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8:55 am, May 22nd, 2026 - 32 comments
Categories: jacinda ardern, labour, socialism -
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There are still those who pine, from the readership of Jacinda Ardern’s biography, for a state that is perfectly kind, does everything with speed and authority, and brims with patrician wisdom for us all.
Her 1.5 terms held many instances in which the state operated on the extremes of control to respond to massive crises.
The Key government had also done so with at least the same force for the Christchurch and North Canterbury rebuilds, but he didn’t get placards saying “He’s a pretty communist”. Ardern did and there’s no fairness in it.
Over a decade after Professor Kelsey wrote Rolling Back The State, and over three decades after Bruce Jesson wrote Only Their Purpose is Mad, socialism being attached as a descriptor to any Labour leader may seem quaint to many, but from Ardern’s residual fan base the hankering for the strong warm and powerful state and its strong warm and powerful leader is not a light entirely dimmed.
So on the eve of Budget 2026, one of the meanest we will have seen since Ruth Richardson’s Ruthenasia Budget 30 years ago, let’s ask ourselves if socialism is still what the left wants.
This is what New Zealand appeared to be to an analyst in 1948:
Infinite indeed are the services which the government … of New Zealand supplies to its citizens.
While it educates the children in its primary and secondary schools, it takes care of their teeth in its own dental clinics and distributes free milk and apples.
It will lend you money to buy a house of your own or allow you to rent one it has constructed …
It will give you insurance on your life and property … It provides you with the services of the telephone, the telegraph, the mails, and a commercial bank.
It will sell you coal which it has extracted from its own mines … It will transport you on its railways, buses, or airplanes, and will invite you to spend a vacation in its own tourist hotels and holiday resorts.
It will entertain, and possibly instruct, you with its broadcasts, …
Should you wish to erect a factory, import materials or manufactures from overseas, or send money abroad, you must obtain the state’s permission.
If you are a labourer, it fixes your minimum rate of wage, determines the hours and conditions of your work, and compels you to enrol in the appropriate trade union.
If you are a farmer, it offers the assistance of its agricultural experts, buys you certain of your products with prices it guarantees, and markets them …
It plants forests, cuts its timber at its own sawmill, and sells it …
Whenever you visit a doctor, it contributes a portion of the medical fees; and if you are unemployed, widowed, orphaned, aged, or totally invalided, it pays you a benefit …
Finally, when you die, it will take its share of what you leave and will include your demise in the published statistics of its invaluable Year Book … Leviathan New Zealand is a well-nigh universal provider.”
There’s plenty more detail contained in such tomes as The Rise of New Zealand Labour: A History of the New Zealand Labour Party from 1914 to 1940, and then the one that came out a few years ago.
Some will conceive of the hand of the large state as more of an enveloping but kind hug, the kindness and control of Ardern’s time.
Others felt the squeeze. You can see the result in PM Luxon’s pathological rejection of fuel rationing in even the most nationall stringest circumstances.
As we deal with this abject Budget 2026, how much of what we have lost from a strong state do we really, really want back?
Well, collective resilience requires intelligent leadership. The state lacks a good record of providing that. It's true that a considerable level of competence prevailed when I was young, though, so fair to concede a more general point on that basis.
It's why I went with Ardern on the state vaccine default thing. I knew of friends & family doing the ole rebel stance but parts of tradition are valid for me.
I suspect trans-generational consensus would include a state of some kind. Social darwinism happens naturally despite such mental constructs, but they do serve a positive purpose: constraint, security, stability. Rocks in the stream of life, while randomising of folks in the flow is happening all around. In the Deep Green view, our interaction with niche & habitat includes ambient field effects, which means field theory is essential.
Some will, some won't.
Those for whom it doesn't materially matter, the "sorted", who will be hunky-dory-rhymes-with-tory anyway, should have their views discounted as inconsequential.
Those who would suffer without it, should be considered most seriously and their welfare accommodated-for with the decision; do we still want Socialism for them.
"…, how much of what we have lost from a strong state do we really, really want back?.."
Yesterday I asked what Labour's theory of power actually is. I didn't get an answer, apart from a lot of expediency dressed up as clever tactics and a far of of grumpy "trust the process" stuff from Labours thinning ranks of grey haired true believers, presumably fresh back from stuffing pamphlets nobody will read into letterboxes. I perhaps conceitedly ascribe this to the convulsive anti-intellectualism of New Zealanders of all stripes who I suspect prefer, in the words of Schlageter's protagonist Thiemann, to "…release the safety on their Browning!"… at the merest mention of theories than engage in opining down the pub on what Weber, Foucault, Marx or even Neitzche might have to say on the topic.
But none the less, Ad's question strikes to the heart of the question – what is Labour's theory of power? Perhaps first, what is a theory of power? I would say for this context it is three basic questions:
1/ Who does Labour consider it must retain and/or win over and to be part of it's winning electoral coalition?
2/ What are the political conditions required to win – and importantly retain – power?
3/ What does Labour plan to do with it's political power if elected?
These questions matter, because without a coherent theory of power, you end up with with shit politics like Chris Hipkin's response to cutting civil servants and punching down on the poor being little more than weak and whining version of "will nobody think of the children?", a classic example of what Zohran Mamdani's campaign communications director Andrew Epstein bluntly said – “You cannot replicate the shit we were doing if you believe in nothing, full stop.”
Mamdani, regardless of what you think of his politics or their transferability to NZ, is a great example of someone who HAS a theory of power. His political style flows coherently from it, or to quote Andrew Epstien again, “the style [was] downstream of the substance.” Having a coherent theory of power means Mamdani has ready in his quivver another political/rhetorical trick that he is outstanding at, perhaps best decribed by Jean-Luc Mélenchon when asked about how to respond to bad faith attacks:
"…‘All these attacks are an opportunity for mass popular education, provided we never back down. That is to say, once the battle is engaged, we do not give in, we do not back down, we do not apologise. We do not admit any mistakes, and we put up a fight. Those who don’t like you, won’t like you any more in the end. They may even hate you more. But those who didn’t know you will understand that there is a problem. And those who are with you will gain confidence. They will say to themselves, “they are not giving up, they’re not going to betray me along the way, they’re not abandoning their ideas along the way.” For us on the Left, regaining the trust of the people is the number one test.’…"
Mamdani is brilliant at this – when confronted with bad faith gotchas, he responds by taking the opportunity to educate.
How should Chris Hipkins have responded to the plans to cut 9000 civil servants? A leader and a party with a theory of power might say something something along the lines of defending the role of government in nation building and the need to ensure that once elected, when the government presses the lever the system can still respond.
Ad asks the third question – 3/ What does Labour plan to do with it's political power if elected? But that is the third question.
I'd genuinely like to hear what the centre-left on this site thinks the answers to the first two questions posed are? In particular I really don’t know what Labour’s winning electoral coalition is in 2026?
On the theory of power – aye, there's the rub!
For the Might is Right crew, it's dead simple – whatever it takes. Dead rat swallowing, crow-eating, snake-in-the-grassing – it just doesn't matter, bar the possible embarrassment of being exposed for behaving' that'a'way.
For the centre-left, it's much more difficult. What ever principles we embrace all have to factor-in what to do in the face of the Right's heartless approach. If all else fails, they'll smash, usually down, in order to retain/regain the top seat. The centre-left won't do that; it's a massive but unavoidable Achilles heel.
1/ Who does Labour consider it must retain and/or win over and to be part of it's winning electoral coalition?
It's a numbers game. Ideally, centre-left strategists/pr folk would have built/be building a coherent, understandable picture for the voters, describing the values, potential outcomes and traps to watch-for, to help them navigate the treacherous waters politics is. Mostly, their efforts have to be spent countering the actions of the Right who, remember, are employing sophisticated, unfair, effective strategies to alienate would-be-Left voters from giving that vote to the socialist side.
2/ What are the political conditions required to win – and importantly retain – power?
A global tendency toward socialism would help. Failing having that, a strong history in ones own country would count toward its continuance. Mostly though, having a team of in-front-of and behind-the-scenes actors to tell the story and parry the blows.
Not too much to ask, is it?
I think a different approach exists, and it looks a lot like a return to good old-fashioned tub-thumping conviction politics.
There’s a strong argument that the electorate has shifted since 2008, or even 2014. Voters no longer want managerialism; they want answers. They want a story that makes sense of their lives and the country around them.
That doesn’t necessarily require a change in substance so much as a change in posture. A willingness to make a moral argument about who we are, what we owe each other, and what New Zealand is for.
The Right has been effective partly because it speaks in the language of conviction, even when the underlying programme is incoherent or cruel. The centre-left often speaks in the language of process, caution, and administration.
Maybe the task now is to reclaim our own national story and values: and even reclaim words like “socialism” from the fussy old men at the NZ Herald who still think it means ration books and Soviet tractors.
Because the truth is that social democracy has always been far more in tune with the story New Zealand tells about itself than we often admit. We’ve just forgotten it.
No, that probably won’t produce a movement that wins every election in a fragmented political and media environment. But it might produce one people can believe in again.
And that may just be enough to matter.
If we could return to the halcyon days of Socialism, how would we secure our place there? It's been demonstrated that it's not a permanent state, beloved by all.
I don't think it's really about returning to some halcyon socialist past. History never works like that.
It's more about reconfiguring our story into something coherent and legible again, using many of the same moral registers, symbols, and appeals to identity and belonging that the Right has successfully occupied since the 1980s.
Because the Right did not just win economic arguments. It won cultural and emotional ones. It wrapped markets, individualism, and deregulation in the language of freedom, aspiration, independence, and common sense.
The centre-left often responded by retreating into technocracy and administration.
But concepts like solidarity, public obligation, fairness, and democratic ownership are not alien to New Zealand political culture. They are deeply embedded within it. The challenge is not resurrecting the past wholesale, but learning how to speak about those values confidently and coherently in the present.
And yes, history tells us that no ideology or political project lasts forever. But that has always been true. Politics is not about building something eternal. It is about deciding what is worth fighting for in the time we have.
"public obligation"
Here's a pivot-point. How'd that "public obligation" weather the storm of Covid years, do you think? Great test, should be salutary lessons in that – who came out on top? Not Jacinda et al. They got crucified. That's the nub of the matter right there: the socialist-Left succeeded in navigating the Clashing/Cyanean Rocks of the matter of Covid, but collapsed as a result of the public turning, or being turned, against them. What's to stop that being an on-going phenomenon?
I think that’s partly true, but I also think it risks proving too much.
COVID probably was a stress test for ideas like public obligation, solidarity, and collective action. And yes, governments that pursued those approaches often paid a political price later.
But I’m not convinced that means those values are impossible or permanently rejected.
Where the centre-left has often struggled in recent decades has not been that its underlying values are wrong or out-of-step, but that it increasingly spoke in the language of administration, expertise, and process while the Right spoke in the language of identity, freedom, aspiration, belonging, and common sense.
The Right also suffers backlash, failures, internal contradictions, and collapsing political coalitions. Nothing in democratic politics is stable forever. Thatcherism wasn’t eternal. Nor was the post-war consensus before it.
What matters is whether a political movement can continue telling a coherent story about society that people emotionally recognise themselves within.
COVID exposed both the strengths and weaknesses of technocratic politics. Competence matters enormously. But competence alone does not generate enduring political legitimacy or emotional attachment. People also need a sense of shared purpose, moral meaning, and collective identity.
That, ultimately, is what successful long-term political movements provide.
So yes, democratic politics is fragile. Of course it is. But if cynicism simply leads us to retreat further into managerial calibration and political risk-aversion, then we should not be surprised when people eventually stop believing in anything at all.
"But I’m not convinced that means those values are impossible or permanently rejected."
Nor am I. Those values are possible/desirable/primarily important and they haven't been permanently rejected, at least by most people (some hard-bitten anti-Ardernists seem concreted-in).
And I don't call taking a clear-eyed look at the levers and cogs of politics and society's relationship with it, cynical. Identifying threats and opportunities is step-one; drawing-up an enduring plan follows on. Personally, I believe the essential elements described here are primary to a life, a society, lived well. I'm just watchful for elements that, unless addressed effectively, will spoil the recipe.
This comment would make an excellent post.
Funny you should say that…
Stephen Minto has a good post on TDB along these lines you've raised but he sees the issue as centrism lacking political power, partly because of a lack of vision/principles.
Three Waters as an example;
"For example in the last election National were hysterical and lying all the time about Three Waters. Its racism! it attacks democracy! Labour being run by centrist ideology reacted by watering down Three Waters which looked like Labour saying National was right. Labour should have run into the fight and doubled down with insights like – National is attacking private property rights. The Treaty recognised Maori rights over private property so Three Waters just gives voice to Maori private property rights…"
Or tax policy "Centrist Labour is currently running the wrong way. For example Barbara Edmonds bringing back a tiny capital gains tax is trying to say ‘it is small and controlled and simple with nothing to fear. Please business donate to Labour.’ But it is not simple. It still relies on definitions and boundaries and it can still be attacked for complexity. She is dreaming while the real economic risks from a distorting tax system in the economy and society remain in place."
https://thedailyblog.co.nz/can-labour-centrism-win-the-election-no-but-why/
More to the point, it doesn’t matter how constrained, modest, or “sensible” any CGT Labour proposes is. The coalition will still turn it into a story about angry socialists trying to steal voters’ hard-earned wealth.
So Labour takes the political hit while also telling voters they aren’t actually serious enough to fight for the policy. If you’re going to wear the attack regardless, you may as well argue for the reform properly.
The assumption seems to be that CGT is and must be a cornerstone of a (the?) reform – there are other ways to achieve that.
The deeper problem is that some Lefties don’t & won’t seem to accept that and/or no longer believe in Labour being the genuine democratic socialist party it used to be. That’s a life-threatening issue for Labour. I don’t think one radical far-fetching [?] CGT policy will restore that lost trust & confidence in NZ Labour Party – some Lefties appear to be very unforgiving, which I find counter-intuitive and somewhat ironic.
I don’t actually think CGT itself is the cornerstone issue. The deeper problem is that Labour often behaves as though technocratic caution can avoid political confrontation.
But the confrontation comes anyway.
So you end up with policies designed to minimise backlash that still receive maximum backlash, while simultaneously failing to convince supporters that you genuinely believe in anything transformative.
I will say it again – style is downstream of substance. Sticking some Mamdani lipstick on Hipkin's Starmerite pig won't save Labour.
It’s frustrating trying to pin the tail when the donkey is horsing around elsewhere.
And yes, substance matters more than style in theory. But in politics, style is the delivery mechanism through which substance is transmitted, interpreted, emotionally understood, and judged by the electorate.
If people cannot hear, feel, or understand your argument, the substance may as well not exist.
Another take is the view from memetics. I asked Google…
So as a political meme, socialism remains viable and influential. I favour crowd-sourcing wisdom, since any who ascend the power become tainted due to the work of the devil (trad christian empiricism) in accord with god's will (not).
Intelligent design is the best stance for any regenerative trend in socialism. Onsite here in the past I have mentioned my submission in response to our govts appeal for input into parliamentary reform: have an upper chamber that works by consensus. I had no expectation that left & right wingers involved in the processing of submissions were capable of the intelligence required to grasp this concept. Since I had made it work to get the Greens into parliament long before, I was just hoping that a morph from clueless to sufficiently intelligent had happened in bureaucracy. The better world awaits us.
Yes, we really do still want socialism. Or at least many of us do. And the left should stop acting terrified of the word simply because the right uses it as a smear against literally any attempt to build a fairer society.
Instead, we should reclaim it and define what it actually means in Aotearoa in 2026.
To me, socialism is not some caricature of grey authoritarian bureaucracy. It means:
And yes, it also means recognising that markets are useful tools, but terrible moral philosophies.
The irony is that many of the things listed nostalgically in that 1948 description are exactly the institutions that built modern New Zealand: state housing, public infrastructure, universal services, public broadcasting, transport, strong labour institutions, guaranteed development, and long-term national planning.
Socialism was never some alien imposition on New Zealand values. At its best, it was their clearest and purest expression.
And it can be so again, if we have the courage and clarity to make it so.
"Yes, we really do still want socialism. Or at least many of us do. And the left should stop acting terrified of the word simply because the right uses it as a smear against literally any attempt to build a fairer society."
What we call "a fairer society".
The others don't. They have other definitions and are proposing them convincingly; you may not (I don't!) like Seymour et al's way, but people are convinced by him and he's promoting "a fairer way".
Then the simple answer is to get better at articulating ours instead of whining and being cynical about their ability to do so with theirs.
A good find; those observations by that 1948-analyst map very well to NZ Labour’s principles and objectives (https://www.labour.org.nz/party_info). Of course, the 1948-descriptors are time-specific and inextricably linked to what actually [had] happened at that time and in that environment while Labour’s principles and objectives lack those time constraints. Both sets are rooted in NZ Labour’s democratic-socialist tradition (cf. “democratic socialism and economic and social co-operation”).
Some here on The Standard seem to be guided by emotion stemming, in part, from their visceral response to Hipkins. Assuming that they believe that Labour still stands for and embodies its stated principles & objectives, their doubts (and attacks) seem to centre on whether NZ Labour can formulate a plausible plan for the future to execute.
I do have my own doubts because I think that NZ Labour focuses way too much on statism as the end rather than a means to achieve its objectives. They spend much resource on the techno-bureaucratic mechanics of the State and how to manage it thereby losing sight & track of their own objectives. In other words, they’re pulled down and bogged down, largely because of loud & sub-audible but omni-present RW narratives in & by media – this clouds Labour’s thinking and that, in turn, influences Labour’s actions.
The thing is though, those values are still very real and very present in New Zealand society. They’ve just become latent.
People still believe in fairness. They still believe nobody should be left behind. They still instinctively understand concepts like public obligation, social trust, and mutual responsibility. Even if they no longer use the language of “social democracy” or “democratic socialism” to describe them.
That tradition was never really foreign to New Zealand. In many ways it was the New Zealand story for much of the 20th century.
I think where Labour sometimes struggles is that it becomes trapped defending systems, institutions, and administrative processes instead of articulating the moral purpose behind them. The state becomes the focus rather than the instrument.
But most people do not wake up in the morning thinking about governance models or delivery frameworks. They think about whether they can afford a home, whether their kids will have a better life, whether communities still hold together, and whether the country still feels like it belongs to ordinary people.
The centre-left often speaks as though competence alone is enough. It probably isn’t. People need something they can believe in, not just something that can be administered.
Some years back I asked Labour why they had the 8 hour working day, 40 hour working week on the front page of their website if they no longer believed in it.
They didn't say we still believe in it they took it off their website. Pretty much that is where they are still at.
Asking do we want socialism is sort of the wrong question because it is too rigid a brush. Do we still want democratic socialism is the better question because we have never actually had socialism but we have had democratic socialism same as the Scandinavian countries, the UK, Australia.
It isn't like we need to reinvent the wheel. Something as simple as looking in an old New Zealand Yearbook gives quite lucid descriptions. With all the educated people in parties the ability to articulate a policy and vision is pretty poor.
The present system cannot be characterised according to any single principle, theory, or formula. It has evolved from changing needs and experience in dealing with them. For example, it looks like a form of community insurance, but is not financed, funded, or administered on an insurance basis. It is contributory, because it is financed from taxation; it acts with the progressive income tax structure in redistributing income. But any person's benefit bears no relation to his tax contribution. While basically income-tested and selective as to need within classes of benefit, it is also universally applied without regard to other income or means in three main cases (superannuation, family, and medical benefits) and in the lesser miners' benefit. It transfers income from the more to the less affluent mainly on the basis of greatest help for those in greatest need. It reflects the traditional humanitarian, egalitarian, and pragmatic approach of New Zealanders and, most importantly, reflects an acceptance of community responsibility for social welfare.
https://www3.stats.govt.nz/New_Zealand_Official_Yearbooks/1974/NZOYB_1974.html#idchapter_1_54058
How's it working for Cuba right now, Advantage?
How might it work if the US didn't embargo Cuba and interfere lest socialist policies take hold in the US? In the meantime….
Specific areas where Cuba outweighs or surpasses the USA include:
Full support, DoS. My point is, with all that you describe, it's all perilously at risk because, 'Merica/Brute Force/Might.
Carefully and intelligently-built systems are vulnerable to Brute Force. Unless somehow, they're inured. I don't know if that's possible – do you? And that's my point.
Borrowed from twitter:
'How much of what we have lost from a strong state do we really want back?' We want all of it back!
That….assuming we win in November (I fervently hope !) could well be a long process.
Still, there are many areas of NACT1 toxicity that can be given a deep clean…and fresh growth begun. For once again…..our Lovely Land.
Ditch the pricks '26 !
"Her 1.5 terms…"
Jacinda was PM for 1917 days which is 1.75 terms approximately.