Democracy doesn’t guarantee you good governments, but it is the only non-violent way of getting rid of bad ones. Not perfect but still a great deal. As the nation’s gaze drifts away from the beaming, self-confident face of Prime Minister Christopher Luxon towards the boyish grin and calculating eyes of Chris Hipkins and contemplates returning Hipkins to power, we’re faced with an unpleasant dilemma: which politicians do we dislike the least? Will one major party mismanage the economy less than the other?
Our rejection of Labour in 2023 was a judgment on a government that was disintegrating before the nation’s eyes. The recent revelation that education spokesperson Willow-Jean Prime ghosted Erica Stanford’s attempts to brief her on education reform recalled the ineptness of many Labour ministers throughout 2023, and the string of resignations heading into the election.
The decision taken by Jacinda Ardern, Grant Robertson, Hipkins and former Covid-19 response and health minister Ayesha Verrall not to publicly testify before the second Royal Commission of Inquiry into the pandemic on the grounds that it constitutes a “show trial” swirled up the still-murky waters of Covid politics. We got rid of their government but now suspect their replacement is a downgrade rather than a turnaround. Where does that leave us?
There’s been much doubt about Te Pāti Māori’s suitability for executive office – and this is a reasonable doubt – and a brief flurry of commentary about whether Chlöe Swarbrick could be finance minister (Hipkins: she could not).
But should Chris Hipkins be prime minister again? The current deadlock in the polls and low favourability ratings for both leaders suggest voters are agonising over the unhappy question: who is the least worst person to run the country?
Ratings deadlock
Since the election, Labour has been celebrated for its internal discipline. It has forgone the traditional post-defeat civil war, but alongside that impressive restraint is a high degree of risk aversion. The party has taken stands on issues it could not avoid – the Treaty Principles Bill, the pay equity legislation – but it has mostly defined itself in negative terms. Hipkins is against the things voters do not like. This was also Luxon’s approach, and it is excellent opposition politics but yielded a government led by someone who cannot say what he’s for and doesn’t seem to know what to do.
Risk minimisation would have been part of Labour’s calculation in declining the option to give public Covid testimonies. Ardern and Robertson had every right to refuse this request. They are private citizens now – although Ardern promises to be a tediously public private citizen. But Hipkins and Verrall want to reprise their roles as prime minister and health minister. If they back their decisions during Covid they should welcome a show trial. If they don’t, they shouldn’t stand again.
Successful political leaders possess virtù – Machiavelli’s term for a combination of self-confidence and cunning, the ability to identify opportunities and take calculated risks. You can still acquire power without it, as Hipkins did when Ardern resigned and Luxon did when the public voted Hipkins out of office. But always accidentally, and temporarily. Someone shrewd and bold – the Winston Peterses, David Seymours, Chlöe Swarbricks of the world – will seize the opportunities you don’t.
Of course, cunning isn’t the only quality we prize in a leader. The recent memoirs published by Ardern and Robertson have resurrected a fearsome ghost from Labour’s civil war era: the revenant David Cunliffe who evidently still haunts the nightmares of his former colleagues; a red-haired, red-bearded figure in a tattered suit chasing them through the maze-like halls of Parliament waving eldritch policy briefing documents daubed with blood.
Anyone but Cunliffe
Ardern, Robertson and Hipkins were co-conspirators in a centrist faction within Labour that called itself ABC: Anyone But Cunliffe. They waged a fierce internal campaign to prevent him from becoming leader and an even more ferocious war to remove him once he succeeded.
Cunliffe’s dismal performance in the 2014 election campaign validated the ABC critique of him: narcissistic, prone to blunders – the most famous of which was his apology for being a man.
But both Cunliffe and his lieutenant David Parker possessed a valuable quality Ardern, Robertson and Hipkins conspicuously lacked – a model of what was wrong with New Zealand’s economy, and how you might fix it.
They recognised we were over-reliant on commodity cycles, had a broken tax system and an addiction to housing, and that too much policy was set by vested interests who wanted to lock in a low-value, low-innovation framework.
Ardern in her memoir dismisses Cunliffe as an early incarnation of the Bernie Sanders/Jeremy Corbyn style of socialism that emerged in the late 2010s, but he was a more sophisticated thinker than that.
It’s a shame the bitterness between factions saw his ideas abandoned under her leadership. Helen Clark made peace with her caucus rival Michael Cullen, and they formed a potent and effective partnership. Ardern gave the finance portfolio to her bestie, Robertson, and their policy legacy is a handful of rebates and subsidies and a large debt.
The Cunliffe wars left wounds that weakened Labour in government. Many of its most capable MPs left Parliament during the cycles of purges and counter-purges. Ardern found herself trying to run the country with cabinet ministers you wouldn’t hire to mow your lawns or paint a fence, and instead of a serious policy agenda, a handful of implausible promises – such as KiwiBuild’s 100,000 homes.
Will Labour be more prepared in 2026? Can it offer something more than a return to the disarray of the Ardern years minus Ardern? An inspiring post-pandemic vision? A diagnosis of challenges and credible solutions?
Or will its offering be negative: to not talk about the Covid past or post-Covid future, to merely not be the Luxon government and then squander three years in power overseeing the nation’s decline in much the same way?
