Jordan on Labour
December 4th, 2011 at 11:00 am by David FarrarJordan Carter has a thoughtful piece on Labour and the Labour leadership. An extract:
In the wake of Labour’s most serious election defeat since the 1920s, a comprehensive and critical re-examination of almost all of what Labour’s politics is about is an absolute necessity for our party.
On the table must be our policy, our campaigning, our organisation from branch to national level, our candidate selection, our structure, our communications, our tone, the way the parliamentary party works, what the staff do in the party and in parliament, and on it goes.
I think Jordan is right in that the leadership is only one aspect that needs reviewing. I’ve written before about what National did in 2002 with an independent review.
We have to start with acknowledging what happened to us on 26 November.
We got hammered.
There are no two ways about it.
The result is worse than in 1996, which should have been impossible given that that result followed the three-way split of the 1980s Labour Party.
It is a comprehensive rejection of Labour as a party fit to lead the government.
I know it as a candidate. There was none of the anger of 2008 directed at us. Instead there was simply indifference. People were sure we weren’t ready for the job. Second time in a row.
We must face that defeat, own it as an organisation, acknowledge it, and be ready to take some hard choices about how to refound our party and our movement to win.
It’s that big a deal. A positive and upbeat four week campaign does not erase the fact of failure, and nor must it be allowed to disguise how far we have fallen and how much work we have to do.
First and most profoundly, Labour has to work out again what electorate it wishes to appeal to. Who are the 50-60% of New Zealanders we want to have open to voting for us, from which we can draw 40-50% of the vote at general elections?
Secondly, we need with hard data and through open and engaged listening, to work out why it is that so many of those groups who used to be open to us are not now listening, and just don’t care what we stand for or say.
Labour could do worse than put Jordan on the review team. Having said that, the review team should ideally have some external people on it. An internal review can only do so much.
Related posts:
- Salient interviews Jordan Carter
- Jordan on Labour’s future
- Jordan vs Roger
- Unions gain vote on Labour leader
December 4th, 2011 at 11:24 am
The Labour Party is an organised conspiracy to betray the average worker.
It’s sole purpose is to organise and legalise the plundering by largely state-sector unions and to fulfill the authoritarian dreams of those who seek to control others.
The World would be a far better place without Labour and its MPs.
Vote:December 4th, 2011 at 11:40 am
The Labour party’s used by date has finally come. They are no longer needed to combat the poor working conditions of decades past. New Zealand has grown up now and doesn’t need envy politics to tarnish it’s landscape. The current National party has evolved into the peoples’ party of New Zealand, so Labour now is really a die-hard fringe party of media hacks and dinosaur unionists.
Vote:December 4th, 2011 at 11:41 am
Really? I’d have to say that Jordan Carter is the last person who should be conducting such a review because – aside from his history of expounding very traditional leftist beliefs (more taxes!)- when he utters bullshit such as …
… he himself sounds like someone desperately in need of some self-examination.
Vote:December 4th, 2011 at 11:43 am
Labour had a very well oiled campaign machine and lost handsomely, because the message was wrong, and their messengers weren’t trusted by voters.
There is no way Labour will regain the treasury benches when Trevor Mallard is seen as a major force within the party. Ditto other unpleasant faces like Darien Fenton, Carol Beaumont, Charles Chauvel and Carmel Sepuloni.
Imagine how very different the middle classes would view Labour if Labour had said;
“We accept we are in a period of belt-tightening. We accept the need for welfare reform and budget savings. Vote for us to make sure no-one gets left behind”
Until Labour are prepared to confront some of the massive policy excesses from their Clark Government, and are prepared to acknowledge that interventionist and expansionist government doesn’t mean the same thing, then they won’t gain office anytime soon.
Vote:December 4th, 2011 at 11:49 am
@DPF – yes, Labour could do worse than having Jordan Carter on the review of Labour’s failure.
They could have Chris Flatt, Trevor Mallard, Darien Fenton and other prominent stooges.
If they had any brains, they’d ask the Mad Butcher.
Vote:December 4th, 2011 at 12:05 pm
The Labour Party have achieved NOTHING in the last 3 years to win back Government. They have suffered the most comprehensive defeat ever so they start again this time under fresh leadership. But that old guard now think they can hold the strings through David Shearer. I though he was the coming man but his uncertain performance on TV causes me to think again. If the Labour Party want a fresh start it has to be Cunliffe. The fact that the old guard have lined up behind an uncertain David Shearer must cause those wanting real change to give Cunliffe a second look.
Vote:December 4th, 2011 at 12:07 pm
The first thing that party must do is recognise that they cant pay themselves $130,000 plus per annum, have a gold plated Super scheme, non taxable allowances of $40,000 plus, other perks *and* claim to represent the poor and low paid.
JC
Vote:December 4th, 2011 at 12:11 pm
As an addendum to my point about Jordan (and other Labour members?) not actually being ready or able to conduct a review is that his list sounds awfully mechanical, in the sense that only one of the things to be questioned is policy. Everything else is the infrastructure of a political party needed to put those policies in place via election wins.
Even when it does come to policy I get the distinct impression (born of decades of steadily building cynicism about politics) that what he really means is that the same ideas just have to be packaged better. Perhaps it’s too much to ask of Labour to really question the driving principals that produce those ideas and hence policies, but when the world changes …..?
Vote:December 4th, 2011 at 12:13 pm
Jordan is right about Labour needing to decide what part of the electorate it stands for.
And it aint the unions! The reality is that most thinking NZers view the unions as stand-over bully boys not much different from the Mongrel Mob or Mafia. The death-knell of this campaign happened when Goff committed to reintroducing 1960-s style national awards which would cost the whole communityh except the union officials. Dumb, dumb, dumb.
Maybe they should begin with a change of name. Heresy? Perhaps, but maybe the word “labour” with the hard slog and muscle it evokes is an alien concept in today’s automated world.
If the Party was a business reeling from such a PR catastrophe, that would be a rational response.
Vote:December 4th, 2011 at 12:33 pm
Carter in proposing root and branch reform of the Labour Party reinforces the point that the last 3 years in opposition achieved nothing at all.
Vote:December 4th, 2011 at 12:34 pm
It’s good that a fact – the percentage vote – has forced at least one Labour person to refer back to the world of the 1920′s. Being forced to delve that far back into the past because of one piece of evidence might cause them to analyse how other aspects of our world have changed since then. The results could be quite impressive if any actual thinking is involved.
The reason I argue for Labour to apply a deeper, more existential level of analysis to themselves than what I think Jordan is proposing, is that other people outside of the NZ Labour Party are asking similar questions about the lack of appeal of left-wing political parties world-wide. And if being forced into such thinking results in ideas and policies that speak to people’s needs better than Labour’s, the party will have far greater problems on its hands than candidate selection, organisation and messaging.
Some of this was pointed out in the thread Why did Labour drop to an 85 year low and I made a couple of points towards the end that bear repeating – in separate comments.
Vote:December 4th, 2011 at 1:02 pm
Anyway, I really cant be bothered with Labour at the moment because I think the Party that has the most work to do is National.. no way will it get away with running a presidential style election in three years time. Frankly I hated it and felt that Bill English was vastly under utilised. Forget all that bullshit about him being uninspiring.. the public *knows* we are in a tricky economic climate and it wants to see that steady hand on the tiller, the Southern Man who was so bloody good in Parliament taking down the Clark Govt and hardly put a foot wrong after his expenses issue.
The public needed to see the confident fixer Joyce talking about *partial* asset sales and the need for the public to have investment opportunities.
Key has to step back now and let his team do more of the talking.. for English to be on the TV every week talking about the economy warts and all and for all Ministers putting out the press releases.. they all need to be seen to be working and doing stuff.
National will be in Opposition in three years if that team isn’t more visible.
JC
Vote:December 4th, 2011 at 1:03 pm
This result as been decades in the making. You cannot create a political party whose activist base (unionists, gays, childless feminists) represents maybe 15% of the population at best. Darien Fenton thought organizing a boycott against the Mad Butcher was cool because she only talks to the 15%. When the attitudes, policies and strategies of this 15% permeate your party’s culture then its next to impossible to come up with policies that appeal to 40-45% of the population, to select people who look like middle NZ and then expect middle NZ to vote for you. What is wrong with Labour is encapusulated by the almost bottom of the list ranking offered (but rejected) by Damien O’Connor because he’s a white, heterosexual, pro life practising Catholic male of 50 – a demograph that Labour used to have about an 80% lock on. His election as an electorate candidate running on that life experience shows us that only by avoiding modern Labour and its leader and policies can that type of candidate succeed.
In my activist days in the Labour Party there was a large group of small business owners (dairy owners, plumbers, courier drivers etc) who found a home in Labour because it was capitalism with a conscience. Over the last 20 years the current activist core, at the behest of Clark, Street, Dyson and the neutred and angry men around them (Mallard, Benson Pope, Carter, Cunliffe), drove the pretty much all away leaving Labour as the party of South Auckland (the ones who haven’t moved to Australia), beneficiaries and the ‘trade union actvists and gaggle of gays’.
For the first three decades after the passage of the Social Security Act of 1938 Labour stood for and encouraged a version of John Key’s life story – the state house and DPB as a temporary help up out of poverty to a new generation who would succeed. Their unvarnished disdain for Key’s aspirational rags to riches story, their visceral and distasteful scaremongering about beneficiary work requirements and their threat to repeal the 3 strikes law show how far Labour have fallen from its core values, how far they have strayed from the aspirations of middle New Zealand and why they were so handsomely trounced.
Vote:December 4th, 2011 at 1:14 pm
Labour should be trying to represent 100% of NZers. Obviously they will never get 100% of the vote, but they will languish in the 20% to 35% range if they are preceived to be the party that pits half the country against the other half. Labour’s campaign sounded like class warfare–taxing the rich and subsidising the poor. That just isn’t going to fly. I don’t think many NZers want that kind of government. Labour needs to become a unifying rather than divisive force.
Vote:December 4th, 2011 at 1:21 pm
To be honest, IMHO, they still dont get it, not even slightly. Doesn’t really mater who wins, the party itself will see that as enough, and just try again. There isnt the will to actually say, you know what, we screwed up, lets admit it and change, fundamentally chnage.
They are putting lipstick on a pig. Shes still a pig. In lipstick.
Vote:December 4th, 2011 at 1:32 pm
The point that this is not just a problem for the NZ Labour party – it’s hitting all left-wing parties and groups across the West. Take a look at thee quotes from a recent article in the Democrats house journal, the NYT:
Amazing – and yet not surprising. One right-winger writer, Moe Lane, finds this admission more than a little astounding, not to mention the fact that the NYT is so blase about the apparent dumping overboard of a formerly large cohort of their voting base:
KIA makes reference to the fact that this has been coming for decades, but the reason for the left’s shift to such a voting base has as much to do with the failure of it’s traditional approach as to the influx of the 60′s New Left – something that people like Trotter still don’t recognise,
I think it would be fair to say that the shift dates back at least to the same, traditional, left-wing approach having been on life support here in NZ since the 1980′s – despite Clake and Cullen’s best tissue-paper wound dressing – and that the overwhelming belief of Left-wing activists is that it should, and can be, restored.
That’s why the point that is just as interesting as the acknowledgement that the “New Deal” is dead, is Moe’s question: What were the Democrats planning to replace it with? He goes on to explain:
Does that not sound exactly like Labour in NZ, judging by their 2011 election campaign? Moreover, Moe’s next comment perhaps explains their failure, and also answers the question that the Dim Post asked:
Of course, in the case of the US, the most recent driver for this approach is the re-election of Obama – …which is something that poor African-American and rich liberal voters both wish to do… – but what happens after 2016 for the rest of the Democrat Party?
Perhaps NZ Labour has already pointed the way towards such a disaster, but not yet the solution?
Vote:December 4th, 2011 at 1:48 pm
Shearer will be portrayed by the media as the new O’bama. They will fete him (see the weekend papers already) as the new Messiah of New Zealand politics.
Vote:Let’s hope he does not follow O”bama – fizz and burn, with disloyal assistants.
December 4th, 2011 at 2:39 pm
Apart from last weekend, at only 1 election since 1925 (the 1996 election) was the Labour percentage of the votes too low for Carter to have entered Parliament; he was at number 40 so 34% of the votes would have done it.
This is the same Jordan Carter who famously once blogged that he was opposed to all trade and considered it immoral?
The same Jordan Carter who cynically moved to Wellington to he could suck up to power brokers in person to get a high list placing?
The same Jordan Carter who would have been elected to Parliament at 26 of the 27 elections between 1928 and 2008?
If so I think last Saturday was a lucky escape for the NZ people; with candidates of this quality you do not have to set up a review committee to ascertain why Labour did so badly.
Vote:December 4th, 2011 at 3:18 pm
When you have a front runner for the Labour leadership threatening to re-nationalize companies, the ideological problem Labour has is immense. The trouble is that any honest assessment of what went wrong will show that Labour can only garner more than 40% of the vote by winning back middle NZ after a major jettisoning of the politics of envy and the policies that flow from it. But any lurch to the centre and purging of left leaning unionist types (as proposed by Trotter, Armstrong, Slater et al) will simply see the left deserting to the Greens, Mana or a new New Labour – such is the reality with MMP.
Labour is ideologically squeezed between a resergent, better organized and increasingly more savvy Green Party (or Mana for the Minto/Bradford hard left types) and National who, under Key, has sprawled across the entire centre of NZ politics with a sizeable chunk of the right to boot. If Labour tries to out-socialist the Greens/Mana, they risk leaking even more votes to National and if they try and out National National, their left leaning Maori base (outside of Tainui) leaves to Mana and the progressive wing goes to the Greens.
The activist core of Labour won’t go without a fight. If there is a frank and honest review (of the type Jordan proposes), who will do the purging? Labour’s head office has all the power particularly the power to steer a Conference with respect to Constitutional amendments. The unions wont give up their power without a fight. Their current block voting power could be used to block or defeat amendments aimed at weakening their power. Turkey’s don’t vote for an early Christmas. Clark and the sisterhood knew what they were doing when the drove out the more small c conservative centrist activists in the party – their fellow travellers have absolute control at every level of the party barring a tiny handful of electorates where there are enough paid up party members to give the local LEC equal representation on any selection panel.
Regardless of which David wins, this will be one long messy show with lots of ‘pass-the-popcorn’ moments!
Vote:December 4th, 2011 at 6:32 pm
When the West Coast goes party vote National, you know Labour is in deep shit.
I was talking to a miner on the coast recently, and I was surprised by the extent to which he clearly loathed Labour and all it currently stood for. I doubt his opinion was an isolated one, workers down there tend to share the political opinions of the people they work and mix with.
Vote:December 4th, 2011 at 7:13 pm
I think this is just cyclical. Labour’s policies haven’t changed that much, perception of those policies has. People want to see renewal, they want to see blood letting.
It was the same with National. Their policies haven’t changed much over the last 12-15 years. The people implementing them have. They’ve always been pretty centre and steady as she goes types, but under English and then Brash the media painted them as far right ideologues, and they got no traction. Under Key, with the same policies, they’re doing well. Some of that is because Key has a very good style about him, and he refuses to be coached. So he always comes across as the real thing, irrespective of whether that is good or bad. People like genuine.
In a funny way, Helen was similar. She again always came across as Helen – they tried a few times to coach her, but she always went back to being Helen. I disliked her policies intensely, but at least you knew what you were getting. I think it puts the media off their stride a bit when you just tell it like it is, say what you believe. They find it hard to pick at the edges when you actually believe what you’re saying.
Anyway, bottom line is that I reckon Labour need a bit of time, a bit of theatre showing that they’re rebuilding, reconsidering, put some lipstick on those policies and tell the media they’re new (not like the media can tell the difference), and then wait for the cycle to roll around. If they get too frantic they could kill the party entirely – leave room for another party to sneak in. They need to hold their place in the spectrum….
Vote:December 4th, 2011 at 9:46 pm
Jordan is one of the thinkers in the Labour Party. Perhaps he should forget the tribalism and think about joining Team Green. I suspect he would fit in rather well.
Vote:December 4th, 2011 at 10:28 pm
Toad
Why would Jordan join the Greens?, you people do not allow free speech or free thought.
Vote:December 5th, 2011 at 7:28 am
It is a fundamental problem with Labour. KIA is exactly right when he says that without people who understand how the productive sector works (i.e. people who have actually worked in a real job and preferably several who have run a business) then they cannot possibly understand or present themselves as a viable alternative to a significant proportion of NZ’ers.
When Key first came into National he unnerved them. Part of the reason why is because they simply had no one who could understand his mindset. I was sometimes bemused watching their fumbling approach to unsettle him (which I’m sure they put a lot of thought into) but in reality was a bunch of secondary schoolers trying to outfox a varsity student.
In my view it is also the reason why they still don’t get it. I think they are finally getting past the denial stage, but are mystified as to why people didn’t vote for them.
Vote: