Dunne: political centre necessary
Around the world, millions of voters are feeling angry and left behind – thanks to changes in the workplace and the impact of new technology, immigration and changing moral attitudes.
It is easy to see why people might conclude that this is a bad time to be Peter Dunne, and the leader of a centrist party such as United Future. Does he feel that way? True, Dunne replies, this is a crunch time for liberal politicians and parties.
The likes of Brexit suggest to him that the style of government pursued in the past 30 years has essentially failed.
‘‘Yet given the nastiness that’s starting to appear around immigration and around minorities, there is also a place for reasserting the temporarily unpopular values, about principle and integrity.’’
Really? But isn’t even former British PM Tony Blair saying that the political centre has lost its power to persuade?
‘‘I think that’s true. That’s part of the challenge. The political centre - which has tended to be the moderator and the balancer - is temporarily perceived as being the problem.
‘‘[It’s] an environment where there is an ‘up you’ mentality [to government] and people want a simple solution – in or out.’’
Real life solutions, he adds, aren’t so simple.
For now, Dunne agrees that United Future is located somewhere between the right wing extremists, who blame everything on the immigrants, and the left wing extremists, who blame everything on the bankers. Both extremes are hostile to globalisation.
In Dunne’s view, his natural constituency isn’t the aggrieved, but the people who oppose the polarising attitudes and actions of the aggrieved. Fine. But which group is bigger?
‘‘I don’t know the answer,’’ Dunne replies.
‘‘You can say the aggrieved are in the ascendancy, so therefore all is doom and gloom. But because of the polarisation this creates, other voices now need to re-assert themselves.’’
Maybe. Yet in this country, New Zealand First is seen as having a virtual lock on the protest vote. So what can Dunne offer to those voters that Winston Peters can’t?
‘‘I don’t think I can necessarily offer much to those voters, because we start from different perspectives.
‘‘The group of people I’m offering substance to are the group who feel that we need to pull back from the abyss at the moment, and that this ‘to hell in a hand- cart’ mentality has got to be stopped.’’
Ultimately, he’s not engaging with Peters’ supporters at all.
‘‘That group is essentially saying that everything that has happened in the past 30 years has left me behind.’’
Brexit in Britain and the rise of Donald Trump strike him as part of the same process.
‘‘Yet if we give in to the aggrieved we’ll have a pretty nasty society in terms of its atti- tudes to various minorities,’’ he says. ‘‘If you give in to the aggrieved you won’t make any form of progress, and we will become a very narrow, very insular kind of place. ‘‘
Since Brexit, he’s heard, the centrist British LiberalDemocrats have signed up 15,000 new members - cause for optimism.
The political centre still strikes Dunne as necessary, now and in the longer term.