Is a Transformational Left-Wing Leadership of the NZ Labour Party Possible?

Written By: - Date published: 4:57 pm, August 17th, 2024 - 79 comments
Categories: Bernie Sanders, Economy, election 2023, Jeremy Corbyn, labour, political parties, Politics, uncategorized - Tags: , , , ,

By Elliot Crossan – Cross-posted from post at System Change

It is a painful experience, to have fought long and hard for something you knew was inadequate and to have even that taken away.

This whiplash is being felt by activists across Aotearoa, some of whom have spent years and others decades fighting for climate action, workers’ rights, livable incomes for all, access to decent housing, and for Te Tiriti o Waitangi to be honoured. Campaigners spent years organising and marching for a fair and sustainable future, were given crumbs by the last Labour Government, and are now watching aghast as the new government tears up the minimal progress that was made in the previous six years whilst advancing their own right-wing agenda at a breakneck speed.

The Labour Party has long urged activists to be ‘realistic,’ arguing that only incremental change is possible; that it is impossible to transform Aotearoa overnight, that the voting public will never accept radical reform, and that three year terms and the MMP electoral system force parties to be moderate and tack to the ‘centre ground.’ National, ACT and NZ First have sent these arguments up in smoke.

The Coalition is taking a scorched earth approach to reform. As soon as the government was formed, the three parties launched an aggressive 100 day agenda, using parliamentary urgency an unprecedented number of times to roll back a number of key Labour reforms. High on the list of axed policies were Fair Pay Agreements, the key workplace reform which private sector unions had spent nearly all of Labour’s two terms awaiting, and the ban on new offshore oil and gas drilling projects, a pivotal demand of the climate movement. Nicola Willis is cutting the public service to the bone, embarking on an austerity programme the likes of which Aotearoa has not experienced since the early 1990s.

The government’s campaign against Te Tiriti o Waitangi threatens to send us back decades on the hard-fought rights won by Māori through relentless struggle. The Treaty Principles Bill is vile; but even if National and NZ First refuse to sign ACT’s most extreme policy into law, they are still set to unleash an avalanche of racist policies. Benefit sanctions and ‘tough on crime’ policies will hit Māori harder than any other group; and the Fast Track Bill constitutes a real and present danger to both the Treaty and the planet.

Workers’ rights, indigenous rights and environmental protections are being bulldozed in front of our eyes, all in service of insatiable corporate greed.

A Labour Party in Crisis

The First Labour Government of Michael Joseph Savage and Peter Fraser, elected in 1935, knew how to use three-year terms to deliver transformational change to benefit working people. The Fourth Labour Government also unleashed radical change, but in the opposite direction; forty years ago, Finance Minister Roger Douglas rolled back the welfare state established by his predecessors. Douglas famously spoke of moving in “quantum leaps” to keep opponents distracted and confused, unable to fight against his uncompromising agenda. This Coalition knows it too — National, ACT and NZ First know that even if they are only a one-term government, moving at speed and scale means they will achieve more than the Ardern-Hipkins government did in two terms; perhaps even more than the Clark and Key-English governments achieved in three.

Chris Hipkins last year led Labour to its second-worst election defeat since the 1920s, with the biggest fall in vote share that either major party has ever experienced. Ardern in her five years failed to deliver the transformational change she had promised in 2017; upon becoming Prime Minister, Hipkins moved the party even further toward the ‘centre,’ ditching a series of reforms and refusing to implement taxes on wealth or capital gains — despite the popularity of such policies. At the precise time that Labour needed to move left, and deliver radical reform in the interests of its working class voter base who were suffering in the cost of living crisis, the government instead moved right, and went down in flames as a result.

Labour Gap to National When Hipkins was Prime Minister

The fact that Hipkins remains leader of the Opposition is a clear sign that the Labour Party does not intend to change direction. Activists will not tolerate this; we will not settle for another incrementalist centre-left government which fails to bring about fundamental change in the wake of the bonfire of progressive policies we are currently witnessing. In the midst of a climate crisis, a housing crisis, a crisis of inequality, and an all-out assault on Te Tiriti, social movements know that transformational change is not just desirable, but necessary now more than ever before.

The incrementalism of Hipkins, following in the footsteps of his predecessors Ardern and Clark, fits perfectly into the mould of Third Way politics which has dominated the western centre-left since the 1990s. The ‘Third Way’ was the agenda of Tony Blair and Bill Clinton, political leaders who sought to adapt to the neoliberal revolution of the previous decade rather than overturn it. Blair and Clinton left the low-tax, low-spend, privatised economic model of the free market in place, and only offered mild tweaks to the supposed ‘trickle down’ system which kept allowing the rich to get richer and richer. Third Way politics has been hegemonic within the New Zealand Labour Party (NZLP) since Helen Clark’s leadership.

The 2008 Global Financial Crisis and the austerity that followed discredited the neoliberal economic model in the eyes of many. In the years since, social movements overseas have attempted to capture the leadership of the leading centre-left parties in their countries in order to force them to adopt transformative politics, in the knowledge that existing leaders are resistant to any real change. Activists demanded that social democratic parties abandon neoliberalism and austerity, and side with workers instead of the corporate interests that these parties had served for two decades.

Could this phenomenon occur within the NZLP? Austerity and sociopolitical polarisation have belatedly arrived upon the shores of Aotearoa, mirroring the experience of many European countries in the 2010s. Is now the moment for activists to attempt a takeover of the Labour Party and turn it into a vehicle for transformational change, returning it to its founding purpose of representing the working class?

The Corbyn Campaign — Could It Happen Here?

Bernie Sanders / Jeremy Corban

The most famous examples of this phenomenon in the English-speaking world were the Bernie Sanders campaigns of 2016 and 2020. Sanders sought to win the Democratic Party nomination on a platform which included taxing and regulating Wall Street, doubling the minimum wage, and establishing a universal public healthcare system; he identified as a democratic socialist and railed against the billionaire class and their “greed and reckless behaviour.” He won an unprecedented number of votes for a socialist candidate in the US, but failed both times to win the nomination. However, as the United States has a presidential system and an entirely different party structure to Aotearoa, the Sanders campaigns are not comparable to what left-wing activists might hope to see here.

Jeremy Corbyn’s successful campaign for the leadership of the UK Labour Party is a much more comparable example for activists in Aotearoa. The colonial New Zealand state and parliament are modelled on the British Westminster system — the main differences between their system and ours are that Britain has a House of Lords as well as a House of Commons, and that Britain still uses first-past-the-post, the electoral system we abandoned in favour of MMP in 1993. Parliamentary parties in the UK are generally structured similarly to how they are in this country, particularly in the case of the NZLP, which is largely modelled on the UK Labour Party. This example is the closest comparison we can make between Aotearoa and a country which has seen a left-wing insurgency within a mainstream centre-left party.

Between 1983 and 2015, Jeremy Corbyn served as a backbench Labour MP. He was among the most rebellious MPs in his party, consistently voting against the neoliberal Blair/Brown Government on issues such as privatisation and the Wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. Corbyn was part of the Socialist Campaign Group (SCG), a small group of 20-40 left-wing MPs committed to returning Labour to its roots as the party of the working class. The SCG vision of socialism was more Marxist than it was Keynesian — although they fought for immediate social democratic reforms to improve the lives of workers, Corbyn and his comrades were proudly anti-capitalist, anti-imperialist, and committed to a socialist world based on peace, justice and genuine democracy.

Here is the first hurdle a left-wing movement in the NZLP would come up against. If such a faction exists within the existing Labour caucus, it is very secretive indeed. There are certainly ‘soft left’ MPs, social democrats with ties to the union movement, but it is hard to see who their leader is at this stage. Michael Wood was seen by some last term as the leading figure on the soft left, but Wood lost his once-safe seat in Mt. Roskill in the 2023 election when the Labour vote crumbled in Auckland. The ‘soft left’ are not radicals like Corbyn — they merely want Labour to move an inch or two further leftwards, rather than committing unreservedly to transformational change outside of the Third Way neoliberal paradigm.

There is no hard left faction in the NZLP. The most outspoken, rebellious wing of the NZLP broke away in 1989, when Jim Anderton led a split from the party in disgust at the right-wing reforms of the Rogernomics period. Anderton created the NewLabour Party, which later became the dominant faction within the Alliance, the left-of-Labour party which won an impressive 18.2% of the vote in the 1993 election.

Alliance electoral results 1993-2002
Electoral record of the Alliance, 1993-2002

Anderton was the most prominent social democrat to oppose Aotearoa’s turn to neoliberalism. But even he was hardly an equivalent figure to Corbyn — his vision was to return to the Keynesian social democratic policies championed by Labour between 1935 and 1984; and when it came down to it, he was happy enough being a Minister in the Third Way Clark Government from 1999 to 2008. The Alliance split and then collapsed when Anderton and three of his colleagues voted with Labour in favour of the War in Afghanistan. The Alliance represented the most left-wing element of the postwar NZLP; its leadership was barely radical compared to the SCG; and it is now a long-dead party.

At the beginning of 2015, Corbyn remained a relatively obscure figure in UK politics. When Labour lost that year’s election, leader Ed Miliband stepped down, and three Third Way candidates emerged to replace him — Andy Burnham, Yvette Cooper and Liz Kendall. The SCG decided to put Corbyn forward as the fourth candidate. They did so because they believed that an anti-austerity, anti-war candidate was needed in the leadership race in order to shift the debate to the left; they didn’t think in a million years that they would actually win. Bookmakers early on put Corbyn’s odds of victory at 200/1.

The year before, Labour had changed its leadership rules to a one-person, one-vote system, with members of the party and affiliated trade unions eligible to vote, as well as any member of the public who paid £5 to register as a supporter. The previous voting system had been an electoral college, in which one-third of the vote was allocated to MPs, one-third to party members, and the remaining one-third to affiliates. Under the new system, the only sway MPs held was in the nominating process, as candidates needed to be nominated by 15% of the Parliamentary Labour Party (PLP) in order to stand.

The 2014 rule change was seen as a victory for the Blairite faction of the party against the soft left, as the common sense was that the general public were more conservative than most Labour MPs. Pundits believed that the new rules would drag the party further to the right; some Blairite MPs even nominated Corbyn because they believed his candidacy would be so unpopular that the hard left would be humiliated. They were completely out-of-touch with what was happening in British society.

If they wanted to know who the new leadership rules would favour, journalists and MPs should have looked to the streets. Hundreds of thousands of people had spent five years marching against the Conservative-led Coalition’s harsh austerity measures. A wave of strikes and campus occupations took place — not since the resistance to Thatcherism had unions and social movements been so combative. Corbyn and his allies supported the movements, linking arms with protesters while the Labour leadership ignored them. Miliband, despite being on the soft left himself, had campaigned on an austerity-lite manifesto, promising to reduce, rather than end, the government’s cuts to public spending.

The Corbyn leadership campaign squeezed onto the ballot at the last possible minute. Once debates and public meetings began, the campaign exploded. People queued around the block to hear this once-obscure figure make a clear and principled case against austerity. Activists flooded into the Labour Party, and membership exploded from 200,000 to nearly 300,000 — it would later peak at close to 600,000, as Labour became the largest party in western Europe under Corbyn’s radical leadership. More than 100,000 people registered as supporters, overwhelmingly to vote for Corbyn.

UK Labour party membership 1928-2023
UK Labour Party membership, 1928-2023

When the final result was declared, Corbyn’s overwhelming mandate was revealed: 251,417 votes, or 59.5%. Even among party members alone, excluding supporters and affiliates, he won 49.6% on the first ballot, with the three other candidates splitting the remainder of the vote between them. The Third Way MPs and bureaucrats used to controlling the party with an iron grip looked shell-shocked; the Blairite candidate Liz Kendall came last on 4.5%.

Shockingly, the NZLP did not allow party members to vote for the leader at all until an electoral college system was implemented in 2012. From 2012 onwards, 40% of the vote was given to MPs, 40% to members, and 20% to affiliated trade unions, with candidates requiring nominations from 10% of caucus to stand. But in 2021, the rules were changed again to give more power back to MPs — today, the initial round of voting takes place in caucus through an alternative vote ballot, to see if any candidate can secure the support of two-thirds of Labour MPs. Only if no candidate reaches this two-thirds threshold is the electoral college system used, allowing members to have a say.

Crucially, within three months of a general election, a new leader can be chosen by caucus through a preferential vote if the previous leader steps down or is removed through a vote of no confidence. This means that members and affiliated unions can be bypassed entirely, and that a leader who faces significant opposition from MPs can be removed regardless of how much support they have outside of caucus.

Corbyn faced overwhelming opposition from his own MPs. He was forced to fight a second leadership election in 2016, after a no-confidence motion was passed by more than 80% of the PLP. He won this election by 313,209 votes (61.8%), an increase of 61,792 (2.3%.) Even after this renewed mandate from the membership, a significant number of MPs spent the entirety of Corbyn’s tenure undermining him. Even MPs from the soft left participated in this campaign to bring down their elected leader — it wasn’t only the Blairites trying to bring him down at all costs. Diane Abbott described this campaign as an attempt to “break him as a man.”

In April 2017, Theresa May called a snap election with less than seven weeks notice. Labour were polling at just 24%, and the Conservatives were predicted to win a landslide majority of unprecedented scale. Had the UK Labour Party followed the rules of the NZLP, the PLP would have simply replaced Corbyn there and then. Thankfully, they did not have the power to do so.

Corbyn ran a campaign so inspired that it captured the attention of left-wing activists the world over. In the face of clear hostility from big business and the mainstream media, the party released an anti-austerity manifesto entitled For the Many, Not the Few. The radical document promised to tax the top 5% of British households in order to bring vital utilities back into public ownership and invest in public services and infrastructure; it included a sorely needed expansion of workers’ rights, a green transition away from fossil fuels, and an end to UK involvement in illegal wars.

The manifesto was wildly popular, and motivated an army of volunteers to mobilise across the country. Many young people felt hopeful about politics for the first time in their lives; this was reflected in polls estimating a significant increase in youth turnout in the election, with young voters overwhelmingly favouring Labour — this phenomenon was dubbed the “youthquake.”

Instead of a landslide, Theresa May lost her majority in Parliament. Labour surged to 40% of the vote — 16% up from the beginning of the campaign, and 9.6% up on 2015, the party’s biggest increase in vote share since 1945. 12.9 million people voted for a party campaigning on a socialist manifesto.

Whatsapp messages leaked three years later revealed that party staffers — who had been hired by Corbyn’s Third Way predecessors — were shellshocked when they saw the exit poll predicting that Labour had gained seats for the first time since 1997. They had been hoping that Corbyn would suffer a defeat devastating enough that he would be forced to resign in disgrace. His opponents smear him as unelectable; but the number of votes received by the party under Corbyn’s leadership remains its high water mark this century.

Corbyn never won a majority, and he never won the popular vote. He resigned as leader after the 2019 election, when the issue of Brexit tore Labour’s voter base apart. But he came closer than any radical left leader in the Anglosphere has ever come to winning power. Had he not been relentlessly sabotaged by his own MPs and party employees, who knows how many more votes and seats Labour could have won. 2017 was close enough that it is possible Corbyn could have become Prime Minister had he not been fatally undermined.

Instead, Corbyn has been expelled from the party he dedicated his life to by his successor Keir Starmer. The new Starmer-led Labour Government won a landslide majority of seats in the 2024 election, but did so with a record low share of the popular vote for a winning party, amidst the second-lowest turnout since the UK adopted universal suffrage. Labour won fewer votes in 2024 than in 2019, let alone 2017. The Starmer Government is already declining in popularity just weeks after entering office, as it has committed itself to austerity and refused to enact an immediate arms embargo on the genocidal regime of Israel.

UK Labour election results 2001-2024

Corbyn is now faced with the need to create a new left-wing party in the UK. Corbyn won his seat as an independent after being purged from his former party, as did four other ‘Gaza independents’ who won seats from Labour; the Greens meanwhile won four seats, having previously held just one seat in their history. These results represented unprecedented success for left-of-Labour candidates in Britain. But the far-right are also on the move, with Nigel Farage’s Reform party winning four million votes. Riots have broken out in recent weeks, in an horrific display of racist, Islamophobic violence. Britain needs transformational change, for the many not the few, even more today than it did in 2015.

Any radical left-wing leader of the NZLP would face the same level of hostility from business, mainstream media outlets and Labour MPs that Corbyn did. The neoliberal establishment is deeply resistant to transformational change, and most Labour MPs are part of that establishment — in Britain and in Aotearoa.

Yet that is not the only barrier to a left-wing takeover of the NZLP. There is no hard left faction in Parliament, not even a single socialist MP who could lead the charge; even if there was, they wouldn’t get the nominations to stand for leader; even if they did, they would be blocked by two-thirds of caucus; even if they weren’t, they would need to win a mandate from an electoral college in which MPs hold hugely disproportionate sway; and even if they won in this system, a simple majority of MPs could oust and replace them three months out from an election.

Thus, a campaign to transform the NZLP would need to start from the bottom-up. It would need to involve both replacing the Third Way majority of Labour MPs with socialist candidates, and campaigning for a one-member, one-vote party democracy.

Such a campaign would take years of hard work. It would involve huge hostility from the Labour membership towards its own leaders, without any guarantee of success. Either more than half of current members would have to turn entirely against the party they chose to join, or enough radical left-wing activists would need to sign up to Labour to overwhelm the existing members — enough activists that it would be easier to simply start a new party altogether.

People flooded to the Corbyn campaign because they knew that electing a leader from the radical left would be a shortcut to social movements against austerity and war winning mainstream representation in British politics. Although the Corbyn project did not fundamentally change the makeup of the Labour Party, and although Third Way MPs were allowed to remain in a position where they could continually undermine and eventually purge Corbyn, this project did mean that for four years, one of the two major parties in Britain offered real hope of real change in the interests of working class people.

There is no such lightning rod here to attract a sudden rush of momentum for a takeover of the NZLP. The Labour leadership in this country are unlikely to repeat the organisational errors that allowed Corbyn’s ascension — they will have learned their own lessons from what occurred in the UK. A soft left leader of the NZLP is possible; but a transformational leader opposed to neoliberalism altogether is virtually out of the question.

A Socialist Party Is Needed

The New Zealand Labour Party is what it is. A moderate, incrementalist Third Way party, which will deliver small crumbs to unions and social movements when pressured, and when under intense and sustained pressure may even yield slightly more than crumbs. But it is incredibly unlikely that Labour will ever return to being a socialist party of the working class; it is unlikely that it will implement Treaty-based constitutional transformation unless it has no other option; and it would take an absolute miracle for Labour to adopt the kind of radical programme for climate action that is desperately required for the survival of humanity.

Chris Hipkins is the leader. Noone expects him to experience a Damascene conversion to radical politics. Complacent rhetoric about the inevitability of the Coalition being a one-term government is foolish when they remain ahead in the polls despite their divisive agenda — Hipkins may well lead Labour to another defeat. If he does, don’t expect his successor to be anything more than a soft left leader who will soften the edges of neoliberal capitalism rather than transform the system.

Thankfully, unlike the UK, Aotearoa has a proportional representation system which allows us to have a multi-party democracy. Whilst neither the Greens or Te Pāti Māori are class-based parties, both are committed to policy platforms clearly to the left of Labour. Both parties would put some pressure on a Labour Government if they entered into a coalition.

But the need for a party created by and for the working class remains; a party which will not abandon its socialist principles like Labour has. Activists, socialists and trade unionists in Aotearoa are faced with the question: when is the right time for the formation of such a party?

We know that transformational change for working people in Aotearoa is necessary. The situation is filled with desperate urgency by the austerity and racism of the Coalition, and by the looming threat of climate change. We know that Labour will not deliver transformational change. But the impetus for change has to come from somewhere. An alternative to the Labour Party must emerge.

Elliot Crossan is an ecosocialist writer and activist from Auckland. He is the Chair of System Change Aotearoa.

System Change is hosting Sue Bradford next week to discuss the question: Does Aotearoa Need a New Radical Left-Wing Party. The event is at 6pm on Tuesday 20th August at the Auckland Irish Club (Rocky Nook Ave, located within Fowlds Park, Morningside, Auckland). There will be a Zoom link available for people who cannot attend in person. RSVP here if you are interested in attending.

79 comments on “Is a Transformational Left-Wing Leadership of the NZ Labour Party Possible? ”

  • Comments are now closed

  1. Ad 1
    17 August 2024 at 5:29 pm

    Hey Elliot Crossan, go right ahead.

    Just to remind you what starting a party looks like at an election:

    Battling it out on the deep right you had New Zealand Loyal, New Zeal, New Nation, New Conservatives, LeightonBaker Party, FreedomsNZ. DemocracyNZ, and the ACT Party … all full of righteous vim. total result of all of that effort for all of them was 11 seats.

    Then on the deep left side you had Women's Rights Party, Aotea Legalise Marijuana, the Green Party, and the Maori Party … full of similarly righteous vim. Total result for all of them 20 seats.

    That's out of 120 seats.

    There's no room for a radical party on that track record.

    If you really think there's an Anderton-like figure who can reunite the rag-tag battlefleet of the deep left and also attract great swathes of Labour, then it's well time you gave us all that name.

    Otherwise go return to your Marxist reading group.

    • TeWhareWhero 1.1
      17 August 2024 at 6:51 pm

      I find your positioning of TPM, WRP ALM and GP on the "deep left", whatever that is, a bit odd.

      That aside, if we had a few more "Marxist reading groups" maybe the left in this country wouldn't be in such a parlous state. Maybe I wouldn't constantly be wanting to put left in inverted commas.

  2. Incognito 2
    17 August 2024 at 6:06 pm

    Well, this overly long Guest Post has stolen most of the thunder of a draft that I wrote today and was hoping to finish tomorrow.

    To state the obvious, I fully agree with the stated problem, but much less so with the suggested solution. Instead of keeping our powder dry we’re wasting it on fighting numerous trench culture wars with ACT + allies making much ground on TPM + allies. This could take many years – status quo suits some more than others.

    • Mountain Tui 2.1
      17 August 2024 at 6:17 pm

      I would be interested in your piece still, Incognito.

    • gsays 2.2
      17 August 2024 at 6:19 pm

      FWIW, put it up anyway.

      We need more of this korero to organize and energise around. To sell a vision to those apolitical folk in our lives.

    • adam 2.3
      18 August 2024 at 2:42 pm

      I would be interested too, as you have always had a go at me for not embracing incrementalism.

      Have you had a change of heart?

      Maybe inspired by the fact we will have 1.5 degree increase locked in for 2027, shown you how shit incrementalism is in the real world?

  3. Drowsy M. Kram 3
    17 August 2024 at 6:09 pm

    yes For the Many, Not the Few – great manifesto title, imho; perhaps less so for the few.

    Saving Capitalism: For the Many, Not the Few [YouTube video]
    America was once celebrated for and defined by its large and prosperous middle class. Now, this middle class is shrinking, a new oligarchy is rising, and the country faces its greatest wealth disparity in eighty years.


    https://thespinoff.co.nz/society/16-08-2022/the-side-eyes-two-new-zealands-the-table

  4. gsays 4
    17 August 2024 at 6:13 pm

    Cheers Elliot, a good read. Something for some of us to get excited about.

    In the UK, they really stooped to have a crack at Corbyn, ie the anti semite smear, which more than a couple round here were happy to repeat.

    The opposition will come not only from Labour MPs, but folk who claim left wing credentials.

    Those who bemoan housing inaffordability but have a couple of rentals, hand wring over to inequality and have a share portfolio, point out neo-liberalim's short comings but draw a wage from subcontracting.

    Liberals will be anti any movement emerging from the left.

  5. Stephen D 5
    17 August 2024 at 6:18 pm

    Don’t be quite so dismissive Ad.
    At our LEC meeting the other night we were discussing, quite animatedly, the fact that at the moment the Labour Party is lacking more left wing policies. No-one is defecting, but there is a feeling that the current caucus, and policy platform is still way too neoliberal. Most of the angst being against Hipkins for his no capital gains “captains call.”

    The hope is the Policy Council, and upcoming conference, will start to turn things more left.

  6. Mountain Tui 6
    17 August 2024 at 6:35 pm

    That is an extraordinary graph, thanks for sharing it.

  7. SPC 7
    18 August 2024 at 12:16 am

    Treasury is forecasting rising debts for decades after 2030, preparing us for another TINA period – limited government capability and dependence on foreign capital for infrastructure. This government is in lockstep with that direction.

    There is a need to both provide an alternative to this, as well as re-visit the path taken since 1984 (neo-liberal deconstruction of the concept of democratic society citizenship – returning us back to class order rule, by capital).

    The Green Party way of sustainable society, is the modern alternative, not socialism. It shares common values as per access to universal rights – to housing, health, education and adequate income. And economic planning – but with the focus being to operate within the limitations of habitat as per finite resources and protection of the environment.

    This requires a major overhaul of government funding.

    1. Place all landlord property ownership into the company model and tax any realised CG at the company tax rate.
    2. restoration of the gift tax (2011)
    3. restoration of the estate tax (1993)
    4. a wealth tax, whereby the amount paid is a credit in the future estate tax liability.
    5. a stamp duty on residential property and lifestyle blocks (over $2m)
    6. windfall profits tax on banks and super markets
    7. a progressive tax system on companies
    8. a mortgage surcharge of up to 1% and no less than 15% on the mortgage payment (as per GST).
    9. a 1% tax on the work income of those over 55
    10. a 1% charge on personal income tax/payroll for the provision of health services (primary care providers and development of dental services).

    This should allow us to operate in the local Tasman (and global) market for staff (as per pay and conditions).

  8. newsense 8
    18 August 2024 at 4:21 am

    Labour and particularly its right wing are redundant if there isn’t a strong New Zealand left wing voice.

    (Though all three of the other parties are currently barreling right so fast, there might be room where National was. If that’s Hipkins’ target, it’s a very bad one.)

    Ad is a case in point.

    Leadership doesn’t particularly give a damn what is happening at LECs, so he says they have zero relationship to policy formation.

    But LECs are the people who turn up to door knock and sell your policies. They are your ground game. If they are weak you end up getting squashed where you don’t intend to. How do you get your vote out if you can’t even get your volunteers out?

    I’m sorry to say I haven’t read the article yet. Turned up to congratulate a Labour MP on some good work shining a local light on a nationwide issue. May have to go to another thread for that though!

    • weka 8.1
      18 August 2024 at 9:49 am

      does the membership have the capacity to change some of the internal structure and process so that the membership has more power?

      how did it come about that the members lost some of their power to choose leaders?

      • Belladonna 8.1.1
        18 August 2024 at 11:47 am

        Possibly, because the last one they chose, Andrew Little, was effectively unelectable.

        The two subsequent ones were elected by the party members.

        Ardern took the Labour Party to within a whisker of a majority – and was able to negotiate effectively with Peters to become the government (Little, based on all of the polls, and all political commentary, would have failed dismally).

        Hipkins, despite being failed by several high-profile ministers engaging in recklessly stupid behaviour, was able to save the furniture for the Labour Party. A defeat, but not an outright annihilation.

        I seriously doubt that retaining the policies dumped in the 'bonfire' would have improved the results for the left as a whole. Those who were outraged, voted for other left parties (they weren't exactly going to shift their vote to ACT, were they). And, retaining them would have bled even more 'soft' left votes to National. It was the best he could do with the poor hand dealt to him. And, it resulted in a bare majority for the right-wing coalition – rather than an outright clear-cut one.

        There is already at least one hard left party in Parliament (GP) – the difficulty they have is that they have very little actual working class support (mostly middle class, and upwards – just look at the electorates they gain the most vote from) If (and it's a very big if) they can attract this, they can potentially become the dominant left wing party. However, I don't see any realistic attempt to do so – and they are hampered by the unions being welded to Labour.

        There seems very little prospect of a true socialist (whatever that might look like in the 21st century) party gaining any traction, let alone parliamentary presence.

        • Karolyn_IS 8.1.1.1
          18 August 2024 at 12:53 pm

          I see the GP as being more liberal than left. They have some very good policies that left wingers can get behind, however, their principles, values etc show they don't have a structural analysis of inequalities and power dynamic. Though I think some of their members and MPs do have a structural analysis.

          They focus their appeal a lot on students, many of whom are middle class or from low income backgrounds while aspiring towards being middle class. The GP's liberal approach probably is why strategically they are pretty poor: don't have strategies to counter the society economic power of the ruling classes.

          • weka 8.1.1.1.1
            18 August 2024 at 6:53 pm

            The GP's liberal approach probably is why strategically they are pretty poor: don't have strategies to counter the society economic power of the ruling classes.

            That's an interesting idea, haven't heard it expressed in that way before. In what ways do you see them as strategically poor?

      • Karolyn_IS 8.1.2
        18 August 2024 at 12:20 pm

        The Labour membership had gained the right to have more say in electing the caucus leader during the Cunliffe era. However, there remained a clause that allowed caucus to choose the leader if a new one was needed in the run up to an election. The caucus grabbed the opportunity to use it when Little resigned.

        Then I understand the Ardern-led party, when in govt, changed the rules back to giving more weight to caucus.

        I guess Labour members really need to seize back the initiative again.

        • weka 8.1.2.1
          18 August 2024 at 12:27 pm

          that's my understanding, and am curious if the members have the power to seize the initiative again. The post is saying they don't.

  9. Binders full of women 9
    18 August 2024 at 6:43 am

    I was dropping my daughter at her takeaway job Friday night. Cold night..lots of homeless people…everyone else struggling with power and food prices. Hipkins comes on the radio…he's got 1 chance to give me a strong message to ponder over the weekend (maybe something like build 2 or 3 State owned dams)…and instead we get "we def need to put 10s of millions of state money into… Chch Cathedral " ffs who's advising him? Are they setting him up to fail? And endless Sausage roll pics on his instagram = pie 🥧 brain.

    • tc 9.1
      18 August 2024 at 9:11 am

      He couldnt get a strong message across in the GE campaign so aye aye captain steady as she goes….down.

    • Belladonna 9.2
      18 August 2024 at 11:53 am

      I'm firmly of the belief that not one $1 of public money should have gone into Christchurch cathedral.
      If the Anglican dioscese didn't want to repair it (and they didn't), and the city council didn't want to repair it (and they couldn't afford to), then those campaigning for the repair should have been invited to stump up the cost by public subscription.
      If all that failed (within a year or so) – the Dioscese (well, their insurers, actually) should have been allowed to remove it, and do what they pleased with the land (new cathedral, social housing, etc)

      • Muttonbird 9.2.1
        18 August 2024 at 12:50 pm

        This is what really dismays me about the right. Being conservative, you would think they'd be good at recognising the value of culture and tradition for identity and the national good.

        It makes sense to save what can be saved and for those who benefit to share the cost. New right theory though reduces the importance of shared and diversified culture in favour of an homogenous, hyper-pragmatic, secular individualism*.

        This is perhaps the biggest driver of division in the developed world.

        *You can see it in the not so sly dig at the Anglican Church for not abandoning their icons in order to stick to their knitting which apparently is to provide social housing wherever the government abdicates its responsibility and refuses to do so.

        • Belladonna 9.2.1.1
          18 August 2024 at 3:54 pm

          Perhaps you're mistaking Right for Centrist. The right are all in favour of heritage protection – it's a bulwark against the encroaching hoardes – and enables them to use price and zoning to keep them out.

          Note that the Anglican church *did not want to rebuild* the cathedral in its current form. It was way too large for their congregation, cost far too much in upkeep, and didn't meet the current church objectives (which, much as you don't seem to realize) are all around charity.

          https://newsroom.co.nz/2024/04/10/how-christchurch-got-sucked-into-an-eye-wateringly-expensive-cathedral-rebuild/

          It seems to me that al the loud voices around restoring it exactly as it was – were all from people who wanted someone else to pay for it.

          It amazes me that 'lefties' who are all in favour of removing heritage zoning from the inner city (because it's used to block low cost intensive housing – which it is) are also adamant that an infrequently used, expensive dinosaur of a building should be restored at vast cost.

          Can you give me one benefit that a rebuilt ChCh cathedral would offer to the working class?

          • Kat 9.2.1.1.1
            18 August 2024 at 6:24 pm

            Hope……………

          • Muttonbird 9.2.1.1.2
            18 August 2024 at 6:43 pm

            I'm specifically talking about the current government and their supporters, who in this case are not interested in heritage protection as far as the Christchurch Cathedral goes.

            There's a point where a rare example of gothic revival architecture becomes more than the needs of the local congregation. It was conceived 170 years ago and consecrated in 1881. There's fuck all standing in NZ from that time so maybe it's worth conserving in some form. Not least to soften the Christchurch concrete slab rebuild.

            None of your numerous comments on this forum seem remotely concerned with the working class so I assume this is a troll question.

            • Belladonna 9.2.1.1.2.1
              19 August 2024 at 10:27 am

              Just to be clear, in what is clearly a budget crunch (in the Government's opinion), you want scarce resourcing to be diverted to maintaining a 'cultural icon' rather than invested in something which practically makes people's lives better.

              Or is this just a convenient stick to beat the government with? (I should have thought they'd have given you plenty of other ammunition).

    • tWig 9.3
      18 August 2024 at 1:38 pm

      I agree with you completely. Labour can be making hay with a lot of bad government stories. Hipkins urgently needs media training, and a media team that give him good one-liners. McNulty hits it every time, as did Ardern when in opposition.

  10. Tiger Mountain 10
    18 August 2024 at 10:47 am

    In short, no–unless Rogernomics is finally repudiated and a few rule changes made to assert primacy of the ordinary membership over the “Parliamentary Wing”.

  11. TeWhareWhero 11
    18 August 2024 at 11:16 am

    Some musings on a very wet Sunday morning.

    The existence of a political “left”is vital to the maintenance of the appearance of liberal democracy. In essence, Neo-liberalism has dragged the fulcrum point of the political spectrum to the right so what was once mainstream left wing theory and praxis is now labelled far left, hard left, radical left, and what was once clearly right wing is seen as centrist. The effect is to pull what was always seen as far-right closer the apparently respectable middle ground.

    NLism sidelined the old red left, which always acted as both the brain and the conscience of the liberal left, and it bought off large sections of the latter with the beads and blankets of :
    a) a place in the numerically strengthened managerial, technocratic, professional strata whose status and remuneration were increased – and with that, their stake in the system;

    b) the granting of certain formal rights and increased social acceptance of previously proscribed or marginalised sections of society which allows the left-ish (many of them way more -ish than left) members of the coordinator class to feel better about their privilege, and to console themselves with the belief that they haven’t sold out because look – equal pay for women, criminalisation of marital rape, decriminalisation of homosexuality, indigenous rights, gay marriage, trans rights …

    Consider how many of the social advances that the left claim as victories over the past 4 decades have been granted under overtly Neo-liberal or NL compliant governments. All those formal rights and social advances are hugely important but do people really believe that if they posed any sort of existential threat to corporate capitalism they would be tolerated, much less enthusiastically embraced and promoted?

    As the ideologically-captured NZ Labour Party was passing a raft of socially progressive laws, and pushing for increased social tolerance, it was also neck-deep in moves to asset-strip the state, and to destroy or weaken the great working class collectives – trade unions, worker education associations, friendly societies etc – and institutions which protected the interests of working class people.

    In the UK those moves were spearheaded by the Tories and carried on by the LP under Blair & his successors.

    The attacks on both the red left and working class collectives and institutions, were in advancement of the push for increasing exploitation of the working class domestically, but much more so, in the parts of the world to which capital went in search of greater profits – not just in respect of lower wages and poorer conditions of employment, but also in relation to laxer health & safety laws and environmental controls.

    One of the clearest examples of how the iniquitous system works was in asbestos manufacture in which the UK was the main centre. Asbestos prohibition laws were first introduced in the mid-1980s. In 1985, the U.K. banned import and use of blue and brown asbestos; in 1992, some uses of chrysotile asbestos, which is considered less lethal than the other forms of asbestos, were also banned. As the countries of the developed world banned the domestic production which made some people rich, and thousands terminally ill, owners invested in manufacture in India which became and remains the world’s centre of asbestos production. They were attracted by not just the much lower pay rates, but the absence of health & safety and environmental laws – which has put potentially hundreds of thousands of Indian workers and their families at risk of mesothelioma. 2400 people still die annually in the UK from asbestos- related cancers so the rates in India for these slow-developing cancers will be massive.

    The Neo-lib Pale encompasses the ruling class, (the owners and controllers of capital & remnants of the old feudal order) and the well rewarded buffer class of politicians, managers, consultants, technocrats, ideologues, enforcers, etc. That leaves the majority of people, both inside the imperial bubbles, and far more so outside them, beyond the pale in every possible sense. It was very clever, in a fiendish sort of way.

    So… what to do? One of the things the old red left understood was the critical importance of worker education, of the coming together in a community to reach collective agreements on both principles and praxis, of creating a common sense of solidarity and purpose, and the building of a solid base of support as that is where a resistance movement’s strength lies.

    It's no accident that interest group politics, which sprang up inside the left initially to push for progress around issues related to sex and race, morphed into forms of identity politics which now trend in the direction of hyper-individualism and aspirational self-expression.

    As I do love an analogy – we've allowed a bunch of short-sighted maniacs to retain control of the locomotive which they're driving at full speed towards a cliff edge while we all argue with each other over who gets to sit where in the carriages.

    It's obvious that we must work together to decouple the locomotive but frankly, if some on the left can’t even see the insanity of such things as the off-label use, in gender dysphoric kids, of endocrine-disrupting, anti-cancer drugs dispensed by members of a medical-industrial complex which is wedded to a petrochemical industrial complex which is saturating the planet in literally tens of thousands of endocrine-disrupting chemicals, I’m afraid we’ll still be arguing over who sits where as we all plunge to our doom.

    • Baxtali 11.1
      18 August 2024 at 5:55 pm

      Spot on about the granting of formal rights and increased acceptance to and of marginalised communities by NL governments, who regarded these rights as mere baubles. We can see currently that these same rights, now more entrenched, are frightening the NL Atlas-funded horses, hence attempts to undercut and disestablish them. Especially for Māori. But also for people with disabilities, and for others who fought for a slice of the pie. All getting too uppity as resources get scarce. Incidentally my dad died from long exposure to asbestos in various factories he worked in. He lived until he was 90, though, but had a struggle through the final decade.

  12. Karolyn_IS 12
    18 August 2024 at 11:54 am

    Excellent analysis. Agree on the need for community education – closing it down was part of the neolib agenda.

    I did some WEA courses and some left wing community organised ones (in drafty church halls) in the UK, which was my introduction to Marxism and socialist feminism – thinking also of your earlier comment about the importance of Marxist reading groups.

    I had a friend there who said that there were a lot of faults with the likes of the SWP, but their reading groups and encouragement of reading left wing texts, gave young people a very good political education.

    I was one of many LGB people who weren't over-enthused with the whole gay marriage move. It didn't really tackle underlying homophobia. Paid parental leave benefits middle class women more than those on low incomes.

    In the digital age, group solidarity is harder to develop. Social media is constructed to prioritise and encourage individualistic, identitarian practices and attitudes. Blogs are a much better forum that don't incorporate so much of the neolib features. Also, offline meetings like the Sue Bradford one in the above post are valuable in creating a sense of community. I went to some of the conferences organise by Sue Bradford's ESRA organisation. Those sort of events are extremely useful.

    Agree totally with your last paragraph, TWW

    • TeWhareWhero 12.1
      18 August 2024 at 12:55 pm

      Given the role of religiously or state sanctioned marriage in the perpetuation of patriarchal family and wider power dynamics, and civil unions, it surprised me when some lesbians and gay men lobbied for the right to marry, even going as far as replicating patriarchal traditions like the bride wearing a white dress, veil etc.

      The drive to break society down to the level of the individual and then allow only reaggregations that either benefit, or do not threaten the socio-economic SQ was there from the beginning of NLism.

      Capitalism created the class of nominally free workers, legally free to enter into a contract to sell their labour. The progression into the era of the atomised and alienated individual has been enabled by technology.

      I remember back in the day being bemused by Bill Gates' vision of the gated community within which (affluent) people would live and work and play, their atomised lives both governed and cushioned by digital technology … it was the early vision of the Neo-Lib Pale.

      We have to find ways to make the technology work for us, not be slaves to it or victims of it. It needs to enable interpersonal and community connections, not replace them.

      • tWig 12.1.1
        18 August 2024 at 1:17 pm

        It may be you are looking only at the trappings of marriage and not the underlying legal benefits, such as recognition as nearest kin for medical and funeral decisions; joint ownership of assets; in some countries job benefits such as medical insurance and retirement payouts, etc.

        As to how people want to throw a party, that's up to them, surely?

        • Karolyn_IS 12.1.1.1
          18 August 2024 at 1:28 pm

          Those things could've been changed without going full in for marriage. Civil Unions were a better direction to go in for that.

          A lot of the changes in partnership laws – de facto, marriage, etc, is more to do with property rights, so that the state didn’t need to cater to individual court processes to sort out who got what when someone dies, or relationships break up.

        • TeWhareWhero 12.1.1.2
          18 August 2024 at 3:27 pm

          All of those things can be and now are guaranteed in other ways, such as a civil union. I'm not opposed to marriage – I've been married for over 40 years but we married because it was the easiest way back then to ensure all those things you mention (and to ensure I wasn't deported by the Thatcher government.)

          On one level gay marriage subverts the patriarchal heterosexual norm which is why the religious right hate it so much but I'm fascinated by why the traditional "white" wedding with all the patriarchal trappings is more popular than ever.

          • Visubversa 12.1.1.2.1
            18 August 2024 at 3:58 pm

            When my sweetie and I had our Civil Union we were determined that it had nothing to do with "marriage". Our invitations were very clear – this is not a wedding, nobody is giving anybody away, and there is definitely no Best Man!

            We wanted the security of sorting all the legal stuff out in one place – we had been together for 20 years, so a party was in order anyway.

      • tWig 12.1.2
        18 August 2024 at 1:27 pm

        Everything else you analyse, spot on.

  13. thinker 13
    18 August 2024 at 12:04 pm

    Unless it can guarantee to pull 5% of the vote or win an electorate seat, it will work against a left victory in 2026.

    Better to convince the middle that it’s in their interest to champion some of the more lefty causes.

    • weka 13.1
      18 August 2024 at 12:19 pm

      how did that go last October?

      • thinker 13.1.1
        18 August 2024 at 7:14 pm

        True, but last October there was a move against the left and a National party that was promising everybody everything, even when some of what it promised compromised some of the other things it was promising.

        I don't think that will be the case in 2026.

        I think your comment is essentially saying "If you do what always did, you'll always get what you had before", but that doesn't apply in politics.

        My earlier comment assumed that the left could get its message across to the people it is trying to persuade.

        • weka 13.1.1.1
          18 August 2024 at 7:32 pm

          fair enough. I just don't think a Hipkins Labour can do that. And it's not like Labour have to radical (we have the Greens for that), but fairly sensible and well received policies like a GCT are no brainers.

  14. Mike the Lefty 14
    18 August 2024 at 12:21 pm

    Its kind of drole that politicians still come up out terms like "working class", (squeezed) "middle class", "renting class", "beneficiary class" and a host of others.

    That is part of the problem.

    When you put people into classes there is a certain amount of polarisation and people believe that the "other classes" are out to steal their cookies, as is depicted by a certain cartoon that appears occasionally on The Daily Blog. Class is a notional concept in New Zealand, we have people who are rich, people who are comfortable and people who are poor – but they pretty much started off from either similar European roots or Maori tribes. Unlike Britain we don't have a history of feudalism and an entrenched economic class system.

    The Labour Party of today does not represent the working class because you could argue that there is no real working class anymore – everyone works to some degree, it is just that some have much better and higher paid jobs than others. Sure, some think they are more privileged than others, but that is due to their own vanity.

    I would argue that the Labour party should think about a new name. The word "labour" still conjures up images of people working manual jobs – cleaning, digging, mining, etc. etc. but our society is vastly vastly different from the times when labour parties began springing up in various parts of the world. Some successfully, some barely even got off the ground (like the US). Labour parties are inevitably regarded as left wing, and I wonder if anyone thinks our Labour party is still that.

    There is a lot more I could say on this but I have deliberately left my comments brief so I don't bore everyone to death.

    • Tracy Bee 14.1
      18 August 2024 at 2:28 pm

      I don't agree that classes aren't important in a New Zealand context. Part of the problem with the modern left is the deviation from class analysis towards identity politics.

      Sorry, but it's really screwed up what people now consider as leftist.

      We end up with bizarre situations where priviledge is negated because of a nebulous gender identity.

      e.g. Laurel Hubbard's gold at the Pacific Games and the fact the public wasn't outraged by it.

      Feagaiga Stowers and Luniana Sipaia just had to suck it up. There should have been mass protests.

  15. tWig 15
    18 August 2024 at 1:26 pm

    A pivotal read for me was a biography of MJ Savage. Savage was very aware of the need to educate the electorate, and had regular radio spots before becoming an MP, and after, at a time when radio was a very new mass medium. I guess the inverse of the talkback radio format that has transmuted into NZ's awful ZM "news" and commentary radio stations that push outrage porn and RW framing on a continuous loop.

  17. Patricia Bremner 17
    18 August 2024 at 5:11 pm

    It is not Hipkins or any of them, It is Atlas and all the billionaires money and power. They are holding all the positions of power, and they are using them without to much recourse to democracy. Lefties fighting over who is Left enough is food and drink to them. We do too much navel gazing, instead of regrouping and creating a framework for people to hang their hat on. We have to sell some ideas which voters feel they can relate to and believe in.

  18. KJT 18
    19 August 2024 at 8:07 am

    No. Hasn't been possible since the ACT party take over since 1984.

    Anything more socialist than that ever since, is considered "too radical"!

  19. Descendant Of Smith 19
    19 August 2024 at 8:22 am

    No it's why many of us switched to the Greens who at least had decent welfare policies.

    • Michael who failed Civics 19.1
      19 August 2024 at 1:10 pm

      Precisely. Labour stopped representing people outside the PSA many years ago. It cannot reform itself. It is not worth reforming by outsiders.

  20. Darien Fenton 20
    19 August 2024 at 9:32 am

    As long as I can remember we have had a Socialist Workers Party in some form. I don't think they contest elections any more. Yep there was the Alliance, and the meltdown that happened but I would hardly call that radical left. The Greens do well in middle class urban areas, but I don't think Sue Bradford is a member anymore. Certainly Gareth Hughes isn't. Then we had the Mana Party and alliance with the Internet Party, paid for by billionaire Kim Dotcom. If you go further back in Labour, there was John A Lee who famously failed to successfully challenge the leadership of MJ Savage and Peter Fraser. And if anyone ever read Sonia Davie's biography, you will see she was expected to wash the sox of Norman Kirk. For those who can be bothered please read the NZLP constitution and rules. We've had open leadership contests on two recent occasions : first was when David Cunliffe won on his platform of being “more left” and took Labour to a whole 24% result in the election ; second was when Andrew Little won and at least had the humility to stand down as Labour was staring at yet another defeat. Finally, this is MMP. The first three years of a Labour government relied on votes from NZ First where Winston was again DPM. I know NZF blocked a lot of progress, particularly on workers' rights which couldn't be changed until the outright win of Labour in 2020. I guess I am just saying, know your history.

  21. Tom Hunter 21
    19 August 2024 at 10:46 am

    This post has ideas for making Socialism a political winner but the history it then tells suggest that those ideas don't work. Sanders? Corbyn? They both ultimately failed, as has every "radical left" movement inside mainstream Western Left parties.

    And when they've gone out on their own they've also failed, even in the face of things like Rogernomics.

    And that's before we get to the failure of Socialist theory in practice, even in its watered down forms of mere increases in taxation, especially wealth taxes and such, plus massive increases in state spending and state ownership.

    And then things like this happen:

    Since Millei’s repeal of rent control laws took effect on December 29, the supply of rental housing in Buenos Aires has jumped by 195.23%, according to the Statistical Observatory of the Real Estate Market of the Real Estate College (CI).

    • weka 21.1
      19 August 2024 at 2:44 pm

      why did Corbyn 'fail'?

      • SPC 21.1.1
        19 August 2024 at 3:28 pm

        Disunity in the party, including a deliberate effort to undermine their party success while he was leader. Our ABC period (2014) was mild in comparison.

        This was in concert with a wider (media campaign) effort to pose his leadership and his supporters as anti-Semitic.

        • weka 21.1.1.1
          19 August 2024 at 4:22 pm

          his is my understanding too, so it's not so much that socialism failed, as it was monkeywrenched.

          • Darien Fenton 21.1.1.1.1
            19 August 2024 at 5:54 pm

            No people didn't vote for him in large enough numbers to win the government benches. It is simple really and to suggest it was a jackup by Labour at the time is suggesting that all of those Labour people in the UK who supported him, who campaigned for him were looking for a defeat. Jezza is old news now.

            • weka 21.1.1.1.1.1
              19 August 2024 at 6:06 pm

              that doesn't make sense. Of course they weren't looking for defeat. But it wasn't up to them.

              If half the party that hated him were trying to undermine and destroy him, who wants to vote for a party doing that?

            • TeWhareWhero 21.1.1.1.1.2
              19 August 2024 at 7:58 pm

              The fact that he won his seat despite the right of the party he'd devoted his life to doing its very best to defeat him, aided and abetted by the media which had played a massive role in Labour's defeat when he was leader, hardly makes him old news.

              With regard to why he didn't win an election, I had never seen as overt a demonisation of a Labour Party leader or trade union leader as vicious as the propaganda campaign waged against him; it was worse than the attacks on Michael Foot and Arthur Scargill and I thought the rightwing UK press had reached the bottom of their foul-smelling old barrel with them.

              The allegations of anti-semitism (ie his decades' old commitment to Palestinian rights) were a major factor as was the divisiveness of the Tories' 2016 announcement of a review of the GRA to allow for sex self identification by statutory declaration.

      • KJT 21.1.2
        20 August 2024 at 7:53 am

        Corbyn was a threat to the comfortable UK establishment and the tweedledee tweedledum arrangement where you can change the rulers every few years but only tinker around the edges with policy.

        Just like some of our NZ politicians who actually try and make changes that benefit the majority over the wealthy oligarchs.

        They are only allowed short political lives as the "system" reacts violently to remove the "infection".

        You only have to look at the orchestrated backlash against the Adern/Robinson Government when we had such a strong and positive example of the “power of the State to do good”. That could not be allowed to continue! The personal attacks, paid propaganda and volume of bullshit directed at what was comparably mild Government intervention is unprecedented since the 1050’s.

    • SPC 21.2
      19 August 2024 at 3:39 pm

      And that's before we get to the failure of Socialist theory in practice, even in its watered down forms of mere increases in taxation, especially wealth taxes and such, plus massive increases in state spending and state ownership.

      A nation without a CGT or estate tax will not just be developing a class divide, it will also be lacking the funds for infrastructure investment. This lack would lead to both dependence on global utilities corporations and investment funds and poor performance in public health and education – as well as a lack of social housing.

      Since Millei’s repeal of rent control laws took effect on December 29, the supply of rental housing in Buenos Aires has jumped by 195.23%, according to the Statistical Observatory of the Real Estate Market of the Real Estate College (CI).

      Difficult economic times lead to fundraising – such as the pawning of goods, renting out of rooms/taking in boarders as well.

    • KJT 21.3
      20 August 2024 at 7:45 am

      Funny how Western countries have been more successful, the more "socialist" they have been.

      The 80% taxes on millionaires , the new deal and the GI bill in the USA, for example.

      How is the regression to rule by oligarchs, austerity and removal of workers rights and social welfare going?

      Much of the USA now resembles a third world rather than a first World country. Without the worlds biggest “socialist” enterprise, the US military, redistributing income to poor and middle class soldiers, who would otherwise be unemployed, the USA would be a total basket case.

      In Aotearoa also we have a coalition of fools and puppets heading us downhill towards similar social and economic disintegration, so a few can profit, as fast as they think they can get away with it.

    • joe90 21.4
      20 August 2024 at 7:24 pm

      , the supply of rental housing in Buenos Aires has jumped by 195.23%

      Where did these newly available rental units come from?

      Were they vacant because the rent control discouraged rentals?

      Did landlords evict a shed load of long term tenants?

  22. Tom Hunter 22
    20 August 2024 at 1:43 pm

    You actually think people paid 80% tax? In fact from the start there were hundreds of tax credits to get around it since nobody would pay. Kennedy's team were the first to reduce the highest income tax rates, which were around 90%, because they realised that would increase tax revenue.

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