prices might!

Can Andrew Little and Labour NZ make hay out of Corbyn and Labours win in the UK?

Short answer to this question is no. 

Different countries, different political systems (FPP vs MMP) and different political cultures and histories all add up to no direct correlation between there and here.

The mid to long term answer is “yes, but…” as the global mood across much of the democratic west has been one of angry populism and punishment for establishment politicians for a while now.

So the question needs to focus less on the yes and more on the “but” to find an answer.

The Numbers

And it would help if we look at how things actually turned out in the UK to see if we can translate what was in effect a “shock outcome”*.

Labour                     Seats      262                 Increase/Decrease       +32     

Conservatives          Seats      318                 Increase/Decrease      -13

Scot Nat Party         Seats      35                    Increase/Decrease      -19

Lib Dems                 Seats      12                   Increase/Decrease      +3

Others                      Seats      23                   Increase/Decrease       -3

And under a FPP system it’s the seats that count so alone the Conservatives are well ahead of Labour but when you add in all the other parties, especially the SNP which is not fond of the Conservatives in the wake of the previous failed Scottish Secession vote, it’s a lot closer and the margin shrinks to less 25 seats. Add in the Lib Dems and its even less.

This gives us, under the mechanics of FPP in the UK, a hung parliament but more on that later.

What’s even more revealing is the vote share and change from the previous election which is as follows:

CON     42.4%                Change +5.5%

LAB     40.0%                 Change + 9.5%

LD        7.4%                  Change -0.5%

SNP      3.0%                  Change -1.7%

UKIP     1.8%                 Change -10.8%

GRN     1.6%                  Change – 2.1%

Also interesting are the turnout figures which 68.7% which was a 2% increase on 2015 and the fact that vote share for the two main parties was the highest since 1970s.

Finally the geographic vote spread which saw three very clear areas for voters in the UK, with London being firmly Labour, the South of England being firmly Tory and the North being for the Scottish National Party and Labour.

All the data used for these numbers can be found here on the BBC website.

The Analysis

So what do these numbers show if we step back a bit from the raw metrics?

The first and most obvious is the large swing towards the left with Labour getting an extra 9.5% of the vote and 32 extra seats. It also shows that while the Conservatives increased vote share (at +5.5%) they lost seats which indicates more people leaving them than coming in seats which they lost.

And that swing happened due to the fact that parties like UKIP lost 10.8% of the vote (and its one seat) so while many of those voters would have gone back to vote Tory the Tories were losing even more voters to Labour as many punters were simply “passing through” on the way to vote for Corbyn and Labour.

Thus for every extra voter that Theresa May and the Conservatives got Labour got almost double and the biggest shift was from the far Right towards the Left.

Also as many minor parties were either wiped out or severely reduced we can see that it was not a case of votes bleeding out to minor parties but instead voters coalescing around the two main parties.

then with the increased turnout and the consolidation of votes into the big two we see a polarization of opinions into two binary choices and the erosion of certain “middle ground” or fringe opinions and the related destruction or reduction of various small parties which were born out of those opinions.

In short the death of small parties, goodbye middle ground and the return to the two party politics of the past**.

But as the UK has a FPP system these results are skewed somewhat by the mechanics particular to FPP rather than how things would be under MMP which would see the Conservatives beaten by a Labour/Lib Dem/SNP coalition.

Therefore who (or what) gets to decide who is the next government? Under FPP the crown of being kingmaker has fallen on the Democratic Unionist Party (DUP) which has the 10 seats to push May and the Conservatives over the line into a majority of seats in the house and thus secure power.

And the DUP being more conservative than the Conservatives means that those 10 seats are locked in and Labour and Corbyn are piped at the post.

What a difference an electoral system makes.

The Bigger Picture

But lets take a further step back and ask why was there such a major and unexpected shift to the Left.

On the negative side Theresa May and the Conservatives judged badly, that, in the wake of Brexit, the mood of the electorate would be calm enough to stand another critical vote of confidence. Seems it was not but given that Brexit went against expectations I am not sure what the logic (if any) was.

Also with the recent terror attacks where it was revealed that most of the suspects were already on watch lists, had been repeatedly reported by members of their own communities to the authorities as being concerns and that May herself was responsible for major cutbacks in Police numbers (as head of the Home Office) under the ever popular "austerity" measures and things did not look good when it became clear that the police were simply too stretched to do anything about it.

Then there was May’s decreasing popularity and the fact that she avoided public speaking and even one debate against Corbyn.

In short the Conservatives stumbled badly, read the mood incorrectly and did the classic tortoise and the hare scenario for the expected results. May won’t make alive it to the next election.

On the flip-side Corbyn and Labour made major capital of this election even if they did not win because despite his naysayers (which are now reduced even further and probably are a distinct minority now) he has solidified his leadership even further, battle tested it and the party, on the hustings and shown that a positive message of change for a better future can resonate with voters.

And it was as simple as that.

If conservatives (in all countries) get to corner the market on things like pragmatism and being “realistic” then liberals get exclusive rights talk about dreams and hopes all by themselves and if Labour had lost its way during the Blairite years it was because those ideas and concepts were given up in favor of a "middle ground" approach which was little more than the same message of realism/pragmatism that the Tories were shilling but with less credibility.

But Jeremy Corbyn killed that idea stone cold dead when he took over and started saying things about dreams, hopes and a better future once again.

Of course it would be unfair to say it’s all due to Corbyn but a lot of this outcome is. He held on in the face of multiple attempts to remove him and took his position to the public in the truest test there is and all the sour grapes in the UK (and there seem to be quite a lot of them) can’t change that. The results speak for themselves.

But what about NZ?

So finally we can ask ourselves about that “yes, but…” answer to our question we were discussing earlier.

Can Andrew Little and Labour do the same here?

To start they don’t have to worry about the FPP hurdle and that means that if they make up the kind of ground that Labour and Corbyn did in the last month of polling then they are home and hosed as UK polls had Labour 20 points behind and that is roughly the numbers that Labour NZ need to beat any combination of National and another party come September.

But because this is MMP there is unlikely to be such titanic shifts in vote share as the UK had simply because parties like the Lib Dems and UKIP picked up votes due to voter frustration with FPP mechanics and then angrily switched when their chosen party couldn't translate that vote share into power or do what the Lib Dems did and go into coalition with the one party they should not have (the Conservatives) when being handed the kingmaker crown on a silver platter***.

Therefore in NZ it’s unlikely that there will be any sudden shift of up to 20% in voters from one party to another as both the smaller parties like The Greens and NZF are locked in and able to translate those votes into some form of result (although that may be less the case for the Greens now as they wrestle with the tar-baby that is translating their 12-15% into genuine political power) and the stability of MMP offsets such FPP related outcomes.

Then there is the leadership question.

Andrew Little is no Jeremy Corbyn (see the links in my previous post) and as Labour NZ is still playing the middle ground/pragmatism card like it’s the 1990s or early 2000s and as such no message that Andrew or the party puts out will resonate like Corbyn and UK Labours did if they keep on that way.

And because I have bashed Andrew Little so much for his terrible leadership skills in the past I will say no more here and just encourage you to read any previous posts I have written about him.

Labour NZ has yet to deal with the horrid stain that is 1984, and as I have argued many times before, until they do, they remain stuck waiting for a big draw leader like Helen Clark (perhaps someone with the initials of J.A.) to enthuse voters over to their side because no message they send says “bright new future for all” when they are couching everything in the realpolitik market-speak which was outdated when it was coming out of Michael Cullen’s mouth.

So in the end the “yes” gets trumped by the “but” and we remain in thrall to whatever Winston Peters has planned for us****.

Which is a shame because if Labour was to make a genuine Mea Culpa for 84 we could see the “yes” trump the “but...”*5.

All it needs is a genuine leader willing to dream big and steer the party out of the doldrums it has been in for the last decade.

I wonder if Jeremy Corbyn has any relatives living in New Zealand?

*-Although when you consider the potential pitfalls of putting a vote to the public in the wake of the last “vote to the public” that lead to BREXIT you might want to consider the “wisdom” of such a view that such an outcome was a “shock”.

**-At least for now.

***-This is the dilemma that Winston and NZF face this election.

****-No matter how many times I twist my analysis on NZ politics it always keeps coming back to Winston, it’s frustrating as hell.

*5-No pun intended but now that I think about it…