NZ First needs new message for 2020
WINSTON PETERS will bank the latest One News/Colmar Brunton poll results with a broad grin. Registering a party vote of 4% with 18 months still to go until the next election, his NZ First Party is handily placed. Indeed, if history is any guide, it is very comfortably placed. NZ First has more than once started its election campaign from a much less promising base. Peters will be confident that if he sets out on the campaign trail with 4% in his pocket, then he is good for 6%, at least, on the day.
The only dark clouds looming over this otherwise sunny horizon are the political limitations imposed upon Peters and his party by the Christchurch mosque shootings. Before the tragic events of 3/15, the NZ First playbook was stuffed with all manner of populist recipes for electoral success. ‘‘Asian Invasion!’’ The ‘‘dark underbelly’’ of Islamic extremism. ‘‘Sickly white liberals’’ pandering to the radical demands of ‘‘Maori separatism’’. Nobody excelled at this sort of wedge politics like Peters, and his efforts on the stump were almost always enough to lift NZ first above the 5% MMP threshold — with room to spare.
But not in 2020. The Prime Minister, Jacinda Ardern, having won the approbation of the civilised world for her handling of the Christchurch mosque shootings, can hardly be seen to campaign alongside the South Seas equivalent of Hungary’s Victor Orban!
Not that the PM needs to worry too much about NZ First. If the latest One News/Colmar Brunton poll is correct, then Labour and the Greens (polling 48% and 6% respectively) would enjoy a comfortable majority of eight seats in the new House of Representatives.
She will worry, though. Because the Greens have lurched dangerously far to the left since the Christchurch tragedy, and the PM will be wondering just how far her putative coalition partner intends to travel in that direction. Much better, from Labour’s perspective, to retain the luxury of having a coalition partner to its right — as well as a supply and confidence ally to its left. That way, if the Greens veer too far into the long grass of Maori nationalism and antiimperialist Europhobia, the PM and her colleagues can turn with some relief to the ever reliable Mr Peters and NZ First.
It is an arrangement that certainly contributed to the longevity of John Key’s ministry. What he could not get from the Maori Party, he could always get from Act and United Future. Having options is of immense political comfort, and only a foolish prime minister unnecessarily limits them.
But if his traditional reliance on all the usual populist suspects has been ruled out by ‘‘events, dear boy, events’’, then on what should Peters rely in 2020?
He could do a lot worse than to take NZ First right back to basics.
Peters’ party, like Jim Anderton’s Alliance, was born out of the deep sense of betrayal experienced by the members and followers of the two major parties when they found themselves enrolled involuntarily in a radical economic and social experiment which they detested. Peters presented himself to the enemies of ‘‘Rogernomics’’ and ‘‘Ruthanasia’’ as the purveyor of a moderate and decent conservatism.
That is a political elixir which still, even quarter of a century later, finds many takers. Especially in the unusual electoral context of a moderate and decent conservatism in alliance with a
❛ The only dark clouds looming over this otherwise sunny horizon are the political limitations imposed upon Peters and his party by the Christchurch mosque shootings.
moderate and decent party of social democrats.
Peters’ crucial insight in the aftermath of the 2017 election, was that New Zealanders are a very peculiar — not to say ideologically contradictory — mixture of social conservatism, economic radicalism and sentimental egalitarianism; and that far from being outlandish, a coalition of Labour and NZ First, supported by the Greens, was likely to satisfy a great many more of the electorate’s longings than a NationalNZ First government.
This was the thinking behind Peters’ musings about the failings of capitalism which preceded his announcement that NZ First would be going with Labour in 2017. It informs the ‘‘compassionate conservatism’’ which the most thoughtful of rightwing thinkers long ago identified as the royal road to electoral success.
It is also, once all the anger and resentment is stripped away, what lies at the heart of populist politics.
In short, it represents NZ First’s best hope of returning in 2020.
Chris Trotter is a political commentator.