The Making and Breaking of Jacinda Ardern’s Labour Government, 2017–2023

Political Quarterly article

The UK’s Political Quarterly journal has just published an article of mine The Making and Breaking of Jacinda Ardern’s Labour Government, 2017–2023.

This 5,000 word essay is, I understand, free to read for one month. The journal is doing a series on social-democratic or labour parties in office, and will be worth following.

In my article I trace the remarkable electoral rise of NZ Labour under Ardern, from 25% in 2014 to 37% in 2017 and to 50% in 2020, and then her shock resignation in January 2023 and Labour’s defeat in October that year.

To account for that defeat, I consider these factors:

• Economic: post-lockdown inflation and the ongoing housing crisis including the KiwiBuild fiasco.

• Covid-19 measures: following an initial high-trust period in 2020, the unraveling of public support for vaccine mandates and MIQ bookings and the prolonged lockdown especially in Auckland.

• Failed policies: principally the aborted unemployment insurance scheme and Three Waters.

• Constitutional and administrative changes that lacked public consent.

Here’s a key takeaway:

“Labour’s pitch to low- and middle-income voters is increasingly – and timidly – limited to tax rates, tax credits, social security benefits and improvements to public services (the social wage). These are important, of course. But taxation and redistribution become the means for delivering benefits to workers, rather than substantial reform of an unjust economic model. The long-term political problem for Labour is that it now looks like the party of taxes and the party of diversity and inclusion – rather than the party of prosperity and security for all. Consequently the New Zealand Labour Party was an easy target in 2023 for opponents on the right, who accused them of being tax-hungry and addicted to spending – and ‘woke’.”

I recommend following The Political Quarterly on substack.

Jacinda Ardern, 6 August 2017.