Just how much the world has changed…
So New Zealand has a new Prime Minister.
Jacinda Ardern is 37 years of age. She’s eloquent and she’s photogenic.
Now I know next to nothing about New Zealand politics, and I know even less about Ardern, but when I saw the news it felt totally unsurprising.
To me, she looks like exactly the kind of candidate the progressive left is throwing into elections these days.
I mean, take a look at Ardern, alongside Canadian Prime Minister Justin Tredeau and French Prime Minster Emanuel Marco:
Am I the only to notice that the Left is using the same casting agency as the hit comedy show ‘Friends’?
Politics, as always, is about branding. If you don’t believe that – if you think politics is about conviction and values and policies (lol), you’re probably wasting your time on my blog. You can go back to reading the newspapers.
So politics is about branding, but have you noticed that the branding has changed? I think this says a bit about where the world is at and where we’re heading.
I mean, go back to the eighties and Hawk vs. Fraser. By modern standards, they’re hard to separate. They look like they belong in the same party.
But at the time, the represented different worlds. Hawk, coming straight out of the ACTU, and holding some sort of record for skulling beer at Oxford, was practically a working-class hero. Fraser represented enlightened new-world economics.
And neither of them were particularly sexy.
Now times have changed. The right is still throwing up characters like Tony Abbott, (though I guess you could say that they flirted with sexy with Malcolm Turnbull – but it was a very safe and boring form of sexy.)
The left on the other hand is turning away from working-class credentials. It’s no longer simply enough to have spent time in the mines. You need to have been an online campaigner for transgender refugee seals in the arctic circle.
Look at Ardern, Trudeau and Marcon – put them in sneakers and they’d look like Silicon Valley execs on their way to a quinoa salad meeting with venture capitalists. And implicitly, they speak for every oppressed minority under the sun.
And in a profound visual way they stand in direct opposition to the old guard of old white-male politics. Trump for example.
I mean, have a look at Trudeau’s photo on his official web page:
How is the imagery here? Looking down on his full and lustrous head of hair, striding up stairs (onwards and upwards), the gold of his wedding ring against the firm gold of the bannister speaking to family values, his face partially hidden, evoking mystique…
(This guy is working with pros.)
He is the embodiment of youth and progress.
Unlike Trump.
But take another look at that photo. Does anything there speak to working-class credentials?
Nope, literally nothing. There is nothing that says that Trudeau knows what it’s like to pack boxes or dig holes. He’s not watching football, motorsports or professional wrestling. He’s not willing to settle arguments with his fists. He’s not telling off-colour jokes in the locker-room with the fellahs after work…
Unlike Trump.
And the left still wonders how Trump won over the working class… How he beat a candidate that was qualified sure enough, but whose central planks included the fact that she was a woman and it was about time the US had a female President.
(That only works if you identify with that sort of branding… and a lot of people didn’t.)
So this is the strange state of politics today. There is a perception that the left has abandoned its working-class roots in favour of identity politics – being the hero of every underdog from homeless women, to refugees, to transgender seals.
But the way I see it, identity politics isn’t anything new. Hawk spoke to a working-class identity.
It’s just that the intellectual left went out on their own journey with respect to what identity they were talking to. And it was a noble journey of sorts. They recognised that oppression (and the exercise of power and privilege) was the true evil. It had many manifestations – there is worker exploitation, but there is also racism, sexism, bigotry, sealism etc.)
You could only destroy these things if you destroyed the very concept of oppression. Either through shame or through force, you had to destroy people’s ability to exercise power and privilege…
… you had to fight the evil at its source.
All very noble. And I think I agree. The only thing that happened though is that working-class people (if anyone even identifies with that term anymore) found themselves recast from oppressed to oppressor. They were the ones who were keeping women out of the workforce, or stopping poor people in Asia from getting a job by opposing the opening of trade barriers.
(And in walked Trump.)
At the same time, it became a badge of pride within the left to have conquered the central evil – to be checking your privilege and to be celebrating diversity in all its forms.
And now, the left’s leaders need to embody this. They need to physically represent the victory over the great evil. Arden, Trudeau and Marcon are the poster children for a future where there is no oppression.
It sells and it sells well. Within their base they are incredibly popular.
So,
FUTURE PREDICTION 1: This dynamic will effectively create positive discrimination in the left’s pre-selection process – expect to see more candidates from diverse backgrounds.
FUTURE PREDICTION 2: Jenny Wong will soon become leader of the Labor party, possibly Prime Minister.
Look, all of this is probably a good thing. I look forward to a world where all oppression has been banished from the Earth.
But a word of warning to the Left: That can only happen if you take everyone on the journey with you. If you keep forgetting yesterday’s oppressed, then they’ll be picked up by your opponents, and round and round we go.
I know the visuals of sexy young techno-hipsters sells well, but it’s only going to get you so far.
What do you make of Ardern’s victory? What's your future prediction (drop it below – let's see how crazy this gets!)
Ian Martin says
I don’t know much about her or her policies, hell what do we even really know about our own policies here… So in all honest opinion, younger people as leaders, may just change the future of politics in a good way
KatM says
The radio informs me that Auckland median house price is ~$1M. That’s definitely cosmopolitan standards! I’ll happily stay in Australia but I love the South Island of NZ.
Petter Dutton should take over from Mal to inject some younger sensible blood.
KiwiAl says
Yep, Auckland house prices are definitely cosmopolitan. LOTS of people want to move to NZ. Auckland is “where it’s at”, so they all want to go there.
But things here are getting like most other countries which let in a whole menagerie of people from all different cultures. Racial / Cultural conflicts are increasing markedly, in my observation. We are all being set up to kill each other, just as foretold in the Bible I think. The problem is, most of the immigrants come from conflict-ridden countries, and bring those issues and behaviours with them.
Anyway, Kat, I heard last week that Australia, not the US, is the most litigious country on Earth, so Aus wouldn’t be my choice.
Andrew says
Let me be the first to pick you up on R.J.L. Hawke… (with an E)…
Andrew.
steve aktipis says
macron
Paul Miles says
And Jenny Wong is going to take over the Labor Party? A Penny for everyone’s thoughts on that.
But I suppose she (or they) could well become better known and more popular overseas than our current Mr Trumbull.
Albert Oshana says
Was your mis-spelling of Penny Wong’s first name intentional?
Brendan says
Trump is life!
Rick Eason says
Control the language and you control the conversation. Whenever we use the terms “Left” and “Right” we unwittingly spread socialist propaganda. For example, Stalin is on the extreme Left and Hitler is on the extreme Right. Stalin was a Soviet Socialist. Hitler was a National Socialist. Both were brutal dictators who used secret police, torture, murder and brainwashing techniques to subdue their own populations.
Who do you know who fits between two brutal socialist dictators? Do you Jon? “Left and Right” are designed to convince us all that we do!
A valid political spectrum would have all dictators at one end and anarchy at the other end. In the middle would be people like us who believe in freedom under law.
Statistics assembled and verified over many years by Prof Rummel show that the 20th century was the bloodiest century in history. 29.7 million were killed in international wars, while a further staggering 95.2 million were killed by their own government, invariably a socialist government.
Political “branding” is part of a wider process of “dumbing down” common law countries. The aim is to get rid of the Christian values that built and underpin the justice, freedom and prosperity that makes common law countries the world’s immigration magnets.
International, atheistic socialism wants a world where power is centralized in the corrupt UN bureaucracy. Our highly valued form of justice, freedom and prosperity would vanish – and the socialist idealists would be glad to see it go. Today, 58% of nations that enjoy voting rights in the UN refuse to give their own people a vote and furthermore, that 58% use the UN to invent “treaties” that tell us how to govern ourselves.
“Political branding” is saying to ordinary people: don’t think, just feel. It is an attempt to put a nice face on the aims of arrogant elites whose schemes would enslave people and wipe out the gains of those who died to build our justice, freedom and prosperity.
KiwiAl says
Late to the party, but late is when they usually warm up!
Yep, we have a new PM. But as with everything, there’s a lot more to it behind the scenes.
The National (conservative, capitalist, encumbent) party got the greatest share of the votes, but under our MMP system (Don’t Go THERE, Aus), that doesn’t mean they won. They didn’t get an outright majority, so needed to successfully form a coalition, to govern. But the “NZ First” party held the deciding position, and could have gone with National, but for the fact that the leader of NZ First came from National and now pretty much hates them. So instead, he went with the second highest result, Labour, and had to pull in the Greens as well, in order to achieve a majority.
In large part, I believe that happened because Ardern is young, inexperienced, and probably willing to sell half the farm to get the top job. That meant the NZ First Leader (Winston Peters) was able to land the Deputy PM job, which National probably wouldn’t have offered. I mean, a party with 9 seats telling a party with 56 seats (min. 61 required for majority), “I’ll decide who gets what.” Yep, Winnie the King/Queen-maker again. There is something fundamentally wrong with this as an Electoral System. I’m sure National, in Opposition this time, is going to make them pay dearly.
(I’m not saying Ardern and the Media didn’t do a great job. Labour came from ‘dead-in-the-water’ to government in just a few short weeks. It was an amazing and very well-timed turnaround, and probably not all bad.)
So, Winnie went with Labour/Greens, and gets Deputy PM. Even stranger and more concerning, the NZ First party also landed three important international relations portfolios. Winnie (at 72 is older than Trump) has a past reputation as a “party animal” so with two other MPs, he’ll be able to party his way around the planet on the NZ Taxpayer. This might be the worst aspect of the entire NZ election outcome.
Apart from that, Jonno, you are right on the money. The current wave of populism has brought us this.
Not sure how it’s going to go, but we are living in a brave new world.