Beyond Jacinda

To talk about what lies “beyond Jacinda” is not to say the Prime Minister is transitory. Jacinda Ardern has demonstrated the requisite skills and resilience to see through this second term and, if she wants, have a fair shot at a third term.

But her Government needs to be seen in a wider and longer context. The wider context is a rapidly changing, turbulent and seriously challenging external world. The longer context is a decade ahead of climate, ecosystem and new-technology forces that will require major policy change and during which will rise a generation with different ideas of how that policy should change. Do Ardern and her X-and Y-generation contemporaries have the mentality to make those big changes or will they be left to a rising generation with a different mentality and different ideas?

Outside our bubble, the world is in disruptive change and this is likely to accelerate through the 2020s.

In short, are Ardern and her X and Y contemporaries tiptoe-through-the-tulips types or striders up and over the mountain pass? Yes, they do things differently from their boomer parents, but are they sufficiently different to bring about real change in this challenging era?

My sense from October 2017 was always that Labour would get a second term, with 41-43% of the vote plus the Greens on 6-7%. Ardern’s commanding leadership in managing Covid-19 added maybe 6-8%, fetching Labour up at 50.01%, an unprecedented single-party majority under MMP in this country. (Scotland has had that under MMP for several terms.)

That made the 2020 election unusual, to say the least. So did Labour’s astonishing electorate wins off National, most notably the seat built around Sid Holland’s crusty Fendalton; young Green star Chloe Swarbrick’s Auckland Central gig; National’s close-to-record 19 percentage-point fall in its vote, three leadership changes and Judith Collins’ mixed-messaging and Trump-lite stumbles; despairing National voters going Labour or piling into Act; and the humiliating exit of Winston Peters after three months of sad, desperate attacks on the parties with which he had been in government.

Zombie companies and junk bonds pose threats to financial stability. The threat of a severe global financial shock, bigger than that of 2007-09, is high.

This has set Labour up for a credible bid for a third term in 2123 with the Greens, who, with some influence but also ability to stay distinctive, should be able to hold above 5%. Although one never says never in politics, a new destabilising shock – a house price crash, say – may disrupt our politics or the Government may make a disastrous mistake.

Some think Ardern will not see out the term and instead go off to look after her daughter, Neve. I am not among them. She has a duty to voters and her party to see through this term and fight the 2023 election, and the residual Mormon inside her takes duty seriously. In any case, Deputy Prime Minister Grant