The legendary Wellington retailer Alan Martin of the famous L.V. Martin & Son home appliance stores was renowned for his catchphrase, “It’s the putting right that counts – and if it’s not put right, ask for me, Alan Martin”. And he was well-known for honouring that commitment. For Martin, efficient and effective after-sales service was just as important as putting a quality product on the shelves in the first place. 

It is a pity this government has not followed Martin’s maxim – but then, given its worldview that nothing of relevance happened before it accidentally tumbled into office in 2017, long after Alan Martin was off the scene, it is hardly surprising. So much of what it has done has been a combination of overpromised and under-achieved, or simply poorly implemented. The one-off cost-of-living payment is but the latest example. 

Faced with stinging criticism from the Auditor-General that the implementation of the scheme had prioritised speed and expediency over certainty and accuracy, the Prime Minister seem unfazed. She brushed aside the Auditor-General’s rebuke that “good stewardship of public money required greater care”, saying that because of the depth of the cost-of-living crisis, the government’s focus had been on doing something immediate to help people. She implied that was more important – even though the $350 payment was at best token – than taking the time to implement something worthwhile properly. 

That has been a typical government response – being seen to be doing something quickly is more important than taking the time to do it properly. And when things go wrong, or do not work quite as intended, the fault is attributed to the way officials have implemented it, not the policy itself. After all, according to the government, the flawed Kiwibuild policy was a brilliant plan to solve the housing crisis, but it failed because officials did not implement it the way the government hoped. 

So too with the cost-of-living payment. The Prime Minister and her colleagues insist there was nothing wrong with the policy, it was just that it was not implemented the way they thought. This is despite Inland Revenue and Treasury warnings at the time the policy was first suggested that it would be unworkable within the timeframe proposed and without significant additional logistical resources. Those warnings, now proven correct, were ignored because the government wanted to be seen to be “doing something” in the May Budget. 

Even now, faced with criticism from the Auditor-General, blunter and far more pointed than any Auditor-General’s report of recent years, the government is still trying to sheet home the blame to Inland Revenue, and not accept any responsibility itself for what has gone wrong. Inland Revenue told the government at the outset that it would have difficulty targeting payments as precisely as intended. Yet now, when thousands of cases of people living overseas and even dead people receiving the payment have been shown up, the government is blaming Inland Revenue for the failings, even though the department pointed out the risk at the outset. 

President Harry Truman – someone this government has probably never heard of – was famous for many things, amongst them his saying, “The buck stops here”. Like Alan Martin over a generation later, Truman knew where responsibility ultimately lay. Both understood that those offering a service to the public, whether in politics or in retail trade, had not only to be prepared to stand by the quality of the service they were offering, but also to accept second-best was never good enough, and that mistakes needed to be acknowledged and rectified. 

That concept seems quite foreign to this government. In its world, bold ideas, no matter how unworkable or impractical, speak for themselves. When they go wrong, or do not work, it is everyone else’s fault. The problem never lies with those who dreamed up the ideas in the first place. Therefore, the “buck” or the “putting right” does not fall back on the government, but rather on those trying to make its ideas work. 

Leadership is about much more than promoting pious dreams about things that would be nice to do. It is also about being willing to do the hard work to make them a feasible reality, and to listen to and accept constructive criticism along the way. And it is about accepting the ultimate responsibility for things not working as intended, not shifting the blame as far away and as quickly as possible. 

The values that drove Truman’s and Martin’s approaches to serving the public now seem far away. Willingness to accept responsibility and “it’s the putting right that counts” have been replaced by policy intent being all that matters. But a government’s responsibility is greater than idealistic policy dreams – its overriding responsibility is to make sure its policies work.

 

 

 

 

Is Christopher Luxon's leadership of the National Party starting to run out of steam?  

When he took over as leader late last year National was languishing in the polls, far behind Labour. Following Luxon's accession, National quickly closed the gap with Labour, and since about May has been looking well placed to be able to form a government with ACT after the next election. Luxon's personal ratings were on the rise, and he was beginning to close the gap with Jacinda Ardern in the preferred Prime Minister stakes. 

But all that may be changing. While National and ACT still lead the Labour/Green bloc – just – in the rolling average of polls, that lead is slipping, leaving the next election currently too close to call. Luxon's own personal ratings have also stalled and are starting to decline.  

The turning point seems to have come around the time of his “Today I am in Te Puke” social media post while he was holidaying with his family in Hawaii. Since then, there have been the controversies surrounding his youth unemployment policy announcement to the otherwise successful National Party conference, the continuing speculation about his stand on access to abortion, and the allegations against new MP Sam Uffindell. 

Each of these has raised questions about aspects of Luxon’s judgement and has led to questions of whether all that much has really changed after all in the basic culture and style of the National Party under his leadership. His political experience has also been called into question, with a view in some quarters that his reliance on corporate-speak and solutions is off-putting to many of the voters National needs to reclaim from Labour to return to government.    

However, does it all matter that much at this stage of the electoral cycle? After all, Labour's ratings are falling like National's, with Ardern slumping more sharply than Luxon, even though she remains comfortably ahead in the preferred Prime Minister ratings. Is it not just a case of the mid-winter blues, brought on by the continuing run of bad weather, the uncertainty caused by the looming economic recession, and the lingering spectre of the pandemic affecting both the major parties equally? 

While there is an element of truth in this, National must nevertheless be concerned about the dip in Luxon’s fortunes. Although there is no suggestion – serious or otherwise – that his leadership is under threat, National strategists will be turning their minds to how he can better connect with the public. They will have noted enviously the Prime Minister’s well-received natural warmth and empathy, demonstrated yet again this week in her visit to storm-ravaged Nelson, even though she had very little to offer in the way of practical assistance. 

National should be concerned that despite the government’s failings, and the deteriorating overall situation, it is still running only neck-in-neck with Labour in opinion polls, when it should be well ahead. Moreover, the response to the Prime Minister’s “charm” visit to Nelson this week is a powerful and ominous reminder of her ongoing appeal to people and the consequent challenge that poses to Luxon to attract favourable public attention. 

Of course, the controversy surrounding now expelled MP Gaurav Sharma and Labour’s handling of it will have hurt Labour, and perhaps restored some of National’s fortunes for the meantime. However, National still awaits the completion of the independent QC’s inquiry into the Uffindell matter, and it remains to be seen how Luxon will handle its findings. So far, his approach has been crisp and decisive, but he will need to continue with that approach once the inquiry has been completed, whatever its outcome. 

Luxon cannot compete with Ardern on the empathy and compassion fronts – nor should he try. But there is more to leadership than empathy and compassion. So, his best option is to present himself as the calm, decisive and clear-thinking alternative, with practical solutions to offer, just the thing the country needs as it moves out of its current economic and pandemic related uncertainties. But he must learn to present himself in a way that demonstrates that convincingly to the voting public. 

National’s and Luxon’s current poll stumbles are not terminal – but they are clear reminders that while voters may be turning off the Labour Government in droves, they are still far from convinced about National’s ability to lead a capable government to replace Labour. While they may have liked what they saw of Luxon in the early months of this year, they are now less certain about him. They do not see him as the new Sir John Key as the National Party would like to promote him. 

Luxon needs to quickly put his recent stumbles behind him and present a clear picture to the public of just who he is, the type of leader he will be, and his ambition for New Zealand. He needs to follow that up with four or five significant new policies which sharply differentiate National from Labour, that he and the party can campaign on relentlessly until the next general election. 

Without those changes, Luxon’s currently spluttering bandwagon risks coming to an early and unfortunate halt.

 

When Sir Peter Blake was heading Team New Zealand’s successful 1995 and 2000 America’s Cup campaigns, he posed one constant question to the team for each aspect of their business – will it make the boat go faster? Not only did that keep Team New Zealand focused on the obvious point that fast boats win races, but it also meant every aspect of its operations concentrated on reaching that objective. No matter how else the team was performing, it was not going to win or retain the America’s Cup if it did not have the fastest boat in the competition. 

The All Blacks look to be going through the same process in the wake of their own recent dismal results. They have realised the hard way that reputations and history are no guarantors of future performance, and that if they are to win the World Cup in 2023 they will need to have the best team in terms of players and performance. For them, the mantra now must be: will what they are doing help win the World Cup? 

In the wake of their awkward last couple of weeks, both the Labour and National parties ought to be asking themselves the same question – is what they are doing now helping make their political boats go faster towards putting a government together after next year’s election? In both cases, the answer at this point is not at all clear. Neither inspire any confidence that they have a plan of Blake-like precision to put them on the track for victory next year. 

National remains bogged down by its recent past. Although its new leader has brought more focus and discipline to the party, and while overall political circumstances have been shifting in its direction, National has still to shake off completely the shadow of the last few years. Despite appearing more unified and determined than previously, doubts remain about the capability of many of National’s personnel to form a capable government, should they be able to do so after the next election. 

Labour’s mainspring has been slowing down noticeably after more than two years dominated by the pandemic. Major policies either have not yet been implemented or are not working out quite as intended. Ministers are starting to look jaded and exhausted. More and more the government is falling back on the personal popularity of the Prime Minister for its impetus, but that has also been on a steady decline for more than a year now, and she is looking increasingly detached from the day-to-day process of government. At the same time, no other Minister is showing the mana to step in and fill the gap. 

While National is yet to escape its past, Labour is desperately trying to recapture its past, to rekindle the popularity that saw it win an unprecedented outright majority at the last election. It seems to be genuinely struggling to understand why, according to the polls at least, around 500,000 of the voters who supported it in 2020 have now deserted it, and why around 21 or so of its current MPs are at risk of being defeated next year. Both main parties appear bogged down by their pasts, National unable and Labour unwilling to shed them. 

Indeed, what political momentum there is now comes more from the main support parties – the Greens and ACT, and increasingly Te Pati Māori – but none of them yet has sufficient support to seize control of the political agenda. 

The malaise affecting the major parties is hitting the whole country as well. We are drifting towards a sharp recession, based on a combination of adverse international circumstances and specific domestic factors, with an unusual sense of inevitability and resignation. The recovery from the pandemic has been slow and cautious, with no real sense of urgency or purpose, or any debate about alternative plans. 

Sir Peter Blake’s “make the boat go faster” singlemindedness and the accompanying Red Socks campaign caught the national imagination in 1995 and enthused the entire country to get behind an America’s Cup campaign then struggling to overcome the disappointments of earlier failed attempts to win the Auld Mug. That same sense of inspiration and drive is what both Labour and National need to ignite right now to get out of the mire of their contemporary political distractions and to lift New Zealand out of its increasing overall pessimism. 

That means Jacinda Ardern must recapture the inspirational style she became renowned for in her early days as Prime Minister, and Christopher Luxon must rediscover the energy and drive that characterised his early days as National’s leader. Both need to break out of the straightjackets they have allowed themselves to become trapped in over recent months. But it is not clear at this stage whether either will be able to credibly do so. Nor is there any real sign they are trying to. 

Yet whoever recovers their role best over the year or so ahead, will not only make their own boat go faster, but also will more than likely become the next Prime Minister. The race is on.

 

 

Speculation that the Prime Minister’s leadership of the Labour Party may be at risk because of this week’s adverse poll results is as exaggerated as it is premature and facile. 

While her popularity has plummeted from the artificially stellar heights of a couple of years ago and is probably set to fall further to what would be a more realistic assessment, she remains the country’s most popular politician and preferred Prime Minister by a comfortable margin. Nor is there any obvious and credible replacement for her emerging yet within Labour’s ranks. None of the names that get idly mentioned from time to time as possible replacements, should the need arise, has any real public appeal, nor looks capable of leading Labour to an election victory. 

Nevertheless, the Prime Minister’s leadership is not without fault, as the sharp and steady decline in her opinion poll ratings shows. She is becoming an increasingly polarising figure as the gap between her “aspirational” approach to politics, as demonstrated in her recent testy interview with Jack Tame on QandA demonstrated, and the practical achievements of her government grows ever wider. 

That should hardly be a surprise though. The Prime Minister made outlandishly extravagant political promises in the lead-up to the 2017 election, which any government would have struggled to get close to fulfilling in even the most normal of circumstances, let alone in the most severe pandemic the world has known in modern times. 

Indeed, it is increasingly overlooked that until the outbreak of Covid19 in New Zealand the polls were showing the government was on track to be the first one-term government since the third Labour government of the early 1970s. It was only the outbreak of the pandemic and the government’s response to it that saved her government from being held to account at the last election for over-promising and under-delivering. 

In those circumstances, it was inevitable that the government’s and the Prime Minister’s ratings would start to take a massive hit once the country began to move on from the artificial environment and restrictions of the pandemic, and return to something approaching normality. The remarkable aspect is not that it has happened, but that it has taken so long to occur. In part, this is due to residual support for the Prime Minister from the heady early days of the Covid19 response, but it is more strongly and immediately due to the woeful performance of the National Party, even now still stumbling to get back on an even and reliable political keel. 

A repeat of the 2020 election landslide next year now seems completely out of the question for Labour. Even the party’s pollster is acknowledging that getting Labour’s support back into the back mid-40 per cent range is going to be difficult, and that the party’s best chance of remaining in government lies with a combination with the Greens and possibly Te Pati Māori getting enough seats to be able to put together a government after next year’s election. It is a grim situation for Labour with a third or more of its current list and electorate MPs now facing defeat next year. 

While it is natural and predictable that those increasingly endangered MPs might be looking around for a way of bolstering their chances of re-election, replacing the leader cannot be a serious option for them to consider. The recent experience alone of the National Party in hurriedly changing its leader just before an election shows that would an extremely unwise option to entertain. The Prime Minister’s popularity may currently be falling faster than her party’s, and no matter unflattering Labour may find the comparison, it is worth remembering that Sir Robert Muldoon, who was considerably more unpopular than Jacinda Ardern, won against the odds re-elections in 1978 and 1981, albeit under the First-Past-the-Post system. 

There is also the example of 1990 when Prime Minister Geoffrey Palmer was forced aside by Mike Moore just eight weeks before the election, on the grounds he could save more Labour seats in what was looming as a massive defeat. In the event, Labour probably did slightly worse under Moore than it would have done under Palmer. 

While the Prime Minister achieved a dramatic turnaround in Labour’s fortunes after taking over as party leader a few weeks before the 2017 election, she did so as Opposition leader, not Prime Minister. Indeed, the last leader to take over as Prime Minister during a term and win the next election was Peter Fraser in the 1940s, in the middle of the Second World War. 

The political situation is difficult for Labour right now, and may well be becoming terminal, although it is still too early to make that prediction with any degree of certainty. What is clear, however, in these circumstances is that they are a test of the Prime Minister’s leadership in just the same way the advent of the pandemic and the aftermath of the Mosque shootings were in earlier years. The Prime Minister has given no hint that she is about to walk away from all this, just because the challenge has got a lot tougher, and nor should she. 

Many things have been said and written about the Prime Minister since she came to office. Some of it has been excessively sycophantic, some of it has been widely inaccurate; and some has been accurate and justified. Whatever else may have been said or written about her, she has never been accused of lacking determination. 

As Labour faces its biggest mountain she well knows that she remains the party’s best chance of conquering it, and that to give up now would be to consign her party to certain defeat. She does not appear to be that selfish. 

So, those who gleefully speculate upon her imminent departure seem set to be disappointed. The Prime Minister will go when the electorate tells her to, and not before.

 

 

In a weekend television interview, the Prime Minister pushed back on a suggestion her government is far better at talking about things than achieving them. She countered that “I would not ever change the fact that we have always throughout been highly aspirational…what you’re asking me essentially is to shy away from aspiration”. 

She is right – up to a point. Governments should never lose sight of their aspirations to make the country a better place. That is, after all, why they have been elected in the first place. But, at the same time, they should also never lose sight of heeding practical advice about the best way to achieve those aspirations. 

Too often, this government has been so focused on the aspirational aspect of its policy agenda that it has given insufficient attention to how it might be achieved. The failure of Kiwibuild, the confusion and division around Three Waters, the uncertainty surrounding the move to Health New Zealand, the emerging controversy over plans to merge the country’s 16 polytechnics into one super vocational training entity, Te Pukenga, are all examples of where bold aspiration has hit major implementation roadblocks. 

Now, the government’s Budget plan of a one-off $350 payment to around 2.1 million eligible taxpayers to offset the current increase in the cost-of-living has run into trouble. It seems a substantial number of taxpayers living overseas (perhaps up to 10,000 people) are receiving the payments, and that the government has no plans to recover the windfall from them. At the same time, approximately 800,000 people reportedly eligible for the payment appear to have missed out. Once again, an “aspirational” government initiative looks in danger of being derailed by the way it has been implemented. 

The government’s first response to the news that people no longer living here are getting the payment was one of surprise, and it looked disorganised. The Minister of Revenue initially said that people receiving the unexpected payment, which they had neither applied for nor requested, were potentially committing tax fraud, only to wind that back a few hours later to saying it would be too difficult for the government to try to recover those funds. 

Yet none of this should have come as any surprise to the government, so it is hard to understand why its responses were not better and more fluently prepared for when the story broke. After all, Inland Revenue had warned the government at the time the payment scheme was being devised that it would have “critical operational impacts” which would “compromise” IRD’s “already stretched workforce”. Other official advice questioned the wisdom of the payment plan saying it was a “poor mechanism for supporting households with a longer-term problem.” Inland Revenue even suggested it would need 750 additional staff to implement the scheme as the government intended. 

Clearly, little if any of these warnings and advice were heeded, as the government went ahead with its plan. It was more focused on immediate steps that could be taken to demonstrate empathy with the emerging public concern about the steeply rising cost-of-living. A simple, one-off token payment, as had been implemented in other countries, appealed as the best way of achieving that, and it is easy to see why. 

But there were other options the government could have considered. The simplest would have been a cut in the GST rate of, say, one to two percent. Not only would have been that deflationary, but it would also have benefitted all households, whatever their current situation. However, it would have taken time to work its way through the system, so would not have had the immediate impact of the one-off payment. 

In a similar vein, the government could have cut tax rates – especially the lowest rate by one or two cents in the dollar, but that might have created distortions elsewhere in the tax system and led to wider pressure for tax cuts, something this government is vehemently opposed to. Or, it could have lifted tax thresholds and perhaps indexed these to inflation levels, but, again, that would not have the immediate impact the government was seeking. It could have looked at increasing Working for Families payments and adjusting benefit levels further to compensate for increases in the cost-of-living, but there are already annual processes in place for doing this, meaning any additional increases now would have been minimal, and of little impact. 

The government’s “aspirations” in this instance were simple and two-fold. It was seeking an initiative that would both look decisive and give a boost to its flagging political fortunes. A straightforward one-off payment was always going to appeal in such circumstances, ahead of more comprehensive, time consuming and potentially expensive changes to the wider tax and benefit system. 

But what looked like a political winner at Budget time is now looking like becoming an object of ridicule because of the way in which it has been rolled out, a risk the government was warned about at the time but chose to ignore. It looks like Kiwibuild all over again, where a laudable policy intent became widely derided because the government failed to appreciate the challenges associated with implementing it. 

The lesson that emerges once more for this government is that while aspirations are laudable, their credibility quickly founders if they cannot be made to work as they were intended. But, given how this government has handled previous situations, the lesson is unlikely to be taken notice of. Talking about things and making vague, soothing, aspirational promises is always easier than taking officials’ advice to help make things work.

 

 

 

 

The Greens’ current co-leadership wrangle reminds me of former Australian Prime Minister Gough Whitlam’s famous comment “Only the impotent are pure.” 

Whitlam was talking to an angry State Labor Party conference in Victoria in 1967, shortly after taking over as party leader, and pledging to overhaul the arcane policies and practices that had kept Labor out of office through eight elections since 1949. His essential point was that political change could only come through winning elections, but that there were compromises that needed to be made to achieve that. 

The dispute within the Greens that has ousted – temporarily at least – James Shaw as the party’s co-leader is less about his performance and commitment than his pragmatism. It is a classic example of the conflict Whitlam was referring to. As Climate Change Minister, Shaw has responsibility for not only the most important long-term issue facing New Zealand, but also the one dearest to the Greens’ hearts. 

He knows that to make sustainable progress he must do much more than keep the Green Party’s activists on-side. Far more importantly, he needs to win over not only the major party of government, Labour, but also enough of the National Party to ensure the policy momentum is maintained when a change of government occurs. He also knows that he needs at least tacit, if not more active, support from the business community, and major greenhouse gas producers like industry and agriculturalists. 

To that end, he has skilfully steered New Zealand to a position where, following the passage of the Climate Change Act in 2020 and the establishment of the Climate Change Commission, the future direction of New Zealand’s climate change response has been broadly settled. Although there will be inevitable modifications under future governments and as international circumstances change, the approach established by Shaw will remain, at least for the foreseeable future. 

Of course, that has involved compromises and may not be as “pure” as Shaw may have wished, but the building blocks for the future are now in place. Over time, as the policy mechanisms begin to bite, there will be sacrifices, some harsher than others, required of just about every sector of New Zealand’s economy and society. There will be tough political and commercial decisions to be confronted, but they are the necessary price of a credible and sustainable approach to our climate change response. 

The immediate political challenge now facing Shaw and future Climate Change Ministers, of whatever political hue, is building, then maintaining, popular support for not just the overarching response to climate change, but also the specific measures that will be proposed from time to time. That is likely to be a constant challenge for governments from here on, which will require political deftness and sensitivity New Zealand governments have not been all that good at demonstrating. Shrewd compromise without losing sight of the endpoint will very much become the future name of the game. 

All of this is anathema to the Greens’ hardcore activists, for whom such pragmatism is weak and unprincipled. They would far rather a Greens’ Climate Change Minister prepared to take on the “vested interests” in government and business head-on, demanding more radical confrontation, and imposing solutions by legislative and regulatory diktat if necessary, with little consideration for their consequences, other than their environmental benefits. For them, extremism in defence of the environment is no vice, to paraphrase the infamous statement that cost Barry Goldwater the 1964 United States’ Presidential election.[1] 

The activists’ commitment to the “purity” of policy is laudable, but as Whitlam warned, without political power it is ultimately unachievable. Shaw clearly understands, even if the more radical section of his party chooses not to, that politics is fundamentally the art of the achievable, which is not always the same as the desirable. As a politician with a focus on doing things, Shaw correctly sees each step as progress towards a goal, and knows the importance of taking people with him, unlike his activists who cannot see why their full, perfect, and pure solution cannot be imposed – immediately. 

All this goes to the heart of what the Green Party’s role should be. Having finally achieved office after years in the political wilderness, the party is struggling to decide whether it has been worth it. Shaw’s critics accuse him of wasted opportunity, while his supporters say his conciliatory tone has brought about steady achievement, making the compromises of being in government worthwhile. 

If the outcome of the current co-leadership process is a more radical, sharply defined and activist-led Green Party, it will make working with Labour as a support partner in this Parliament, and potentially beyond, more difficult. That could cost the Greens the middle ground support they have assiduously built up in recent years, leaving the party “pure” but “impotent” in Whitlam’s terms, but relegated to permanent Opposition. 

Unlike his activists, Shaw understands that forever feverishly worrying and talking endlessly about issues will always run a distant second to accepting the harder challenges of getting directly involved and making the necessary sacrifices to do something about them.   

 

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[1] In accepting nomination as its Presidential candidate, Goldwater told the Republican National Convention in 1964 “extremism in the defence of liberty is no vice” and “moderation in the pursuit of justice is no virtue”, hard-line comments widely held to have been influential in contributing to his landslide defeat by President Lyndon Johnson.

 

One of the more frequently quoted statements of the Irish statesman and philosopher, Edmund Burke, was his observation that “Your representative owes you, not his industry only, but his judgement, and he betrays instead of serving you if he sacrifices it to your opinion.” 

Within the Westminster Parliamentary system over the last two hundred years, Burke’s comment has been constantly held up to justify Members of Parliament, whatever their party disposition, having the ultimate right to exercise their consciences above all else, should they wish to, on matters of absolute importance to them. In New Zealand, matters relating to alcohol and gaming, life and death, and sexual morality have customarily been held to be the issues on which Members of Parliament vote according to their own conscience, rather than the policies of the parties they represent. 

Over the years, the exercise of Burke’s principle has taken a variety of forms whenever there have been conscience votes in the New Zealand Parliament. Some MPs have followed Burke’s line absolutely and voted exactly as they personally have felt and been prepared to confront any electoral consequences later; while others have taken the view that the conscience vote they exercise should not be the selfish privilege of their own conscience, but rather the view of the electorate they represent, and so have either polled or canvassed widely local public opinion before they vote. Others have just followed the party line on the issue, regardless of their own or their constituents’ views. 

In recent years, there has been a slow but steady move to reduce, if not eliminate, the range of issues on which MPs have a conscience vote and rely instead on the requirement to uphold stated party policy on the issue in question. The rationale offered is that this gives the general electorate a greater sense of certainty and does not leave important and controversial issues up to the whims and vagaries of an individual, or groups of MPs, to decide according to their own reasons. 

So far, this trend has been more apparent on the left side of politics. The Greens eschewed the notion of a conscience vote a long time ago, arguing that because the Greens are largely a list-based party, all their MPs have been elected because of the Greens’ policies, and that the notion of an individual conscience is therefore irrelevant. There have been times of late when Labour has exercised what it has called a “collective” conscience where all its MPs just happen to vote the same way on a conscience question. 

Underlying all this is an assumption, again more strongly held on the left, that the privilege of Parliamentary decision-making is much too important to be left to the vested interests and prejudices of individual MPs, and best resides within the power of the collective. It is consistent with a wider ideological view it should be not the role of governments to promote the primacy and interests of the individual, but to uphold and support the value of collective action and shared responsibility. The quotation, famously but erroneously*, attributed to Voltaire that “I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it” has no place in the neo-Orwellian world of collective-speak these anti-liberals are keen to usher in. Their notion of majority rule means the remainder must simply fall in and unquestioningly comply. 

There are those who argue that the advent of MMP and its strong focus on political parties over traditional electorates has rendered redundant the idea of MPs promoting their individual views. List MPs are, after all, only in Parliament because of the ranking accorded them by the party they represent, so why should they not be expected to promote exclusively the views of the party whose label they wear? There is, according to this viewpoint, no other justification for their being in Parliament at all. 

But Parliament is not a collection of blank pages to be scrawled over as political parties see fit. Well over half the MPs elected are from specific electorates, chosen because they are seen by those constituents to be the best person to represent their area in Parliament. That carries the not unreasonable expectation that local electorate MPs will at least speak out on local issues, even if it annoys their party, and be unafraid to show leadership when conscience issues arise.   

Unfortunately, though, that noble expectation is currently being challenged on both sides of the political fence. It is becoming increasingly rare to see even electorate MPs – whose authority comes primarily from their electorate, not their party, willing to speak out when the interests of their electorates are being compromised. Instead of being the being the electorate’s representative, promoting the local case to Parliament, too often electorate MPs are joining their list colleagues and becoming just the cipher promoting and justifying the party’s position to the electorate. 

It is a world far away from what Burke envisaged, where MPs would exercise their judgement alongside their party principles to make decisions in the best interests of the country. And as politicians have become more mono-dimensional, focused on protecting the party line ahead of the public interest, tolerance for diversity has been diminishing. A stifling uniformity is descending across the parties – where to succeed all their MPs try to look and sound the same. A modern version of HMS Pinafore’s Sir Joseph Porter, “I always voted at my party’s call, and never thought of thinking for myself at all.” 

Political parties have a legitimate role in the mobilisation of opinion, and the organisation of its political expression. Democratic government cannot function without them. But to survive long-term parties need to become more flexible and tolerant of divergent views within their ranks. They also need to recognise the distinct human virtue of free will – or the right to be right and the right to be wrong, and that everyone is not the same. Suffocating or devaluing the value of free will in the interests of a wider collective, as today’s parties are doing is narrowing both individual uniqueness and social diversity. 

It is time to rekindle Burke’s message. Our parties must certainly become more inclusive, but not just in a statistical sense. They must also become genuinely more tolerant of divergence within their memberships. Above all, they need to understand once more and promote afresh the notion that the best way of all to represent the public interest is to encourage their representatives to listen to local communities and always speak fearlessly on their behalf. 

 

 

* The words reportedly come from an English author named Evelyn Beatrice Hall in 1906.