Labour astray in New Zealand 3 Edition

• Published in: Independent (London, England : 1986)
• Main Author: Lawson, Mark
• Format: Newspaper Article
• Language: English
• Published: London (UK) Independent Digital News & Media 08.11.1993
• Subjects: Smith, John
• ISSN: 0951-9467

I fear, though, that the more relevant dress rehearsal for the next British election was this weekend's poll in New Zealand. The ruling party had followed right-wing economic policies resulting in, or followed by, an epic recession. The prime minister was a man of negative charisma and absent oratory, who had achieved the lowest opinion poll ratings not just in the history of New Zealand but of any leader in any democracy since personality politics began. It looked as if Jim Bolger, the starchy farmer who led New Zealand's National Party, could have run against the Amoebic Dysentery For Everyone Party and still lost. Yet despite all this, the opposition Labour leader - a bald Labour opposition leader, one adds with gathering gloom - was unable cleanly to knock over an apparently coconut-shy opponent. A hung parliament resulted, with Bolger's party holding the largest number of seats, leaving political uncertainty and a scramble for coalitions. Optimists will observe that Labour was within a whisker of winning. Alarmists will note that, even in such helpful circumstances, they could not do it. So, joke about which two Tories would survive the same trick here, but Canada is probably more America's mirror than Britain's. We should look at New Zealand. Older Kiwis still call Britain the "mother country" but New Zealand has been the mother country (they never found the father) for a many political ideas practised on Britain. Indeed, Herbert Asquith, while prime minister in 1912, declared New Zealand a "laboratory" for the instruction of other countries. I wonder, though, whether the New Zealand result really is such good PR, as it were, for PR. One of the drawbacks of the constituency system - particularly in places such as New Zealand and the UK where beliefs and lifestyles clump together regionally - is that it provides little possibility of radical protest at the ballot box, isolated loyalties always masking generalised resentment. In Britain, the SDP and the various species of Liberals have generated much heat but few seats. Two new New Zealand groupings in the recent poll had to be content with a pair of seats each.