Summarised by Centrist
In “Losing the working class”, commentator Chris Trotter examines Labour’s slow alienation of working class voters, which resulted in this year’s historic general election defeat.
Trotter outlines Labour’s history from Rogernomics to its embrace of abortion rights, homosexual law reform and the fallout of the Springbok Tour as milestones along the way.
Ultimately, Labour’s undoing was in the mishandling of “The radical quest for Māori sovereignty, and its central political demand – ‘Honour the Treaty,’” says Trotter.
“The leaders, and the members, of the Labour Party… simply didn’t see the harm in paying lip-service to Māori demands,” he says.
Trotter writes:
“Neither Ardern, nor her successor, Chris Hipkins, had the intellectual or ideological sophistication to argue either For or Against the revolutionary ideas contained in the He Puapua Report.”
“Labour made no case for co-governance because it couldn’t,” he says.
In a last ditch, Labour opted for accusing the very voters upon whom their re-election depended as being racists. Not surprisingly, the strategy didn’t work.
