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10:27 am, May 9th, 2026 - 23 comments
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Anyone who thinks that New Zealand won’t be touched by the same rapid democratic pessimism as we see in our most comparable democracies, is like those who thought COVID could be stopped from reaching us.
It’s a fantasy and a dangerous lie.
We’re not special. We’re not seeing a clamour for coherence, a belief in economic turnaround plans, or platforms with an optimism assuming that generous social cohesion can be rebuilt. We are seeing the reverse.
In the two democracies on which our entire governing system is based – Great Britain and Australia – there is a political swing hard against massive political parties that have previously been a reliable base for sensible governance that guided those two countries for over a century. Whether I agree with the broad policy base of Australia’s Liberal Party or National Party, or the UK Conservatives or the UK Labor Party is less material than the political liquefaction within those two countries that we have relied upon and been guided by over our existence. Their precedents and forecasts matter to us because they have made and are making us: the UK in the past, and Australia in our present and future.
Australia
Australia is critical to the current and future New Zealand in every conceivable aspect. There’s a by-election happening this weekend for the seat in Victoria of Farrar. Whatever the result, the trend is clear: the rise in One Nation support is not a temporary protest driven by cost-of-living measures. A major Australian National University (ANU) study out recently says that it reflects “a potentially more durable and structurally grounded configuration, one where low hope, high financial stress, scepticism about government capacity, indifference to environmental concerns, and a populist orientation toward political life combine to produce a distinctive and internally coherent support base”.
Even in Australia, that massively prosperous and assertive country, the belief-in-government index declined between December 2025 and March 2026, consistent with falling institutional confidence over the period.
The Liberal Party that guided and shaped Australia with great leaders like Alfred Deakin and John Howard and Robert Menzies, is in terminal decline. Granted no political party is immutable. But this is a sea change we have not seen since the Liberals were formed in 1944.
United Kingdom
In the United Kingdom, the Conservatives have failed to be competitive against Reform for some time, but this is the first term that UK Labour are also being eclipsed.
The 2024 UK election was a world ago, an historic win for Labour. It was a landslide victory, and the worst performance in the history of the Conservative party. This landslide victory was secured by the Conservative vote share plummeting by 20%, to just 121 seats. Remarkably, the collapse in government’s popularity wasn’t solely down to Labour, which saw its vote share rise by just 2%, but largely due to increased support for other political parties.
The reach and depth of public dissatisfaction with immigration controls, EU skepticism, and a hardening of social divides is a UK undercurrent rising into a tsunami smashing away old political orders.
To suggest that the rise of One Nation or Reform are political accidents that can be “looked through” like the NZ Reserve Bank “looking through” a massive economic shock, is wrong. It is real and it is here to stay.
New Zealand
Like the voter populations of Australia and the United Kingdom, we have a population that is financially squeezed, has diminished confidence in government’s ability to deliver, and is at the same time unwilling to accept either taxes that more spending would require or debt that would otherwise fund it.
New Zealand has had low points in the performance of National and Labour, such as Labour in 2014 or National in 2020. But no third party has gone on track to 15% of the vote until now. There is no “looking through” New Zealand First.
It may well be that the wreckage of the New Zealand economy since COVID will take more than two governments to right. It may also be that government simply isn’t capable of righting the economy against the scale of shock we face, and it really is going to get as bad as the late 1970s.
It is also not fair on any one party that they both resonate with profound skepticism that the state will in the end deliver for us, and at the same time set afire a deep nationalism based upon an inchoate unwillingness to give up on our own country and to defend its borders and its existence. But for Australia, the United Kingdom, and now New Zealand, that is what we are all facing.
Uncomfortably, New Zealand First are rising in this election as never before. It’s as sure as COVID got here.
Optionality is an interesting dimension of political psychology. I see no real ideological component to NZF. Winston remains staunch on recycling nationalism so his pull on sheeple is no real surprise. Somehow Lux must simulate being pragmatic instead of his usual neolib default stance, and fool some of the people some of the time thereby.
Big ask, eh? So W does his pit-bull thing on the Nats underbelly with relative impunity. Lux's deputy telling him off for being naughty was fun for a day or two, particularly when he admitted it with a grin. Johansson standing behind him like the proverbial grey eminence of bygone days backed up the heft of the clowning, like when Trump pointed his Bible at the tv cameras in front of a church without ever saying a word. Looks to be approx 105 (I know he's younger than me) – yet his formula is working
Sheeple optionality has also validated Labour's sleep-walk to victory strategy: got them a switcheroo with the Nats @ 37% vs 29%, opposite to a couple of years ago. Kiwi journo turned entrepreneur Richard Meadows wrote a cool tome on optionality, and he condensed key principles here: https://thedeepdish.org/optionality/
It looks like the UK is now a 3 to 4! party system with Lab, Cons, Reform and are LibDems still a thing? New Zealand could be heading that way if NZF poll 15ish%.
UK Greens did very well in the local body elections this week.
Labour deserve the thrashing they got. Starmer's government is an anti-leftist, neoliberal hell train. I hope NZ Labour are learning the right things from this.
NZ First = disease 🙂
It's a big blind spot for the left. We still largely operate as if we are right and people will soon come to agree with us because we're on the right side of history. Reform and NZF prove us wrong.
As an example. The left refuses to talk about immigration policy. But Brexit in the UK was a clear indication that people were not going to just accept neoliberal job losses. Of course there was a major push on making it a racist issue, and that's exactly how so many people were dragged or pushed to Reform now. Exactly how. The new right ran racist politics and the left called anyone who wanted to say 'hang on, we do actually need to talk about neoliberalism, job loss, and immigration settings' a racist. The new right won, on Brexit, but more importantly on smashing the Overton Window.
People want to belong. Reform and NZ offer a place to go. The liberal left runs purity politics and prefers to ostracise and ridicule. We call people nimbys, or racists, or whatever name we have that puts people in their place.
People want to belong and feel secure, and the more crises we have (covid, cost of living, climate, the worlds is a scary place) the more people will go where they feel safe.
The left could be offering a safe place for people to go, and we aren't. I don't mean the people that love Swarbrick, or are Labour stalwarts. We will already vote on the left. I mean the swing voters who determine elections in NZ, and the non-vote. Those are the ones we should be connecting with. And we aren't.
That's the conversation we should be having. Policy matters, but it doesn't matter as much as sense of belonging and feeling secure.
There’s no reason, AFAIK, why the Left cannot provide a sense of belonging and feeling secure any less than the Right. In any case, it’s a vibe with a bit of emotion on top.
The Right, especially the populist Right that’s been mentioned in the OP, has quite hideous ways of attacking and mowing down opponents because they stand in the way of their unfettered ideology yet the Left has this stigma, deserved or not, of running ‘purity politics and prefers to ostracise and ridicule’!? The Left has ‘purity politics’ vs the Right has ‘dirty politics’, that’s dichotomy and I think it’s urban myth that we should stop believing.
Completely agree. The question is why we are not.
Narrative, PR & communication.
I think it's more fundamental than that. Those are tools we need, and we need to change how we use them. But why aren't we?
And how should/could 'we'? Not like this, imho, but I donated anyway.
As overshoot squeezes harder, getting ahead will be the least of 'our' worries.
NZ's projected overshoot day for 2026 is an electorally ugly 10th of April.
Party vote Green.
https://overshoot.footprintnetwork.org/newsroom/country-overshoot-days/
What is more fundamental than that?
A "sense of belonging and feeling secure" is long gone, weka. No one feels that way. Some one needs to step up and say, we have energy and heart and are up for the challenge! Come with us!
I'm with Weka on that point but I get where you are coming from. Heart politics was a trend in the early '90s tho I never went to any of the workshops (I already was applying the principle). I imagine the Hipkins reckons he's been up for it awhile already, btw.
The reason so many feel lack of belonging & insecurity is neolib economic policy creates precariats in western countries. Weka seems to be warning about freedom ethos working for the right by making rightist voters feel secure and the political trend here could easily track like the UK more than it currently is. So it's a valid concern.
neolib economic policy creates precariats in western countries.
Automation and AI seem likely to create more precariance in future. The British economist Guy Standing, who has made the precariat issue his own, suggests that the time has come to introduce a UBI.
It's exactly why people are choosing Reform over Labour in the UK (and the Greens over Labour). It's a not an inviolate sense of belonging and security. It's moving towards the people where voters feel welcome.
I agree someone needs to step up and say 'here's a good way, come with us!' Wonder why that's not happening?
Chlöe & Marama are.
Tania Waikato is on Q&A right now.
Fierce!
Marama has been amazing on BHN lately/
She has. She and Chlöe have got chutzpa and the bit between their teeth 🙂
Did you watch Tania Waikato on Q&A?
The surge of Māori interest toward The Greens is massive, imo.
About time too 🙂
One Nation wins the Farrar election with ease in a Liberal stronghold:
Farrer presents One Nation as a genuine electoral threat rather than just a protest – ABC News
… and the regional government results in the UK are so bad that Starmer is very likely facing a leadership challenge:
Labour MP says she will trigger leadership contest by Monday if cabinet does not launch challenge – ask it happened | Politics | The Guardian
NZ came within a whisker of this just two weeks ago.
Yes, rather an uncanny resemblance! Here's the BBC update: https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cx210w87l4do (with numbers).
Pulling the trigger on Monday is a rare example of initiative in Labour, so the sheeple will be well & truly spooked (even if she's pointing that gun she's waving around at her own head much of the time). Hasn't got a clue who will rise to her challenge. Last Chance Saloon? Complaints about Labour & Starmer are vague, but the gist is being out of touch with the people. Nobody has explained why decades of focus groups failed to remedy this long-term trend. Nor any amount of door-knocking…
There were significant bright spots. The Greens polled very well in England and Scotland.
In Scotland the SNP and Greens have a solid 73 seat majority. Both support Scottish independence, so will ask Ed Miliband, sorry, Starmer, to allow an independence referendum.
Good post. NZF advertising online for public meetings now in mid may to keep flooding the zone.
Grinds my gears the opposition isn't calling out the true colours of NZF/NACT with the Irex debacle, tobacco, media attacks and pretty much all of Jones handy work.
Least they can do till that well crafted vision for NZ they roll out to bring kiwis on their journey at the polls V where the coalition are taking us.