Posts by Rob Salmond
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Polity: Meet the middle, in reply to Russell Brown,
My impression, unsupported by data, is that centrists – or at least people without pronounced ideological positions – place a lot of value on perceived competence.
I do have data on this, and you're absolutely right. When people perceive themselves to be broadly equidistant from each of the two main options (which they often do when they identify as "centrist"), their vote decision relies more a valence dimension, "competence," than on the policy dimension.
That's why political parties vying to win centrist votes spend so much time pairing their opponents as bungling out-of-touch losers, even on relatively minor matters. Good example: National's AmDram theatrics about a long lost New York bank account.
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Polity: In defence of the centre, in reply to Tom Semmens,
Let’s start with your proposed purpose for Labour, which I think you’ve got half right. My changes are in CAPS, and basically delete “radical” and insert “lasting:”
The purpose of the Labour party is to be a vehicle of LASTING change, to stand for something that gives hope to the poor, the oppressed, and the exploited, and to fight with them to get elected, and when elected use that power to bloody well ram MEANINGFUL change down the throats of the neoliberals THAT THEY CAN’T EVER UNDO.
I don’t really care how radical or not radical the change is, I care how long it lasts. Because when it lasts longer, it helps more poor, oppressed, exploited people. That’s why Working for Families is better than a UBI and high marginal taxes – it’s broadly popular enough that the right can’t afford to undo it, even when they desperately want to and win three terms in a row. That’s why public opinion matters.
Secondly, whining that
<q>…“pulling the centre back towards the left” is massively, massively hard…as a reason not to try is lily-livered defeatism. If you think it is too hard, get out of the way and find someone more interested in trying.</q>
I’m much more interested in delivering than in trying. My assessment, which is well supported be evidence, is that the best way to deliver centre-left government is to get the centre to support it. So I choose the route that’s most likely to deliver what we all want – meaning, lasting, progressive change. My worry about the alternative jump-to-the-left plan isn;t that it's a lot of work, its that it's more likely to fail.
And, to anticipate the retort that this strategy is obviously no good at delivering because Key's still in power, I'd suggest (1) he's been targeting the centre, too; and (2) you also look at the policy achievements of Blair, Clinton, Obama, Gillard, and Clark. (Yes, Clark made sure she was closer to the centre than the Nats were, too.)
Neoliberal capitalism is a zombie ideology discredited everywhere except in its extreme supporters in global financial markets and the inertia of it’s colonised establishment bureaucracies.
I’d check your facts on that one.
All the other contenders in the UK leadership election – and most of our Labour party – are interchangable memebers of that colonised establishment, as are the Tories. That isn’t democracy, that is a one party state with a charade of choice, a charade that is increasingly being seen through with declining voter participation as people give up in disgust.
I don’t think Andrew Little is a John Key clone. Do you?
I don’t think Grant Robertson is a Bill English clone. Do you?
I don’t think Jacinda Ardern is a Judith Collins clone. Do you?
I don’t think Phil Twyford is a Nick Smith clone. Do you?Also, check your facts on voter turnout. It has been in steady, secular decline across the western world for the past 50 years – you really think that half-century trend all over the place is about lack of radicalism on the left? The leading scholarly explanation for that is cultural, not ideological (see Putnam’s Bowling Alone, for example).
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Polity: New Zealand and the TPP: “Or…, in reply to TracyMac,
why do you seem to think modern unions are incapable of collaboration (they patently aren’t)
I don't agree with that. As head of the EPMU, Andrew Little led a top-notch collaboration to save some aircraft engineering jobs, and increase profit for Air NZ at the same time.
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Polity: New Zealand and the TPP: “Or…, in reply to Don Christie,
most people now accept that successful negation for sustainable outcomes is a collaborative effort from all sides.
I agree. Searching for win/wins is the essence of modern negotiation. But eventually you run out of those, and you have to start dealing with a series of increasingly fraught win/losses on various issues. That's the pointy end, that's where we're at on the TPP now, and that's where "or you'll do what?" is critical.
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Polity: New Zealand and the TPP: “Or…, in reply to linger,
Stop playing the blame game for a moment.
Do you support the TPP yourself, and if so, why?Fair question: I would support the TPP is our market access gains (prime targets: dairy into Canada, Japan, US) were worth more to NZ over the long term than the concessions we're being asked to make. Form what we're hearing that's a long way from the deal we're about to be presented with.
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Polity: New Zealand and the TPP: “Or…, in reply to Nick Russell,
New Zealand is tiny and is not essential to any trade deal involving large countries like the US or Japan. We are a very small fish in a big pond, and this is what happens to small fish, no matter who is running the Government.
I agree, Nick. That's why Groser looks so stupid when he tries to threaten the whole deal if little old New Zealand doesn't get its way.
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Polity: New Zealand and the TPP: “Or…, in reply to Tinakori,
Including, presumably, the 6 or so years he was the Labour government’s chief trade negotiator?
Most of the damage he did up to now was in promoting the unilateral trade liberalisation that came before 1999.
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Polity: New Zealand and the TPP: “Or…, in reply to ,
Or what will you do?
Labour Party…
Or we won't sign up.
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That interview was astonishing. We know that this expenditure was so unusual that it required the MFAT CEO to visit the Auditor-General to try and explain what on earth was going on. Yet Key wants us to believe that same expenditure was simultaneously so normal that it's OK to not even talk with Treasury about it.
We're now at a level where he's lying right to our faces, knowing full well that everyone who bothers to check in the most cursory way will see through the lie.
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Update: The Labour party has produced a digest of some of the 900 pages of documents, including some of the documents I quoted from in this post, and stuck them up online here.