I’ve argued that Labour are on track to win the 2023 election but there are two outside chances National have left that could spook those 45+ women back to National and see them beat Labour with ACT.
Labour have benefited from an unprecedented solidarity created by the universal shared experience of the pandemic and Jacinda’s incredible leadership skills during that lockdown won over all the generational female vote that Labour lost to John Key.
These 45+ women didn’t vote for Jacinda in 2017, but the pandemic represented a seismic shift in the psychology of the electorate and Jacinda’s leadership generated a never before seen MMP majority.
This leaves National with almost no chance of winning back hearts and minds, especially with the strength of ACT. A hard right ACT/National Government will scare the bejesus out of middle NZ, and in that fear is National’s only path to winning 2023.
There are 2 chances for National, and both require reactionary fear and anger.
The first is that Covid breaks out in NZ and the public trace it back to an incompetence by the Government.
The ongoing fiascos at the border are beltway topics that someone like Chris Bishop can champion but for voters the proof is in the pudding and our Covid free status held up against news coverage of other countries still being ravaged by the pandemic means National can only win when NZ fails.
We have had almost 140 000 through MIQ with only a handful of breaches, until there is a serious breach (which is possible with a Trans-Tasman bubble), voters will still see Labour as their personal saviour.
The second issue that National could manipulate into reactionary fear and anger is the looming gang war that is erupting on th streets right now.
The domestic criminal gang scene has probably never been under the unique stresses it is now facing.
2000 ‘501’s have been forcibly removed to NZ in the space of 5 years. In almost all cases, these people left NZ when they were children and have little or no connection to our country.
40% go on to offend in NZ, and while all are not hardened criminals, those who are have brought a level of violence to the criminal gang scene that is completely outside the norm for NZ gangs.
Kiwis like to think our domestic gang scene is rough and dangerous, the truth is that we are very tame when compared to the Australian crime scene.
Th 501s are bringing an enormous level of violence to NZ and are using it against the domestic gangs in stand over tactics. They are also bringing high quality, cheaper meth from South American Cartels alongside guns to enforce those stand over tactics.
Th 501s are targeting existing leaders in various gangs and we have seen that violence escalate recently with this drive by shooting of the HeadHunters pad and the killings of various domestic gang members.
In response, domestic gangs have gone on a meth cooking binge while also trying to buy as many guns as possible to counter the 501s.
What we are seeing is a market in chaos with an invasive new species taking over.
This becomes a political issue when ordinary Kiwis accidentally get caught up in the cross fire. We are not used to this kind of gang violence, and when it erupts, Kiwis will demand a response from the Police that will border on the paramilitary.
National and ACT will capitalise on this the moment it happens and Labour’s attempts to unpick the factors that cause crime will be seen as grossly underwhelming.
Finally, for any of these to work it will be with a new leadership team. Judith can’t appeal to the electorate National needs to win back and she doesn’t have any strategy to arrest the loss of votes to ACT.
So National’s hopes rely on Team Luxon/Bridges and that hope has to be fed by reactionary anger and fear from open gang warfare and or NZ failing at the border.
Lucky us.
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Disagree wholeheartedly.
Labour will win easily with two words, ‘Jacinda Ardern’
As long as Jacinda is in charge, Labour will win, without her then it becomes a contest. You are absolutely correct in the 45+ female voter being her key, but from I’ve seen and heard, that group have almost made her a saint. None of Labour’s failings are ever her fault, or they just completely ignore them.
National just do not have enough of a populist leader to get anywhere near her, and even in they did, “Jacinda saved gran” is what people remember, not the countless muck ups.
What an idictment on the sub-par intelligence of anyone who would consider casting a vote for Labour simply because Jacinda Ardern is the leader. In fact, someone as mindnumbingly average as Ardern being the left’s trump card should make her even more average colleagues question themselves very seriously. National are presently terrible too, as they blindly accept the dominant leftist paradigm and so follow Ardern’s lead on everything rather than reacting to the insanity and reality-denial underpinning the government’s policy prescriptions.
Well Jacinda took Labour from 23% to 38% when she took over from Little, not with great policy credentials, but with a smile and an adoring media…so go figure.
The collapse of the [Ponzi] global economic system and the collapse of the environment will hurt all the neoliberal parties…which means all those currently in parliament.
The latest thing we are short of in NZ is electricity.
‘Low lake levels and constrained gas supply have again pushed wholesale electricity prices up, causing some large manufactures to curtail production.
The Norske Skog Tasman Mill has been stopping and starting production since March, and running at reduced capacity.
New Zealand Steel has also had to cut production at a time demand for steel within New Zealand is at a record high.
Electricity providers are watching closely. Transpower, which owns and operates the national electricity grid, is issuing daily security of supply reports and will start holding bi-weekly industry briefings. It’s also developing an “outage watchlist” it intends to publish shortly…..’
Hmm? How did that happen? Could it be combination of dysfunctional political ideology and incompetence going back many decades to…..LINO of the 1980s?
One thing we can be sure about: ideology and incompetence reign supreme. And everything that matters is being made worse by the clowns and criminals in power, maintaining a long-standing tradition of making everything that matters worse.
By the way, Covid-19 is just a tiny diversion/distraction on the path to self-inflicted extinction via looting-and-polluting the commons. And looting-and-polluting the commons, along with eve-greater population overshoot, is what ALL political parties advocate.
So we are fucked whichever political party or combination of parties acquires power.
https://www.interest.co.nz/opinion/109993/deep-dive-whats-causing-wholesale-electricity-prices-soar-and-manufacturers-curtail
Could it be a lot of people in NZ are mining Bitcoin and/or other Cryptos to supplement our incomes? As I write this, Bitcoin mining alone is already globally consuming electricity consumed by all of Argentina! Even with NZ’s total rip-off electricity prices, it is very profitable to mine cryptos here. Crypto’s are not exactly “green” currencies…
https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-56012952
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-9358737/How-cryptocurrency-uses-electricity-transaction-method.html
you won’t read/hear that in the mainstream media.
There’s a 3rd reason that Labour can lose on that will send NZdrs back to Act/Nat’s: http://bowalleyroad.blogspot.com/2021/04/a-break-in-wave-giving-effect-to-un.html?m=1
Bravest and best move to make to counter the 501s is to do a Portugal where drugs go, pull the bloody rug right out from under their feet.
If you think gangs will just pack up and disappear because you drugs are legalised, you also believe in the tooth fairy.
agree 100% They would just undercut the legal price and fight harder for their share of the market. . They would get their stock through robbery just as they are now with cigarettes.
.
Balls @ xray. @ FoldArt is correct and you’re wrong and in the worst possible way. Your being wrong is driven by your ignorance. Just ask Mr Right Wing 2021 up there as trevor sennitt? “Stock through robbery”? WTF? As for cigarettes? They should be freely available to anyone who wants one without the lunacy of trying to price them out of reach. What a fucking dumb idea that is? That, by itself, immediately made them a lucrative commodity. Clearly, not smoking doesn’t make you smarter.
By never promoting cigarettes in print media or on television then shutting the fuck up about it will work far better than the insufferable wank of locking fags behind steel doors and making a 30 gm pack of tobacco worth as much as the weekly groceries? Who the fuck was responsible for that blinding stupidity? And in case you’re wondering… I used to smoke years ago and I loved it but I also understood they’d kill me after they’d make me sick and smelly.
Decriminalising all street drugs then deeming them a medical health issue is the only way to go. Then, how about a basic universal income and returning what were state run medical facilities back to those tax payers who paid for them as well?
Jesus! Are we really this fucking dumb?
Legalise drugs and suddenly these guys who live under an organization founded on informal rank structure, easy money, status, intimidation, earning the respect they think they get and in short, doing and taking what they want how they want will just see the error of their ways and just go out and get 8 to 4 jobs. How delusional are you?
Use another barrow to legalise drugs but pretending gangs will all become good law abiding productive citizens as the excuse is plain old political manipulation at its worst.
All comes back to housing.
If as per your piece, a deportee lands in NZ What do they find? The most unaffordable country in the galaxy to house themselves. That is not only an issue for deportees but for their fellow gang members and their families. They know they have no hope and will sink. Everything else like money, food, employment, navigating NZ’s support bureaucracy run close behind. And when the street is your home, or the constant threat that it will be, alternatives like crime become mighty tempting. But we save money as taxpayers ignoring the above by putting them on the street. Yessss…
On the immediate front Labour have selected a highly intellectual but dithering well meaning social worker for Police Commissioner. The action so far has been very a belated disorganised response like any other crime and none of us feel reassured this policing model is a counter to these losers. The so called operation on gangs is little more than a statistical gun recovery exercise. When the Minister demands answers she will get bullshit in return and no action of worth. The minister, as per the rest of Jacinda’s cohorts, will do nothing to address it. Labour are very very vulnerable here.
Bigger issue though is credibility. Labour are quickly becoming a government that can’t do things, that not only tolerates poor ministry performance but defends it. Great on announcements, woeful on results. Suspicions that there is no one capable in Jacinda’s government to deliver anything of use are solidifying into fact.
That is what will lose Labour power and will probably sink them as a party. The only thing keeping them in the game right now is Covid and a shit opposition.
The other 2 ways would be for National to announce, that their new leader is either Richie McCaw or Ashley Bloomfield.
Ashley? He’s Jacinda’s left hand man isn’t he?
You are getting mixed up with Ashley Church.
“Labour have benefited from an unprecedented solidarity created by the universal shared experience of the pandemic and Jacinda’s incredible leadership skills during that lockdown won over all the generational female vote that Labour lost to John Key”.
Yep, expect billboards such as:
LABOUR SAVED YOUR GRAN
VOTE THE PARTY YOU CAN TRUST
This headline would have frightened me in the past. Now Labour are just as bad so hey-ho.
Every day in NZ is like being on a huge centrifugal spinning machine. There are several rows of seats. The young near the centre and the older you are, the further out towards the outer cage you are. Money is placed on the floor at an equal height. Initially there is an equal opportunity for wealth for all. Each person can access the same money by working their body and bending down and picking up the money. The same amount of work creates the same outcome…equals Fairness. Then the RBNZ and the Treasury decide that they want to change the status quo. They want more to go to the boomers as they are boomers and feel entitled to more. They despise the young so they get control of the spinning mechanism and start spinning the machine slowly. This moves some of the money out towards the old. Orr gets excited and sees all his mates get richer. Robbo sees what happened and feels a little guilty. He lets the machine spin, but slowly, and tells Orr thats enough, no more speed. Orr is frustrated but accepts that speed. Then COVID comes along. Bingo Orr says. Orr convinces Robbo that the faster it spins the less chance of breathing in the virus particles. Robbo knows the damage this will do. All of the money will be transferred from the young to the old. The young will have no chance of ever becoming financially secure. He asks Jacinda what to do…. she looks at the people on board, decides who are voters and says, “ramp the speed up to warp speed Robbo, its what Kiwis expect!!!”
Another way for the Tories to win is to go back to their base. Muldoon and Brash succeeded – Maori bashing. It was Brash’s Orewa speech that won the Natz the benches in 2008 not Key. Brash brought Natz up from 25% to 47% and nearly won the 2005 election. Any leader in Natz could have won the 2008 election. There are plenty of candidates in Natz/Act who can mobilise the Talk-back listeners and Bloggers (Superannuant beneficiaries).
NZers dont give a shit about Bishop and Seymours ravings about retrospective closecalls – only the right wing media try and blow it up. NZers just look at the overseas news casts to see the death and destruction happening around the world and dont want things to change. Thank goodness Jacinda followed advice from the scientists and expert advice from around the world instead of the Natz, Act and NZ media advice they get from Youtube, conspirators and Qnon. Everything Jacinda has done has been right – im happy to wait for my vac jab just to see if there are any problems with the Pfizer vac overseas.
As I say to the sad old moaning men, rejoice and enjoy the free-est country in the world.
You are all wrong – the only way Labour lose under the Blairite is if there is a sustained recession coupled with house price inflation. Under this scenario all the issues of this government get magnified x10. Otherwise the sheeple in the middle don’t care. This scenario is about 20-25% atm.
National have two shows of beating Labour in 2023. Shit show and no show.
Ardern represents mothers milk to many Kiwi’s. That won’t be changing any time soon. National are dead in the water. Chucky is untrustworthy, toxic and divisive. Her brand was damaged beyond repair in 2023 and that was without our media addressing her enormous role in DIRTY POLITICS to say nothing of the shitshow her husband would bring to the top floor. Second cab off their ranks is God botherer Luxon. He gave up his Air NZ C.E.O role for one reason only….to be PM. He has high level backing to lead the Latrine Rodents and is just playing a waiting game. Politics moves in cycles. Sir Winston Churchill was almost worshiped by many people after helping save the allies from Nazi Germany and all that entails yet in 1945 Clement Attlee won in a landslide. Ardern will eventually lose her appeal but that won’t be happening any time soon. In 2018, I very confidently predicted she would serve an unprecedented 4 terms as PM. Nothing has changed since I made that call.
Chucky is the quintessential seat warmer. I find it hilarious that she tries to sell the myth she is a reluctant leader and is taking one for the team. Haha, the other one plays Jingle bells. Third choice is Simon Bridges who has not given up on being PM but his brand and dog barking at every passing car style was an epic fail The time for a person like Luxon to lead NZ has well and truly been and gone. Ardern has very cleverly AND most appropriately kept Politics and Religion apart. Any attempt by Luxon to do the same will be totally bereft of credibility and seen as much yet if he shows his true hand, he will be rejected on a grand scale. He’s trapped in nomans land and the inevitable relentless attempt to sell him as an alternative to mothers milk will fail big time.
So what will it take to knock Ardern off her perch? Two possibilities. The first is she decides family life / children has more appeal and steps down as leader. Grant Robertson would make an excellent PM but the shoes he’d have to fill are so big, he’d almost certainly fail. Chris Hipkins is extremely capable but the rest of the team with the exception of Ayesha Verrall are light years back. I have zero time for their alleged big hitter Megan Woods. Everything about her makes my skin crawl. If and when Ardern steps down, Labour are in real trouble.
Second possibility is a tidal wave movement for a different change arriving. How much longer does QEII have left as Queen? The main reason we are still not a republic and the flag referendum failed was due to QEII. The moment she is no longer Queen is the same moment loud calls for referendums will be back on the table. Should NZ become a republic and should we have a new flag?? if William was next in line, both referendum would likely fail but he isn’t. Charles has nowhere near the same popularity and appeal as his mother. Camilla has even less. If / when Charles becomes King, we will have epic change. NZ will be a republic called Aotearoa. The name New Zealand will quickly go straight into the history books and or bin. That process has already started. We will have a new flag. This will happen in a total landslide. Ardern knows it. That firestorm desire for change may hurt Ardern especially as the Covid threat will be at a much reduced level. Ardern herself may endorse the change so it could end up helping her rather than hurting her. One thing for absolute certain, this scenario does have 100 x the substance of any threat from Collins, Luxon or Bridges.
Have not heard that clarion call for a while–“latrine rodents”–heh.
My take is the Nats are closer to being finished for good with each funeral of a devout Nat “good ol’” boy or gal. Generational change while not absolute is significant and it is happening. The reactionary sector may gravitate to ACT in increasing numbers, but their MP ranks are pathetically light weight too including warm gun lover Nicole McKee.
There’s a third way: National doesn’t win but Labour loses.
In our system we don’t vote in new governments; instead we vote out old ones.
By the time of the next election I will *guarantee* Labour will have failed in every way, and have squandered billions on ‘working groups’ and ‘consultative committees’.
“and still get back in.” You forgot that last bit Andrew. I somewhat agree with what you say though.
One Jacindafan on their worst day is easily worth ten Andrew’s on his best day. I just like stating the obvious.
Yo 🙂
National could pick up a lot of votes by simply reforming the Cannabis laws, 1 million voted for it, so, if National did this…Labour would struggle to win in 2023
Akshully a picture is worth a million words and that picture above shows the two reason why National won’t win the 2023 election.
Agree with most of what you said Jacinda fan and would like to add both Bridges and Reti have ambitions to be leader or thereabouts. So Luxs-on has a big up hill battle if he wants to become the leader as he would have to navigate his way past the minefield first and that won’t be easy, its not the same as running an airline. And given he (luxon) has very little political experience and this showed when he opened his mouth and his ideas were all mixed up with this Christian ideology. I think many in NZ would see Luxons’ views as outdated. As for the barking dogs in the National party that award would go to Bishop and Willis.
Reti has fans out there, yes.
His strong call of “Overreach!” to one of the govt’s nanny-state tactics resonated with many. The rest of the Nats just rolled over – Reti was the only one standing for something, the one mp that stopped even more Nats turning to ACT.
I don’t know about becoming pm, but he could re-build confidence in the party (if he were leader after collins)
‘ Best way to avoid a punch?- don’t be there’.
And man and boy , has that old saying been proven so true to me time and again in all manner of altercations !
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