Why Labour lost

What went wrong in 2023? What are the political lessons?

Looking back at July 2020, the Labour Party was on a high. In a Newshub/Reid Research poll, support for Labour hit 61 percent and Jacinda Ardern was the preferred prime minister for 62 percent. Public confidence in the government’s pandemic response was strong. Compliance with lockdown (one of the strictest in the world) had been good, and the virus had temporarily been eliminated.

All that was to change, however, leading to a four-week delay in the 2020 election date due to another outbreak. As expected, Labour’s polling declined from 61, but nonetheless the party landed on 50 percent – the highest election result achieved by any party under the MMP system.

Over three elections, Labour’s vote had risen from 25 to 37 to 50 percent – but then it plummeted to just below 27 percent in 2023. So the 2020–23 period saw a violent swing of the Labour–National pendulum, back and forth, as shown in this chart:

But those were unusual times. And it’s not as if National’s rise in 2023 balanced out Labour’s fall. The Greens, ACT and NZ First also took their share. This reflected an internationally widespread public dissatisfaction with how representative democracy is working, with consequent electoral swings against incumbents. The crushing defeat that awaits the UK Conservatives on 4 July is an outstanding example.

What went wrong for the NZ Labour Party, then? As summed up by Claire Trevett in the NZ Herald, it was all about Covid-19, crime and cost of living. The Ardern government’s initial success in dealing with Covid-19 turned into a headwind as prolonged lockdown in Auckland in 2021, border closures, MIQ facilities and vaccine mandates became increasingly irritating, if not infuriating, for many people – and not just for the extreme anti-vaxxers. Inflation was a predictable result of pandemic fiscal stimulus, exacerbated by supply-chain disruptions and Putin’s invasion of Ukraine.

One could add capital gains tax (CGT) – a ball that was fumbled following the Cullen report that recommended it in February 2019. Winston Peters used his leverage in Cabinet to block CGT, and Jacinda Ardern – not wanting it to turn into an election issue – said it was off the table as long as she was PM. And then there was co-governance which (even if one supports the principles of indigenous self-determination and partnership) was being planned and implemented without popular consent, leading to a backlash.

The list could go on. Some problematic policies (e.g., the RNZ/TVNZ merger) were thrown onto Chris Hipkins’s famous “policy bonfire” soon after Ardern stood down in January 2023 – but too late.

Rather than haggle over failed policies in detail, what were the strategic political lessons from NZ Labour’s dramatic fall?

When you enjoy a thumping victory, don’t let it go to your head. Even at the time, commentators were warning that Labour’s majority would make them over-confident. They were proved right. The Labour government’s success in the Covid-19 response and the resounding electoral victory of 2020 meant they didn’t “read the room”, even as the support ebbed away. Anyone who questioned the pandemic policies was likely to be branded as misinformed or worse. To be fair, many people, especially the most vulnerable, wanted the government to maintain the restrictions. But the Labour government failed to estimate the human and the political costs of the Covid-19 policies. Having saved lives, they gave themselves a pat on the back, and they didn’t pay enough attention (or didn’t respond soon enough) to the plight of the living.

Restructuring isn’t a solution. Amalgamations in public health, broadcasting and tertiary education are the main exhibits here – and these are industries in which a lot of traditional Labour voters work, or used to work. The health-sector reforms remain in place, other than the Luxon government’s disestablishment of the Māori Health Authority. As education minister, Hipkins sat and watched the universities fall into deficit, but amalgamated ailing polytechs into Te Pūkenga. About the latter there was never any good news, and it’s being disestablished by National. The broadcasting merger was canned before the election. When they saw a problem, the Labour government said, “Let’s centralise it”. Restructuring is always expensive and disruptive, however, and it shouldn’t be undertaken without a clear and widely understood strategic plan and purpose. “Structure follows strategy”. Restructuring in itself solves nothing. It doesn’t necessarily reduce overhead costs, let alone “deliver better outcomes”.

Be open about your plans. Exhibit A here is Labour’s abandoned proposal for a social unemployment insurance scheme (SUI) that was to be grafted onto accident compensation (ACC). This was rejected by businesses as just another tax, and by the left for not addressing poverty and inequality. Although SUI would have been the biggest social security innovation in NZ since ACC in 1974, it was planned behind closed doors in tripartite talks – completely unlike the Royal Commission and the bipartisan legislation that went into ACC. Exhibit B is the He Puapua report sent to the minister of Māori development in late 2019 and leaked by opposition parties in mid-2021. The report described itself as a plan, with a “vision for 2040”, to implement the UN Declaration of Indigenous Rights in Aotearoa. Setting aside the contentious debate over its particular proposals, the facts are: He Puapua asserted that “constitutional transformation” was needed, and yet this constitutional discussion was conducted by unelected people without public awareness. Prime Minister Ardern was saying in May 2021 that the report didn’t represent government policy and hadn’t been considered by Cabinet. But her Māori development minister Willie Jackson was saying something different: He Puapua represented “standard kaupapa that we’re doing now’’. The Labour government rolled out reforms in health, local government and water infrastructure that were consistent with He Puapua principles. It’s unusual – if not undemocratic – for “constitutional transformation” to be initiated without open processes of inquiry, deliberation and referendum. Although a lot of the backlash against He Puapua was racist, it doesn’t help Labour’s electoral chances to treat it that way. “Don’t be a racist – vote Labour” won’t entice the swing voters back. Constitutional reform requires time to bring the people with you – both Māori and non-Māori. Hidden agendas breached political trust, and now Labour has a long road ahead to earn it back.

Under-promise and over-deliver. At least be realistic about what you can do. The vibe of hope and promise that Jacinda Adern inspired when she took on the leadership of Labour in August 2017 transformed that election campaign. Unfortunately, much of the promise (such as “housing is a right”) sounded empty well before 2023. Labour got stuck with the “failed to deliver” label – and not without cause. They over-promised and under-delivered. On the other hand, don’t under-promise so much that people think you have nothing much to offer!

The rally-round-the-flag effect doesn’t see you through. As George W. Bush learned after 9/11, public approval and trust following a moment of national emergency soon ebb away. Ardern very ably led her country through three emergencies: the terrorist attack in Christchurch, the Whakaari/White Is. eruption and the Covid-19 pandemic. Her leadership in those times created her international reputation. The pandemic response certainly helped her win the 2020 election, but the effect was waning even at that time. And those national emergencies were never part of Ardern’s plan when she entered parliament in 2008, let alone when she was sworn in as PM in 2017. No sane person could have wished for the terrible events that now cement her reputation. Her “legacy” rests on catastrophe. National emergencies are moments when leadership really counts, but the responses don’t secure political success. Unlike previous Labour governments, Ardern and her team left the country with no enduring achievements in public policy.

Know your political virtues. The pandemic exposed the first principle of state power: protego ergo obligo. The sovereign protects lives and livelihoods, therefore we obey. The secular state doesn’t promise eternal pain-free existence or happiness. What’s worse, some people will suffer the pain of the state’s punishment while others will be commanded to put their lives at risk. This ancient protection–obedience trade-off has nothing “kind” about it. It’s unapologetically tough. In announcing the world’s toughest pandemic restrictions, however, Ardern commanded New Zealanders to “Be kind”. That worked in day-to-day interactions, but many of those who suffered the harsher consequences of lockdown found it utterly inauthentic, and they said so. “Be kind” is a paradoxical injunction, the classic example of which is “Be spontaneous”. If you obey the command, then you’re disobeying it. It would have been plainer to say, “I have to be unkind and make you stay at home and not come out unless I allow it, because that’s how we’ll save lives”. Many people who reacted against Ardern’s politics of kindness were also conspiracy theorists, but they had put their finger on something. On the other side, those who still see her leadership style as an antidote to right-wing authoritarianism should understand that it’s probably more of a provocation. Those who are flocking to the likes of Reform UK or AfD won’t be listening to Ardern, or, if they do, she’ll sound to them like another reason for leaning rightwards. Kindness is a virtue in private life, but in public political discourse its appeal is limited.

Good leaders support victims; they don’t act like victims. A powerful rhetorical tactic is to position oneself or one’s social group as a victim. This has traditionally been used by left-wing social movements (“Blame the system not the victim”), but it’s been adopted recently on the right as well (e.g., Trump claiming to be a victim of a witch-hunt). One of Ardern’s strengths was that she empathised with victims but didn’t play the victim card herself. She let insults bounce off her and left the outrage to others. Nonetheless, the death threats and misogyny that were aimed at her, especially over vaccine mandates, must have taken their toll. She didn’t publicly cite that torrent of abuse as a reason for her standing down in January 2023 – but others did, and, in doing so, attributed more power to cowardly abusers than they ever deserved. Having heard Ardern talk (before she became PM) about sexism in politics, I suggest that it underestimates her personal strength to attribute her resignation to misogynistic abuse. It must have played a part, but she would have had the Labour Party’s long-term interests in mind. Ardern’s declining rating as preferred PM and Labour’s waning public support (both down in the 30s during 2022) occurred as people’s frustration and anger became intensely personalised. A downside of charismatic leadership is that adulation can switch into its opposite. National began to pull ahead of Labour in the polls from early 2022, around the same time as the protest occupation on parliament grounds. Labour regained a lead after Hipkins took over in January 2023, boosted by his response to weather emergencies that soon followed. Labour and National were neck and neck around May/June, but National led Labour by 11 percentage points in the October election (“the only poll that counts”). Ardern had stood down for good personal and political reasons, but it didn’t work out well for Labour all the same. I giver her credit, however, for thinking ahead, taking the fall, and not playing the victim card.

On the release of the July 2020 opinion poll mentioned above, a reporter asked me enthusiastically if I thought that Ardern was the most popular PM ever – to which I replied, “Ask me again in six years time”. I could have made that two years. When she stood down, I fielded a few inquiries from incredulous foreign journalists. Understandably, they hadn’t followed New Zealand politics much. I summed it up for them by saying that the Covid-19 response had been both the making and the breaking of Jacinda Ardern’s political career. And it wasn’t as if her resignation hadn’t been anticipated more than a year earlier. To restate remarks I made back in November 2021: The tough decisions taken by Ardern to deal effectively with the pandemic were compromising her social democratic ideals and her ethics of kindness, empathy and inclusiveness. As the emotional and financial costs and the social divisions mounted up daily in people’s lives, many turned their anger and frustration on the country’s leader.

Today, the NZ Labour Party fancy their chances of making Luxon & Co a one-term government. That’s the kind of thing oppositions say, of course. But it may be plausible if we put the last election defeat down to post-Covid discontent and consider National’s struggle to keep its nose above water in the polls. Hipkins kicked off with a vision speech in May. And Labour’s polling has lifted above the 27 percent it got in the election: sometimes over 30, although still trailing behind National. It looks like Hipkins is up for another joust against Luxon. But that would be a repeat contest between two leaders who’ve already proven themselves to be underwhelming. That’s not as crazy as the next US election, but a similar kind of rematch. There’s no reason to think the two Chrises will have improved much on their 2023 campaign performance.

What Hipkins doesn’t get is that people all around the developed world, not just NZ, are sick and tired of the same old faces on their TV screens. For a while it had looked as if Ardern would be a game-changer, but her career was derailed by events beyond her control. It seems unlikely that Hipkins can inspire a movement for change in 2026, but it’s not clear who could take his place to give Labour a better chance.

Readers can throw some names for next Labour leader into the comments box. And maybe I’ll do a straw poll next time.