Why Labour's redundant
A renewed political vision is needed for the future welfare of working people as the world undergoes technological transformation.
“People are fed up and they want change”, said Pauline Hanson, leader of Australia’s One Nation Party. The quote comes from an ABC article in which she also talks about becoming prime minister of Australia:
“I am not going to underestimate myself and say, ‘I can’t do it’, because, you know, have a look at what we’ve got now.”
What they’ve got now is Albanese’s Labor government. One Nation, meanwhile, has been rising in polls, and, in one, even leading the primary vote. Support for One Nation is stronger among older age-groups, but it’s rising across the board, including women.
Meanwhile in the UK, Nigel Farage’s Reform party is polling well ahead of both Labour and the Conservatives. Prime minister Starmer’s leadership has been challenged, further destabilising Labour.
The situation’s different in New Zealand, in part because the populist NZ First Party has been in office before, in coalitions with Labour and National, and hence Kiwi voters are sceptical about them. Many conservatives can’t forgive Winston for putting Jacinda into office in 2017. Nonetheless, NZ First could be the third largest party in the next parliament, which is quite a feat after getting booted out in 2020.
The rise of populist parties is one side of the coin. The other is the weakness of the “legacy” parties. For the present, I’ll focus on the NZ Labour Party.
Since its first election victory in 1935, the New Zealand Labour Party pursued a historical mission of social improvement, seeing the country through recovery from the Great Depression, then the War and its aftermath. Following its 1984 win, however, the fourth Labour government set about undoing many of its own achievements. The National Party then took it further, especially with their 1991 budget and the Employment Contracts Act.
Now that social conditions have visibly and predictably worsened, a Labour Party stacked with middle-class professionals seems unwilling or unable to re-establish the sense of fairness and opportunity that was once commonly shared. A policy that gives everyone three free visits to the doctor per year may be welcomed by the least well-off, but it won’t correct the inequality and poverty that have become entrenched since the 1990s.
According to the Acumen Edelman Trust barometer 2025 survey, only 19% of New Zealanders believe the next generation will be better off compared to today, well below the global average of 36%. And on average 61% reported they worry that government officials, business leaders and journalists try to mislead people by saying things they know are false.
Kiwis have lost belief in leaders and they’ve lost hope that the future will be better. For those unsatisfied with the Labour/National duopoly – and for those not duped by the call of populism – it’s time for a reassessment.
That’s reassessment, not revolution.
One of the big historical lessons of the twentieth century was that ordinary working people were better off with gradual social reform than with revolutionary industrial socialism. Fabians were more effective and successful than Wobblies in achieving real gains for the people. It was smarter to use the State than to smash it. For all its shortcomings, representative democracy was better than Lenin’s democratic centralism.
As many young people are now turning to communism, however, they’d be well advised to learn about communists in history. Having recently read about the old Bolshevichka Elena Stasova (1873–1966) and the Italian communist Antonio Gramsci (1891–1937), I’m reminded that they understood the social and economic problems well enough, but a one-party State (“a dictatorship of the proletariat”) turned out to be a dreadful and inhumane error. In Italy, of course, fascism was as bad or worse. But one totalitarian extreme had stoked up the other.
Today, some young folk are “planning on overthrowing capitalism”, by force if necessary, and “fighting for a classless and stateless society”. Lucky for them, they weren’t born into an actual communist society, let alone a stateless one, but they, like Stasova and Gramsci, can clearly see real social and economic problems that need remedies. Their concerns are genuine, but the communist model has been proven to be disastrous. All the same, they look at their world and whom do they see leading it? Starmer, Farage, Trump, Luxon and their like. No wonder they think there’s a need for a fundamental change!
In the midst of genuine social, economic and environmental crises, the powerful appeal of extremes can blind many people to the successful policy pathways taken in the past by countries such as Australia, New Zealand and the Scandinavians. If those successful countries are no longer looking so successful – and hence many citizens are prone to anxiety and disillusionment – then a reassessment is called for, but not a revolution. Revolutionary change has a bad track-record. Many Chinese had reason to regard Mao Zedong as a promising leader in the chaos following WWII. Many Iranians had reason to regard Ayatollah Khomeini as a humane alternative in 1979. The outcomes in China during the Cultural Revolution and in Iran today didn’t realise those hopes.
What did work, then? And why did we stop doing it? What happens now in a world driven by AI?