Jacinda Ardern is in a rut. New Zealand’s prime minister could still win next year’s election, but her chances seem to be slimming by the day.
Most polls show a lead for the centre-right opposition bloc of National and ACT, two parties that have not had the numbers to govern without a centrist party’s help since 2008.
Ardern’s government seems to hurtle from bad headline to bad headline, unable to take back control of the narrative while facing a very sceptical media. Some bad news stories are inevitable – being in government this long means you, theoretically, have responsibility for every problem the nation faces – but others represent huge unforced errors, like the furore over an attempt to entrench part of controversial water reforms.
This brutal period was capped off with a large byelection loss in Hamilton West. National cruised to a 16 percentage point victory in a seat it lost by 21 points just two years ago. You can easily read too much into byelections – the turnout was abysmal – but it was hardly a sign that the polls showing Labour heading to a defeat were wrong.
As New Zealand heads into the summer break, Ardern is attempting to clear the decks and focus on the economy in 2023. She’s planning a reshuffle for early in the new year and told all of her ministers to have a think about what they might be able to “pare back” from their policy agendas, to instead focus on the economic issues facing Kiwis.
It’s true that the government has just had a whole lot of things happening. Winning a majority gave Labour the room to do basically anything it wanted in its second term, and it stumbled around trying to seize that opportunity, even as Covid-19 continued to suck up a huge amount of airspace and ministerial time.
A focus on the economy also makes sense, although Ardern’s hands are somewhat tied. The Reserve Bank have rapidly hiked interest rates to deliberately engineer a recession, but don’t think this will necessarily bring down inflation in the period ahead of the election. The government will brag about how high employment and general labour force participation is, but most people don’t think they have jobs because of the government’s macroeconomic nous, they believe they won them all by themselves.
The reshuffle of her ministers was probably always going to happen but has somewhat been forced on Ardern, as six of her MPs have now announced their intention to resign at the next election, including three ministers.
None of these MPs are rising stars. But the overall imagery of six MPs all at once deciding they don’t want to go for another term is painful for Labour – especially given one of them inexplicably chose to imply that he didn’t want to run because he didn’t think Labour would win government again.
Still, these exits give Ardern a chance to show if there really is some sort of new approach in the offing, rather than just a rhetorical reset, like her “year of delivery” in 2019. They give her several spaces to fill in cabinet. And they give the Labour party a chance to reconfigure itself somewhat – four of the MPs retiring have very safe Labour seats, so safe that selection is essentially a job for life if one wants it.
Ardern has been tight-lipped on what policies might deserve “paring back”. Many speculate that the fairly expensive move to merge our two state broadcasters into an ABC- or BBC-style powerhouse could fall away, as it is fairly hard to describe this very disruptive move as essential.
The government’s large unemployment insurance scheme is also seen be some as a target – although this one seems more likely to survive, as it is the baby of Ardern’s closest political ally Grant Robertson, and will have more public salience if a recession is in full swing. That said, there are many ways you could trim back the ambitious scheme without getting rid of it altogether.
Nothing is unsalvageable. Ardern still has one more budget and faces an opposition leader prone to an unforced error or two of his own. Australian Labor’s victory in Victoria shows that that the leftover bad feeling from the pandemic is not the electoral poison some in opposition thought it would be, and that focusing on very basic issues like energy and level crossings can get you a long way – alongside a healthy bit of sledging of the other guys.
This kind of politics has never been Ardern’s strength. She is much better at projecting incredibly competent crisis management and empathy than “this policy will help middle class voters like you far more than the rich guy’s tax cuts will.” It will require not just fewer policies, but for the ones that she has left to be bold enough to set the terms of the conversation, with a communications strategy that is far less risk averse than her current one.
Because if she wants to get out of the rut she will need to be in the driver’s seat again.