Labour’s next challenge: Managing the blame game - Mike Munro

Chris Hipkins has been endorsed as Labour leader while Carmel Sepuloni has been elected the new deputy leader. Photo / Mark Mitchell

OPINION

It’s natural some people will go looking for blame rather than the truth after an election defeat of the scale Labour has just experienced.

“Everybody hates us” was the blunt summation of one Labour aide this week. But the truth behind the loss is more complex, and delving into it will invariably involve some finger-pointing, with the leader a prime target.

Chris Hipkins is presently finding that out for himself.

The Labour MPs who found themselves unable to dodge the microphones of waiting journalists as the caucus gathered in Upper Hutt on Tuesday for a post-election inquisition were expressing varying degrees of loyalty to their man, as you would expect.

Media attention in the run-up to the caucus had inevitably focused on Hipkins’ immediate future. There was, of course, never any real likelihood Hipkins was going to be rolled - the main reason being the absence of an obvious, or even a semi-obvious, successor.

But, clearly, something happened inside the caucus meeting that left Hipkins in no doubt about MPs’ dismay over the extent to which Labour, under his direction, tacked too far to the centre this year, so blurring the party’s brand and costing it party votes.

In particular, his “captain’s call” to end work on a wealth tax, which followed a more general policy bonfire after he was sworn in, clearly tested some MPs’ forbearance. And that of party members, too.

That saw Hipkins emerge from the caucus gathering to announce that, policy-wise, everything is back on the table, including a discussion around tax. And yes, that includes – though this was implied rather than said – wealth and capital gains taxes. Labour, Hipkins said, stands for progress and a fairer New Zealand, where hard-working Kiwis can get ahead, a message that many of his colleagues wanted to hear.

It was a smart move, but if the truth be known, he had little choice.

His statement that Labour’s tax policy in 2026 could look “quite different” would’ve silenced for now the mutterings about his leadership.

It seems that caucus forced Hipkins’ hand, and his endorsement as leader was contingent on him going out and promising a fresh look at a fairer tax system. We’ll never know that for sure, as caucus business is shrouded in secrecy, but Hipkins’ “we start again” declaration suggests he got a hurry-up from colleagues.

So he lives to fight another day, perhaps many a day.

The normal practice with defeated prime ministers is they generally don’t linger for long, as a glance at the changes of government over the past 40 years illustrates. They either quit or are dumped.

Robert Muldoon was deposed a few months after losing power in 1984; Jenny Shipley stood down, but not by choice, two years after losing in 1999; Helen Clark announced she was quitting Labour’s leadership the night her Government was defeated in 2008; and Bill English retired from politics four months after his prime ministership ended in October 2017.

The exception was Mike Moore in 1990. He lost an election after just 60 days as PM, but so brief was his time in the leader’s chair that he was given another crack.

Hipkins falls into the same late-comer category. He was catapulted into the leadership in January, just nine months before the election, at a time when the seeds of Labour’s defeat were arguably well sown. Despite some misgivings about his focus group-driven centrist tendencies, few in the party are demanding he now be discarded.

Rod Emmerson's view. Illustration / Rod Emmerson

Hipkins, “Chippy” to his colleagues, is a well-liked scrapper. There’s broad acceptance he handled his duties well during what has been a trying year, and while his campaign had a lacklustre opening fortnight, it improved in the latter stages, during which he outpointed Christopher Luxon in the second and third televised leaders’ debates.

Hipkins’ leadership was accordingly endorsed this week by his caucus colleagues, who gave him the 60 per cent plus one vote he needs to carry on.

But while MPs don’t want a blame game played out in public, some in party ranks obviously feel differently.

Newshub reported on Wednesday it had been leaked Labour Party election feedback from the previously ultra-safe Mt Albert seat, now held by just 20 votes after the counting of specials. The feedback had Hipkins on the “chuck” list, that is, the list of things that didn’t go well.

Right now, you needn’t look far to find Labour loyalists who remain grumpy about errant ministerial behaviour and recent policy decisions, chief among them being Hipkins’ halting of the wealth tax, a piece of work Jacinda Ardern, Grant Robertson and David Parker, as Revenue Minister, had last year agreed to progress.

Another commonly heard gripe is that having ditched a number of unpopular policies at the beginning of the year, Hipkins, the self-titled bread-and-butter man, failed to adequately set out what he stood for.

So the party base is gearing up for the “who are we, what do we stand for” conversation the leader is now promising, and will be wanting a meaningful role in the policy discussions that follow.

The challenge for Labour’s parliamentary and party leadership will be ensuring that this exercise doesn’t unleash a volley of recriminations.

That’s always a risk to be managed when the rank and file are given the opportunity to tell a few home truths.

- Mike Munro is a former chief of staff for Jacinda Ardern and was chief press secretary for Helen Clark.