WHEN ANDREW LITTLE resigned as Labour leader, his party had sunk to just 24 percent support in a Colmar Brunton Poll. The new Roy Morgan Poll shows Labour dropping a further 4.5 points to 26 percent. But with the general election so close, Chris Hipkins is going nowhere. That's not only because there's no suitable alternative waiting in the wings but it would also signal panic and really end Labour's already slim chance of staying in office. But when do Labour's strategists, in hushed tones, start talking about damage control?
Labour's sharp drop in the Roy Morgan Poll will be attributed to a series of ministerial misadventures, culminating in a tired and emotional Minister of Justice crashing into a parked car and, it appears, attempting to flee the scene. While this was clickbait-from-heaven for the media, the real driver for Labour's declining support is the parlous state of the economy and a society fraying at the edges.
The economy is a neoliberal bomb site. Living costs continue to rise, there are over 25,000 people wanting a state house, the numbers of homeless continues to rise, and a creaking and under pressure health system continues to deny ready access to its services. Labour's friends in the media are doing their best to paint, at least, a more favourable picture but this is not dissimilar to pushing water up a hill. Even the person mostly uninterested in politics knows that all is not well every time they go to the supermarket and are confronted by the latest round of price rises. The usual claims from the usual suspects that life would be so much worse under a National Government will be treated with the derision they deserve.
While the focus will be on Labour's polling decline it is noticeable that, despite Labour's problems, National is still polling at just 33.5 percent. Indeed, support for the two major parties fell again to a combined 59.5 percent. This indicates that folk who do intend to vote are looking around for fresh ideas and policies.
But if the last election is any indication, some 900,000 people will simply not vote, given the lack of real choice. There's an absent of anything that resembles an alternative to the neoliberal straitjacket that the economy has been in for over three decades. Even one of the new parties on the block, The Opportunities Party, has little more to offer than what it describes as 'radical centrism'. We got an indication of what 'radical centrism' involves from its Ilam electorate candidate Raf Manji. As a Christchurch City councillor he pushed for the council to sell off its social housing stock, home for the city's poorest and most vulnerable people.
Despite that there is widespread support for an alternative to neoliberalism, the liberal left has failed to provide that alternative. Its considerations are not driven by the needs of the working class but by the electoral interests of the Labour Party. It remains hostile to any political development that might threaten the position of Labour. That's in despite of it being little more than a defender of an economic and political status quo incapable of providing any answers to the country's accumulating problems. In that respect, the Labour left has invited the election of another centrist government, but this one will be led by the National Party.
