How the Centre-Right National Party Trounced Labour in New Zealand
Just three years after Jacinda Ardern’s landslide victory in New Zealand, the Labour Party has collapsed, polling half as many voters as it did last time. With over three-quarters of the votes counted, Labour is on 26%, National is on 40%, the Greens 10%, ACT (low taxes) on 9% and the Māori Party on 2.5%. Nicholas Sheppard in the Spectator explains what went wrong for Ardern’s party.
Astonishingly, Labour lost the electorate of Mount Albert, the seat of three former Labour prime ministers: Jacinda Ardern, Helen Clark and the abiding saint of the Labour Party himself, Michael Joseph Savage. Savage was an icon of the party during the depression and world war two.
Prime Minister Chris Hipkins took over in January, and was initially warmly received. His easy-going, subdued appeal, combined with a managerial approach to governance, seemed to strike the right chord after the loftier but somewhat abstracted idealism of his predecessor, Ardern. But the ongoing cost-of-living crisis, a blemished agenda and to a lesser degree, an inchoate wariness of identity politics and ‘wokeness’ ultimately made his task too difficult. He also presided over a succession of ministerial mishaps resulting in firings and reshufflings.
Nobody particularly dislikes Hipkins – he is regarded as decent and unpretentious – it’s just that his administration gave the impression of muddling along and not offering any particular rationale for re-election.
Former prime minister Sir John Key said: “In 2020, Jacinda delivered a result I didn’t think was possible under MMP (mixed-member proportional voting). But, [Labour has] gone from that to losing half their caucus. It’s pretty brutal.”
The final results will not be reported for another three weeks. Plenty can change between election day and when the verified results are declared. In 2020, 488,776 people cast valid special votes, which are ballots returned by voters who can’t attend their polling station on the day of a vote. They can be returned up to 10 days after an election and still be valid. These types of votes accounted for 16.9% of all votes cast in the last election.
Worth reading in full.
To join in with the discussion please make a donation to The Daily Sceptic.
Profanity and abuse will be removed and may lead to a permanent ban.
So the “correct” result can still be obtained once all the postal votes are counted.
The beauty of PR is it’s just a merry-go-round and Government actually never changed. Exhibit A: Germany; Exhibit B: Israel.
That’s a pretty mild description of what’s going on in NZ. Labour has been engaged in extremely radical reforms that have deeply worried the typically equanimous Kiwi voter. They have been pushing through co-governance with the Maori tribes (eg: the local councils are to be 50% Maori and 50% all other races), creating a separate health service for Maori, declaring large areas of the sea as Maori-only with regards to fishing. They have centralised education – controlling the curriculum. The curriculum is anti-Western and Maoist: every subject is infused with Maori “ideals” (which just co-incidentally happen to be Communist, with a racial, original sin twist), as well as Climate Catastrophism, and Wokery. My 14 year old nephew was recently made to play a “match up” game in class featuring “anal” and “mutual masturbation”. Labour has been destroying farm viability and spending like there’s no tomorrow. Food prices are high and quality low. For example, it is typical to find that the pork in Supermarket is sourced from China. Minimum wage has been set at $22.70 (£11.00). Basically, they have been doing what the rest of the West has been doing, only faster. NZ has net migration losses – largely the… Read more »
Centre Right, Centre Left – what exactly is the difference?