2025: a forgettable year
A year when principles got thrown out the window.
For the Left, 2025 was not as bad as expected, in part thanks (perversely) to Donald Trump whose second term has upended everything – not least for Greenlanders.
Centre-left parties that had been struggling in the polls were returned to office in elections in Australia, Canada and Norway, as voters rejected contenders who were even vaguely associated with Trump. And progressive mayors were elected in New York and Seattle. On the other hand, things aren’t going well for UK Labour, who are polling below 20% now, trailing well behind Reform who are up around 30ish.
Incidentally, my most-read post in 2025 seems to have been this one:
The readers’ poll and comments showed strongly divided opinions about this possible coalition.
Or is it now an impossible coalition? That post was in the middle of the year. Since then, Te Pāti Māori went into meltdown, and Labour leader Chris Hipkins distanced his party from them. One of the two MPs expelled from Te Pāti Māori, Mariameno Kapa-Kingi, won an interim injunction against party president John Tamihere, thus allowing her to attend the party’s conference. It was extraordinary that a court had to be asked to make a ruling on a political party’s misbehaviour.
TPM’s radical policies, nepotistic leadership and dysfunctional internal politics have turned them into a pariah. No one will be able or willing to work with them in government at this rate. Their polling dropped from highs (often over 5%) at the beginning of the year during the Treaty Principles debate, and they’re now down around 2%.
TPM’s self-inflicted decline means it can’t be assumed any longer that Election 2026 is simply a drag-race between Labour/Green/TPM and National/NZF/ACT.
Labour’s polling over the course of 2025 went gradually up, and they’re now leading National more often than not, but only narrowly. They’re not in pole position to win an election at the moment. They won’t have liked one recent poll that had them on 28%, but that may be an outlier.
The scandal-prone Greens did well in that same poll, but on average they’re a bit below their last election result of 11.6%.
For the Right in New Zealand, it’s been an eminently forgettable year. At this stage in the cycle, Luxon & Co ought to be doing well in the polls – but they’re not. The National Party is polling in the low 30s, and the numbers can’t give them much confidence that the coalition would retain their majority in an election, if held tomorrow. It was Luxon’s bad luck to get into office as the economy was hitting the bottom of a cycle. He’ll be asking Santa for an economic miracle in 2026. Naturally there’ve been rumours that he’ll be rolled. There have also been calls from some influential people on the Right for Nicola Willis to step aside as finance minister.
NZ First are often below 5% in polls in mid-term, especially when they’re propping up a government, but they’re bucking that trend with numbers up around 9%, above their 6% election result.
ACT is not so buoyant, around 8%, just below their last election result.
The Opportunities Party has a new leader, Qiulae Wong, and that may have given them a boost to 2.5% in one recent poll. Can they (ever) make it to 5%?
For everyone, though, it would be a good time for some non-partisan reflection about why things aren’t going well for New Zealand and what can be done about it. It’s not just the long-term lag in economic productivity that’s a worry, there are also unresolvable divisions about the constitution.
2025 began with an intense and yet fruitless debate about the principles of the Treaty of Waitangi, thanks to a clause in a coalition agreement that had allowed the introduction of a Bill that was never meant to be passed.
While it’s normal for the political year to begin at Ratana and Waitangi, 2025 was outstanding, as the debate about the Treaty Principles Bill took up most available political airtime. This debate achieved nothing, however. The underlying constitutional impasse about the nation’s historical foundation and about the contemporary interpretation of the Treaty remains unresolved. Political leaders on the Right started this debate but then the entire political class determinedly refused to help end it, leaving it to simmer for the next time. No one even wanted to resolve it: legislators and commentators were more invested in being self-righteous than in finding consensus. Entrenched political positions meant that the Great Big Treaty Debate was only put on pause. When will it restart?
2025 saw one more turn of the screw that’s fastening the country to its traumatic past.
The year staggered to a close with scandal over the misconduct of former deputy police commissioner Jevon McSkimming. It’s a tale too Byzantine to recount right now, but readers who’ve not been following it can find a summary here. The only good news I can dredge up from this is the fact that the IPCA did a strongly worded report.
Commentators on the left and the right seized upon it with glee. Both sides generalised, groundlessly claiming it showed that the system as a whole was “corrupt”. For once, there was agreement on something, even though it had to be dredged up from the swamp. The IPCA report, however, didn’t say there was any corruption, and, as far as I can tell, there was no bribery, embezzlement, kick-backs, nepotism or money-laundering. There was no finding of intent to circumvent policies or to undermine the integrity of the police.
Former Police Commissioner Coster has admitted publicly that he got it wrong about McSkimming, but said he was acting in good faith. He’s said he informally briefed ministers Hipkins and Mitchell about McSkimming’s affair with a staffer much earlier than the time at which they said they first found out about it. But both politicians deny that such a conversation happened. Who do you believe?
Stupidity, complicity and a general lack of intelligence at the highest levels shouldn’t surprise us. I’ve seen it in universities too. But it does more harm when it’s top police.
Going in search of some good news to end the year, New Zealand was ranked third on the 2025 Global Peace Index, after Iceland and Ireland. While there were large demonstrations, they were peaceful. Post-Covid disruptions of early 2022 and the violent protest against Posie Parker in March 2023 are behind us now it seems. It may have made national news in October when a window was broken at Winston Peters’ home, but is there any window that’s not been broken in Gaza?
And, yes, I know this is Beehive hype, and you’ve probably heard of the Hawthorne Effect, but it is good news that students who were learning an hour a day of maths with new resources, even those not in a special trial, “made, on average, a full year’s progress in just 12 weeks.” It will be great if those results generalise to all school children. Perhaps a compulsory question should be: What’s the difference between 2026 and 1840?
Remember 2020 when everything was unprecedented? If it’s not too paradoxical, 2025 will be remembered for being forgettable. Can we do better next year?
The PM asked Santa for an economic miracle – and a new social media manager.
Great ending to your article Grant!
Grant, in case you don’t post another column before year-end, thank you for your many well-researched, balanced, insightful, entertaining and thought-provoking columns, which have made the year more BEARABLE for me and, I’ve no doubt, many other readers.