Our political lite is all right, compared to the others

John Lapsley

I get a table tucked in a corner, open the batting with a Tio Pepe fino sherry (solidly unfashionable, but bless them, they keep it), and then fire up my traveller’s Kindle.

The Manners Police believe reading while dining is poor form.  But what is the solitary diner to do between courses?  Fill in sudoku squares, bother the couple at the next table, make important-sounding telephone calls?It’s a culinary fact that at breakfast, the taste of two eggs and a slice of bacon is improved when served aboard the morning newspaper. So come dinnertime, why wouldn’t Two Chefs’ duck soup and ribeye steak be tastier with the latest Lee Child thriller?

"Precisely," I hear you say.  Child’s hero Jack Reacher had beaten a baddie to a satisfactory pulp and, I think, fed him into a cement mixer, when my literary dinner was interrupted by the arrival of an overly cheerful group. They wore name tags plus bright red ribbons, and were conventioneers of some ilk. I glared at them. These same red ribboners must have caused my accommodation woes. Dunedin’s  "No Vacancy" signs go up when the town hosts even modest events. I’d spent hours on the internet finding a place I could stay a few days, but only if I room-hopped. Idly, I tried to work out what brand of conventioneers these were.  Aussie Bank Platinum Sales Achievers? The Amalgamated Union of Brown Egg Classers? Eavesdropping, I discovered they kept reciting one word.  Jacinda, Jacinda.

But of course — the New Zealand Labour Party was in town for its 102nd Annual Conference. I’d struggled getting a room because there were Reds in the Beds. (OK, OK. The Letters to the Editor address is on the page opposite). I doubt their conference would have accepted Wit’s End as accredited media, but this mattered not because their debates are mainly closed to the press. Embarrassingly, too many party members propose daft motions, and say what they think. More significant was the football crowd queues of Southerners come to witness the Jacinda star. The line was three deep, stretching from the Town Hall doors, down Moray Place, and up George Street nearly to the Octagon.

Proof again that we haven’t seen the like of The Jacinda Effect, and with her recent "kind politics" statements the winsome PM has doubtless hit the PR ball out of the park again.

Of course "kind politics" is feel-good stuff that gets dodgy when the tough decisions arrive. A beaming, universal kindness breaks economies and grants residence to poor wee Czech gangsters.

For all that, the times show we’re a lucky country if we can think of kind politics as relative civility and moderation.  Forget "Yeah, but what about So and So?" Compared with the democracies most like us, the Clark, Key, English, Ardern succession, has seen little real hate and extremism. We’ve had Labour Lite, and Conservative Lite — because they make each other possible.

Conservative Heavy has taken the "Liberal" side of Australian politics, and the shambolic process that almost gave them a Peter Dutton means their next Federal election will be won by the Aussies’ Labour Heavy. Bill Shorten’s ALP offers the most radically left cheeseboard since Gough Whitlam’s 1972 idealists. Comrade Shorten, a disgraced Union leader, is on the nose, but they’ll cop him. In the UK, the Labour Party’s 2017 conference wound up with wobbly old Jeremy Corbyn leading its delegates as they wheezed out the Marxist anthem, The Red Flag. "The People’s flag is deepest red, it shrouded oft our martyred dead."

Dear God, they’re back. There hasn’t been a Marxist state that didn’t result in a ruined economy and impoverished population — and in Russia, China, and Cambodia, millions dead.  Yet Corbyn and the asylum he leads are now serious contenders. The poor old Poms will have to deal with Labour Heavy plus Brexit.

Still the model for today’s "political unkindness" is set by the Trumpian Far Right, with parts of Europe lining up to follow suit. Meanwhile, back here in Dunedin, our NZ Labour Party’s President, Nigel Haworth, finished his welcome to the red ribboned conventioneers with these words: "Failte agus bidth co-labhairt sgoinneil agad!"

Huh? Yes, really. Look, that’s all Greek (no, Gaelic?) to me.  I’m sure it beats a chorus of The Red Flag, but has anyone the foggiest what Nigel meant?  Maybe this is what we expect when the Labour Lite president is (inevitably) a professor rather than a unionist. I’m a conservative, as if you hadn’t guessed.  But looking at where the democracies around us are spiralling to, perhaps we have to suck it up, and allow that politics isn’t all bad at home.

-John Lapsley is an Arrowtown writer.