Four months out from a General Election, people start talking about potential political alliances. Once it becomes clear that certain parties are unlikely to clear the 5% threshold, teaming up becomes the obvious way forwards. Although most discussions of this nature are unfruitful, there’s one option that would upend the New Zealand political order.
The Establishment parties are National on the right, Labour on the left and New Zealand First in the centre. These parties are full of the old, mature people who want to maintain the status quo but with slight adjustments. These parties represent those who already have it good, so they most they want to do is tinker.
From this cozy arrangement came the Alliance Party, which provided an alternative on the left. This alternative left is now represented by the Green Party, who developed out of the Alliance (although the Greens are arguably now part of the neoliberal globalist establishment). The other alternative parties are ACT on the right and The Opportunities Party in the centre.
These three parties are the only ones to have consistently offered meaningful alternatives to the status quo over the past quarter century.
The basic logic of an ACT-TOP alliance is that the two parties share many sentiments, both moral and economic. Both parties oppose cannabis prohibition, both are in favour of euthanasia rights and abortion rights. Both appeal primarily to young and educated people. An alliance between the two might allow for them to come close to the 5% threshold on their own merits, without needing Seymour to win in Epsom.
This hints at the idea that gives National and Labour party strategists sleepless nights: a grand alliance between all of the anti-Establishment parties.
As it is, the anti-Establishment forces are so disorganised that the major parties can easily knock them out. All that Labour and the Greens have to do to keep the Aotearoa Legalise Cannabis Party from threatening their position is to adopt ALCP policies as they become popular, and mainstream voters will vote for the established left parties so as to “not waste a vote”.
Likewise, National can keep ACT and the New Conservatives small by adopting the most popular of their policies. If either of them have a policy that attracts more than half a percent of votes on its own (which is about what the ALCP wins), National can and will simply adopt it themselves, leaving the smaller parties holding their dicks.
What would really put the shits up the Establishment would be if all of these minor parties, instead of letting themselves get divided and conquered, came together as a single bloc. This anti-Establishment bloc would unite on the basis that a new political order is of primary importance, with the precise details being secondary (note that the New Conservatives, not wanting change, are not part of this).
Many people want alternative politics, but are put off the Greens because they know that if the Greens get enough to get into Parliament, they will inevitably bring rubbish like Marama Davidson and Golriz Ghahraman in with them. They are also put off ACT because ACT’s unrepentant neoliberalism seems like a recipe for more of the suffering that we’re already enduring.
This alliance would assuage both concerns. Not only would the Greens be limited to a few members (or, better yet, excluded altogether), but the presence of centrist elements would help moderate Seymour’s soulless “show me the money” hypercapitalism. Mirroring this, Seymour would provide a sober restraint to the potential kookery from the other parties.
It’s worth noting here that, should it be decided the Greens really are an Establishment party, it’s possible to find an element of the alternative left elsewhere. Amanda Vickers is intelligent, has developed a respected social media profile and has done good work for the Social Credit Party, which once was strong enough to get over 20% in the 1981 General Election. Either she, the Social Credit Party leader Chris Leitch, or both, could combine with the best ACT and TOP candidates to create an Alternative A-Team.
Such an alliance would benefit from the leadership of Seymour, who is highly respected among Generation X and younger voters (some go as far as to declare him the true Leader of the Opposition). It could count on the current numbers of votes achieved by all the constituent parties (ACT got 13,075 votes in 2017, and TOP 63,260), plus two major groups of new voters.
The first are those put off from supporting alternative parties by the 5% threshold. This threshold is a hurdle so high that only three new parties have surmounted it in 24 years – the Alliance/Greens, New Zealand First and ACT, and the latter now relies on winning the Epsom electorate for any Parliamentary representation (1).
This division of alternative forces across three or more parties severely weakens them, and the 5% threshold, like a battlefield reaver, finishes them off. An ACT-TOP-Socred alliance would obviate any realistic fear of inducing wasted votes – even if they did not get 5%, they would still have Epsom, and so could realistically count on at least four or five seats to begin with.
The second major group of likely new voters are those who are put off by all the retards in the other parties. Characters like Davidson and Ghahraman, although they are idolised by Marxist malcontents, place a hard upper limit on how much support their parties can ever get from the public at large. The vast majority of voters listen to them and are repulsed.
A genuine Alternative Alliance with a top seven of David Seymour, Geoff Simmons, Amanda Vickers, some intelligent young candidates like TOP’s Joshua Love and Matthew Pottinger, and rounded off by ACT’s deputy Beth Houlbrooke, would have a minimum of objectionable weirdos while still maintaining a firm anti-Establishment line. The coming of such a movement would land tsunami-like upon the New Zealand Establishment.
This would not require the dismantling of the existing parties, merely their temporarily coming together for the sake of the General Election. Then the nature of the alliance could be revisited.
(1) This article initially stated that ACT has never cleared the 5% threshold. Credit to Stephen Berry for the correction.
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