So, the Labour Party now has its fifth leader since Helen Clark's resignation after the 2008 election. Why has this latest change happened? Three opinion polls in the past week have placed Labour under 25 per cent. In other words, the Labour Party is heading for an iceberg and a
Grant Duncan: Pressure now on Ardern to lift Labour
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Associate Professor Grant Duncan
Ardern has been ahead of Little in preferred prime minister polls for some time. Although many people feel she lacks depth and experience, she is very popular.
She presents the party's policies and values clearly and authentically. At 37, she is young to become the Leader of the Opposition. And she now faces the prospect of pre-election leadership debates head-to-head with the much more experienced Bill English. But then, as a protege of Helen Clark, she will have seen how it's done.
Today's spill is clearly not the best way for her to have acquired the leadership, however. It would have been preferable to contest the leadership after the inevitable defeat at the coming election.
The Labour Party's rules require that a new leadership election be triggered if the leader "fails to obtain the support of 60 per cent plus one of the caucus membership in a vote held within three months after a General Election". So, her leadership may still be tested after the election anyway, especially if things don't improve.
The pressure is now on Ardern to lift Labour significantly in the polls, or her political career is at risk.
In her first speech as leader, she declared that Labour is about to run "the campaign of our lives". Indeed, it could be "do or die" for her and the party. Labour has been squeezed out of its traditional role as the "broad church" representing the left, thanks to growing pressure from the Greens and NZ First on either side, and an unusually popular centre-right opponent. In the long term, Labour is in danger of becoming a victim of the kind of political fragmentation seen in other proportional-representation systems in Europe, such as France and the Netherlands.
Ardern will now have to prove herself as the new Leader of the Opposition, and even as the next prime minister.
She and the new deputy, Kelvin Davis, will have to establish their profile for the voting public. And the party as a whole will have to get its policy and values messages out to the public, putting the distraction of the leadership spill behind them. And they have less than eight weeks to do it.
Public opinion these days is volatile and rife with discontent.
Will Labour's big risk pay off with a boost in the polls? If it does, will that last through till the election? I won't risk a prediction. One can only wish them luck.
Associate Professor Grant Duncan teaches political theory and New Zealand politics at Massey University. Views expressed here are the writer's opinion and not the newspaper's. Email: editor@hbtoday.co.nz