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12:17 pm, August 6th, 2026 - 20 comments
Categories: Chlöe Swarbrick, chris hipkins, Deep stuff, election 2026, greens, labour, marama davidson, national, Politics, same old national, Shane Jones, TOPS, winston peters -
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In a 2026 election beset already by bombast and hyperbole, is the big-policy-first approach of the left still working?
For those who believe like Marcus Aurelius that politics is a noble sport dedicated to improving lives and nation as one, 2026 is a disappointment even before Parliament rises.
Labour, the Greens, and Opportunities are policy-drive movements led by reasonable and rational people.
The substance those three parties are all promoting – huge tax changes, more health services, more social welfare certainty – are illuminated with set-piece interviews and standard speeches.
Big policies rising to popularity requires a calm, articulate, constantly reinforced message, consistently delivered over time by rational, unflappable and highly briefed leaders.
The leaders of those parties are measured, thoughtful, nuanced people. Chris Hipkins to his bones is a dedicated public servant and understands how to make gradual gains with consistently applied policy. Probed about policy, Chloe Swarbrick and Marama Davidson are increasingly unruffled under pressure. Qiulae Wong has gained profile with soft long-form set-piece interviews.
The party candidates underneath those leaders are policy-qualified, mostly ex-NGO-ex-public servants, and calm, articulate, measured, thoughtful, nuanced people. Just like their leaders.
Policy is the essence of the establishment because it needs the establishment to implement policy. So, such parties hire establishment people.
But that isn’t working in 2026. We should be sternly disabused of any notion that we are at Peak Woke as far as full-spectrum media dominance is concerned. Woke controversies, not policy, are winning this politics.
It has taken one sentence each from Winston Peters, Shane Jones, random Act Loonies, one paragraph from Chris Luxon, and all that measured policy-rich rationality in those sit-down interviews is dissolved from the public mind as fast as a Men In Black pen.
The right are monstering public discourse for weeks on end without a mention of a single policy, or direction for the country, or indeed much at all. This is the best defence the right has: smother policy discourse with slightly controversial lines: that’s enough to retain power.
The establishment masquerading as the insurgent from the left, is being dominated by the insurgent masquerading as the establishment from the right.
Through such tactics the right remain on course to win power in 2026. The left may presume that the rationality of the righteous policy-directed reckoning will prevail over the right. But that bet isn’t working.
There is no going back to 2017. There is no breakthrough salvific charisma from the broad left that can beat the controversy-dominance of the right.
When one scans across the current polling and recent electoral results of the UK, France, Germany, and the United States – and New Zealand – unapologetic bombast and hyperbolic statements create the winning politics. Australia’s Labor and Canada’s Liberals are the remaining rational outliers.
There will, while the Boomers and GenZ still live, be a segment of voters who inhale policy in all its richness.
But this is their last run. Pete Buttigieg election politics no longer works. Hilary Clinton and Kamala Harris and Helen Clark politics no longer works. Not enough to win – which is the actual point of elections.
For the left here in New Zealand, 2026 should already tell us …
There is no going back.
Even deeper than the economy is a sense of well-being, and I suspect it will be the primary driver this election, so well done for an exploratory essay into that.
Skids are under Lux big-time, so the left can easily win without trying if the mood of the crowd merely seeks change. Problem: too many influencers seeking paradigm shift.
I don't mean just politicos – too many of those feel constrained by the system. I mean natural influencers, who tend to steer those they talk to subliminally more than overtly.
I would argue that the last three elections (at least) have been driven by emotion, rather than considered deliberation over policy.
2017. The reversal of the downward trend of Labour in the polls under Little, putting Ardern in a position where she could form a government with NZF and C&S from the Greens – was entirely emotional. There was no difference in campaign policy under Little and under Ardern. But the public liked her and didn't like him.
2020. The Covid election. Entirely emotional support for Adern's handling of the initial stages of the pandemic. Policy was largely irrelevant, and ignored.
2023. The Covid reverse election. Reaction against the later stages of the pandemic handling; and the assumption that Labour had a mandate for radical changes, which they had not specifically campaigned on. Policy was largely irrelevant. Labour was being judged on the 'mistakes' not the successes of the pandemic policy; and on the arrogance of the radical changes. This was an emotional 'anti-Labour' election result, not one based on consideration of the policy alternatives.
2026. Who knows? But, I'd argue that the NZ electorate is long past rational weighing up of policy alternatives (if, that was indeed ever a historical reality).
PS: Fan-girling over the Marcus Aurelius reference AND the MIB one.
Sound assessment agree.
The last time an election actually swung on policy, arguably, was 2005 when interest-free student loans debatably got Labour over the line (along with turning out South Auckland). Before that was probably 1975 with dancing Cossacks, or 1960 after the black budget.
With the dancing Cossacks Muldoon tried to suggest an association between Labour and Russian communism. What he didn't realise was that the Cossacks were Ukrainians rather than Russians, and that they preceded communism anyway.
And of course it was just a choreographed dance rather than an example of regimentation in the political sense. One would not have wanted them to be all out of sync with one another.
No, it's 2026, policies haven't mattered for a long time, what matters is who is delivering the policies and whether the public digs the person, Jacinda Ardern won a majority landslide in 2020 on a manifesto with no policies because the public liked her, it had nothing to do with policies and less to do with labour party parliamentary candidates, it was solely because people liked her, they trusted her at that moment, just like John Key was elected on his personality not his policies and Luxon was elected because he was leading a party that wasn't labour in an election where everyone on the left, right and center had a grudge against labours pathetic and pointless second term.
It's been this way for awhile, Labour have a dual problem, the policies they are announcing are pathetic and do nothing to address the energy and food and housing costs NZ in a structural way in NZ so they aren't getting any points for their policies
And they get points deducted for the people delivering the policies, the labour party is a party now totally full of upper middle class managers that come off as titchy librarians, who knew better than us but then you look at the policies they are offering and you laugh because their policies are like opening an umbrella in a cyclone, they do nothing.
They are both unlikable, unrelatable and unrecognizable.
When Chris Hipkins delivers a message we change the channel, when Luxon delivers a message we change the channel. The public have tuned them out.
Hipkins can release all the policies he wants, the public doesn't like him, the truth is over the next 90 days that polling lead is going to continue to disintegrate as people are continuously reminded why they don't like him, see their weird librarian like local labour candidate being unlikable, the reason labour are polling better than they should be is because everyone hates Luxon and Hipkins and labour don't get much attention but parties have to get equal time during the election and they'll be reminded of how piss poor that second term was, why they didn't like him and how pathetic labours polices and local electorate candidates are and stay home or vote another party.
The only likable person in Labour is Kieran McNulty who actually sounds like the people who need and vote for labour, ie bogans, the working class, Hipkins sounds like a robot librarian from the Clark years
If the messenger of the policies is unlikable noone listens
Hipkins should have been given the boot a year ago, half of la
bours caucus should retired at the end of this term and an effort should have been made to get real human beings who speak like human beings to stand for labour, instead we have unlikable librarian robots offering a couple free doctors visits a year when noone can afford to eat and pay their rents or mortgages 😂
I hope we win this election, but we're not. Both parties need to change leaders immediately
What do you have against librarians? Mostly very nice people, who do the best they can to deliver a public service in a difficult economic and social environment.
Not, perhaps, the most charismatic of social butterflies, but not universally disliked!
But I think librarians reflect more the middle class than the working class in steel-toed boots, and I feel that is the type of Labour supporter who Corey feels is not being represented by the present bunch. Perhaps Corey would like to pass his opinion on what I have said?
"Not, perhaps, the most charismatic of social butterflies, but not universally disliked!"
WHATT??
Librarians are gorgeous, creative, aware, alert and fun with a capital "F"!
Any librarian you might know must be an outlier – mine are mainstream Best People and butterflies of the highest caliber. They are surrounded by BOOKS, don'cha know! Books! Authors! Imaginators!
How could you not know this, Belladonna???
If you'll read Corey's comment, you'll find that he was dissing librarians, not me.
Given that I am one (by avocation and training, although only peripherally practicing at this stage of my life) – I'm not going to say you're wrong.
However, compared to my arts and music colleagues, we are not quite as extroverted a bunch.
I think this is a fairer criticism, even if it is considerably overstated.
To be clear, though, Labour did not win in 2020 because Jacinda Ardern was personally popular while offering no meaningful policy. Her government had articulated and implemented one overwhelmingly important policy: doing everything reasonably possible to stop your grandad, your mum or your aunties dying of COVID.
That policy was inseparable from the trust people placed in Ardern. Voters trusted her because they believed she understood the threat, cared about protecting them, and had demonstrated that her government could act effectively.
The messenger mattered enormously. But the messenger was carrying a policy, a moral argument and a record of delivery.
The same is true of John Key. His personality helped him sell a particular political offer: stability, optimism and competent economic management. Luxon benefited from an electorate determined to remove Labour, but National still won by promising tax relief, economic recovery and more competent government.
Politics is never simply policy or personality. It is whether the person, the policy and the political moment reinforce one another.
There is a legitimate criticism that Labour's current programme may not yet feel proportionate to the scale of the problems people face, and that Hipkins does not always communicate urgency or conviction particularly well. But that is very different from saying policy no longer matters. Or, for that matter, that Hipkins can't manage it.
In 2020, the policy was extremely simple and emotionally immediate: we are going to protect the people you love.
That may be one of the clearest examples in recent New Zealand history of policy winning an election.
I think this is a fatalistic and unduly pessimistic diagnosis.
To be fair, there is a real problem here: the right has become very good at hijacking the media cycle with symbolic controversies, while the left often responds with careful explanations that struggle to compete for attention. But dominating the discourse for a few days is not the same thing as winning the political argument.
Policy is already playing a major role in shaping the election. Because the most important thing it communicates is not always its technical design.
It is what it says about a party’s priorities.
Labour, the Greens and TOP are all, in different ways, saying: we care about whether you can see a doctor, whether you can afford to live, and whether your children will inherit a functioning country.
The coalition’s endless succession of gaffes, culture-war distractions and tone-deaf provocations communicates something too: that while households are struggling and hospitals are deteriorating in real time, the government would rather argue about whether English needs to be declared an official language, or whether we should re-visit, yet again, our electoral system.
That may generate coverage. It does not necessarily generate support. In fact, it risks reinforcing the most damaging possible impression of the government: that it is distracted, ideological and indifferent to the material problems people can see around them.
Nor was the 2023 election won through Trumpian bombast or culture-war politics. National won because it promised lower taxes, better economic management and a more coherent plan than an exhausted Labour government appeared capable of offering.
It won a fundamentally material argument.
The coalition now has to persuade voters that it delivered on those promises. That is much harder when the cost of living remains punishing, public services are under visible strain and Luxon’s leadership continues to look politically uncertain. Asking voters to re-elect the government increasingly requires them to discount the evidence of their own experience.
The lesson for the left is not that rational politics or substantial policy has stopped working. It is that policy cannot be presented as an end in itself. It has to support a simple and emotionally legible political message:
We care about your health, your cost of living and your children’s future. These people do not.
That is not bloodless establishment politics. It is a direct moral and material argument about whose side government is on.
The right may currently be better at creating noise. But noise is not the same thing as trust, credibility or a reason to vote for someone. There is no reason to assume that voters will prefer endless symbolic provocation to a political programme that speaks directly to the problems they are actually living through.
Can I please put that up as a post?
Sure thing 🙂
If English as an official language is a trivial culture-war distraction, the best way to respond is to immediately and whole-heartedly support it. If you think there are serious problems with making English an official language, then it's not a trivial issue after all, is it?
Yeah, nah. That's not how it works.
Just because something is trivial and unimportant doesn't mean it's inconsequential. Or that it's not worth fighting. It simply means the underlying problem being invoked doesn't warrant the political attention being lavished on it.
And spending time, resources and political capital on it in an election year is a choice the government has made, and one that speaks to its priorities.
You don't get to smuggle in bullshit and then declare that anyone who objects has proved it wasn't bullshit after all.
Nice try at a rhetorical trap, but it only works if you don't think about it for more than 15 seconds.
Clearly, Ad, this approach, coached approach, from the Right will continue and intensify. Luxon hasn't delivered his last wtf moment, Peters and Jones have more racism to splatter about yet and Seymour's saving his best-worst for last.
They know the technique works; it's been well-tested overseas and here, and it's their only chance of swinging the election their way; unfortunately, it's a very strong chance, and they know it. We can and will be outraged more and more, but outrage won't alter their course. We must counter with effective, attention-catching responses.
Who, on our side, knows how to do this?
McAnulty's good, Swarbrick's good.
Brian Bennett, drummer for The Shadows (if you can remember them), when doing a media call for their 50th anniversary tour, was questioned about whether he thought they would win X-Factor if they were their original selves today.
His response was that they probably wouldn't have entered. That their goal was to be good working (pop) musicians, but people on the X-Factor want to be celebrities.
Just like the 'working bands' of the past – The Shadows, The Beatles, The Stones, Bee Gees, Tina Turner and such like – earned their popularity by hard work, today's celebrities are thrust into adulation by clever marketing, quick coaching, and the endorsement of supposed-experts.
The same has happened in politics, unfortunately. Even Muldoon who, in my opinion, became a convenient 'enemy of the state' to help ease the ushering in of neoliberalism, despite having genuine failings, was a 'proper' politician.
You're right – Chris Hipkins is a consummate political professional. But, "We, the People" are conditioned now to give priority to the likes of Paul Henry who, despite being an expert in some things, has possibly never read the likes of a briefing document, or could develop policy, or deal with a rogue Ministerial H.O.D who wanted to fly an underperforming pet project under the radar.
It's our fault, not theirs. Our ancestors who weren't male landowners fought for the right to vote for someone to represent their interests in the running of this country. Many of us have trampled on that right and helped to usher in government after government of Bread and Circuses, where cool sunglasses or racist outbursts or calling schoolkids "little shits" are what it takes to capture the hearts and minds of potential voters.
Not considering at all what the policies themselves are. That’s another issue.
Every election we get accusations of not providing policy at all, or not enough or in a time frame that opponents want so they can mount countermoves.
Providing policy counters all that.
The next question is what other messages do voters react to in a positive way? And yes, feelings and emotions which voters can attach to are important, both positive and negative.
Give them something to be proud of. Something that is stirring. Something that is reassuring and secure. Something that relieves fear and negativity. Something to be angry or critical of, in the opposition. Something that reassures people financially, socially, and in terms of safety, within and without our borders. Something of hope. Something of faith in our system, our values, our democracy. Something of charity to others.
All repeated so often that we think it is too often, when actually it just starts to sink home.
Short messages. Not too many. Repeated.
If you want the handbook- read this from the master. https://www.physics.smu.edu/pseudo/Propaganda/goebbels.html
Agree! This is a fight of populism not policy.
And too many on the left – really can't fight that fight.
Shame really, because the ideology of liberalism is falling apart, and in the west being replaced by a corporate oligarchy – who are in essence producing a nerd reich.