Editorial: Where to now for defeated Labour?

Outgoing Prime Minister Chris Hipkins. Photo / Mark Mitchell

After the election, the defeated major party will find an array of pitfalls in front of them in opposition.

But the time in opposition can also be useful to Labour if the party stays focused.

A government minus all the extraordinary, exhausting imported difficulties of recent years - a pandemic, inflation, supply issues, war-spurred costs - would probably have gained a third term despite its own mistakes.

Now all the weight of governing falls on a new inexperienced team with its own ideas, but managing problems while advancing pet policies won’t be easy.

There’s a general reluctance to connect the dots in domestic politics with events overseas, but global interconnection and its impact on the economy and our lives is hard to avoid and will continue.

Choices the Government makes will have their own impacts. At a basic level, an electorate that voted for a spring clean and fresh start will expect to notice changes to difficult problems. It won’t be any easier for the new Government to deliver.

In this situation, where it will be hard for National and Act to get comfortable in power with or without NZ First, Labour needs to stay match-fit. After all, a country is stronger if it has a high-performing Opposition.

The party will be well aware of how easy it is to fall into disarray in opposition. It has its own past and National’s leadership turnovers as a reminder.

Too much navel-gazing and infighting would be destructive and the public would have little patience for it.

Lessons from what has happened shouldn’t be that difficult to process.

A government needs to transmit a sense of purpose and progress and to present both to the public with clear messaging. Labour lost the narrative and big picture of what it was doing and aiming to do.

It let other voices frame its story to the public. Right-wing populists tend to be better at cutting through to people and forming a connection than centre-left communicators.

Labour focused too much on cautious managing and got lost in complexity. Policies can make people’s eyes glaze over. A simple change, or a project with a visual impact, leaves an impression. Boldness can be rewarded if it’s explained and people understand the need for it.

The party needs both fresh and innovative ideas and easy to understand ways of implementing them. It needs proposals big enough to impress people but which also have completion dates. Any party needs to be able to say ‘we can do this’, and eventually, ‘we got this done’.

In opposition, Labour needs its experienced MPs to keep the Government under pressure while the party works on improving its approach and what it aims to stand for.

Voters will respond to more clarity, valid points and ideas, and a unity of purpose. Now is not the time to waste energy and time on party squabbling.

Judging by the past, it is all too easy for defeated parties to trip over this hurdle and wallow in flabby self-indulgence. But it just means it takes the party longer to regain sharpness.