Jacinda Ardern has just led the New Zealand Labour Party to one of the best results in their entire history. They won 49% of the vote and with 64 seats out of 120 become the first majority government in New Zealand since they adopted a modern proportional voting system in 1994.
The National Party, which is like the New Zealand Tories, suffered one of the worst electoral results in their history, with only 26% of the vote and 35 seats.
It’s hardly surprising that Ardern has achieved such a resounding success in this election, given her excellent handling of the Coronavirus crisis, and her exceptional speech in the aftermath of the horrifying Christchurch massacre.
But it’s been quite astonishing watching Labour right-wingers in the UK seeking to ride on the coat tails of this remarkable success.If Ardern was leader of the UK Labour Party they would have ganged up to attack and smear her as an antisemite, orchestrated coup plots, constantly briefed the press against her, abused her and bragged about wanting to stab her, and deliberately sabotaged this election campaign because of her left-wing and anti-imperialist principles.
Ardern famously described capitalism as a “blatant failure” and criticised the market economy. On policy she’s got far more in common with Jeremy Corbyn and the UK Labour left than the pro-establishment Labour right-wingers.
Some of her key policies in the 2020 election were to increase taxes on the super-rich; investment in education and especially night school courses that had been catastrophically under-funded by preceding right-wing governments; public sector pay rises; the closure of corporate tax loopholes; a highly ambitious target of 100% renewable energy by 2030; significant infrastructure investment; a significant increase in the minimum wage; improved workers’ rights; affordable house building; improved tenant’s rights; commitment to public ownership of energy, railways and water supplies …
All of this stuff was what UK Labour was offering under Jeremy Corbyn’s leadership, and what the Labour right worked so tirelessly for five years to undermine, because they’d rather have the Tories in power forever, than have the British public benefit from socialist policies like these.Additionally Ardern has always been a vehement critic of imperialist foreign policy, and especially the disastrous invasion and occupation of Iraq.
And anyone who thinks she’s the kind of politician who would have bullied her MPs into abstaining on legislation to allow spy cops to rape, torture, and murder New Zealand citizens with absolute legal impunity (like the UK Labour leadership has just done) is clearly living in some kind of delusional political la-la land.
If Ardern was in the UK Labour Party, the very same Labour right-wingers who are singing her praises would have been backstabbing and badmouthing; deriding her manifesto as unrealistic extreme-left nonsense; and smearing her as a traitor over her opposition to imperialist warmongering.
What Ardern’s resounding win tells us is that victory is definitely possible for a radical Labour Party offering real substantial changes to reduce inequality; save the environment; and substantially improve ordinary people’s lives, as long as the party backs its leader, works together, and stays on message.
The UK Labour Party couldn’t be more different, with the right wing of the party the last five years deliberately undermining the party leadership, permanently tarnishing the party brand in the process. And now they’re busy abandoning all of the Ardern-style policies developed since 2015, and orchestrating grotesquely cynical ideological purges to remove anyone of remotely good conscience (all of the potential future British Jacinda Arderns) from the Labour shadow cabinet.
Ardern has provided a perfect blueprint for electoral success from the left, but the Labour right in the UK think they know best, so they’re charging full speed ahead in the opposite direction!
