Summarised by Centrist
As New Zealand heads into its October 2025 local body elections, a YouTube commentator known as The Anglo Saxon is urging voters to reject Māori wards, framing the debate as a clash between two incompatible systems of governance.
He rejects the idea that we must “decide together and thrive together,” calling it “a recipe for disaster,” and instead argues that New Zealand must “decide as one and thrive as one” under a single democratic authority.
He contrasts what he calls “collective rule”, associated with iwi authority, with “sovereign rule” under the Crown. “A collective authority cannot admit a sovereign authority and at the same time retain its collective authority. And a sovereign authority cannot admit a collective authority and at the same time retain its supreme authority. The two systems are mutually exclusive polar opposites. We can have one or the other, but not both.”
He links Māori tribal structures to Europe before the 1648 Peace of Westphalia, when overlapping jurisdictions and feudalism led to constant conflict. “The diplomats concluded that collective rule was the problem. Instead, they adopted sovereign territorial rule where each state had supreme authority within fixed borders. This marked the birth of the modern nation state,” he says.
His conclusion is blunt: “You are literally voting to set in place the necessary conditions setting the stage for the future outbreak of civil war. Vote no to Māori wards. Vote yes to sovereign democratic rule.”
