Identikit populist plays same old tune

By TIM BALE*

All right. I admit it. I like Winston Peters. I know I shouldn't. But I do. It's not like I don't know it's wrong. It's just that I cannot help myself.

My only comfort is that I'm obviously not alone. The polls seem to suggest that one in 10 Kiwis is similarly hypnotised - in such a deep sleep that, come Saturday, they look set to actually vote for New Zealand First.

So what's going on? Obviously a lot of it is down to the man himself. Maybe it's the suits. Maybe it's the smile. Maybe it's the showmanship - that compelling combination of posturing pomposity and charlatan cheek. Whatever it is, we all know Winston has more charisma than the rest of his opponents put together.

But that's partly their own fault, too. Labour and National, in particular, have played too safe for too long. Their focus-group-friendly messages and micro-managed campaigns reduce risk but inspire no one.

Their leaders, thus protected, seem unapproachable, unspontaneous, unattractive - everything Winston is not.

They've made things worse by running what amounts to a disguised grand coalition on all the really big issues.

Can anyone really doubt, for instance, that National would ride to Labour's rescue on free trade, on foreign policy, on GM, even on the treaty - where the only difference seems to be one of timing.

And, of course, on immigration, which both partners in the grand coalition clearly see as a good thing. Bill might be slightly more for it because it's good for business, while Helen loves the cultural diversity most. But for both it is as necessary and as inevitable as, for example, the economic reforms of the 1980s. Now, as then, those who aren't so sure will just have to get over it - and themselves.

But some people can't get over it - or not as quickly as we might like them to. By denying their fears any legitimacy, by branding them redneck or racist, by prioritising the duty to lead opinion over the duty to represent it, the other parties hand the issue to Winston Peters on a plate. And by doing that, they play into his hands on an even deeper level.

Peters is an identikit populist. A man with a ready-made message whose familiarity never seems to dull its appeal to the discontented and disconcerted the world over.

Its strength lies in its paranoid simplicity. We are all, it runs, the victims of some kind of conspiracy - in this case of silence - among an elite of self-serving politicians, supine journos, money-grubbing lawyers, bent merchant bankers and clever-dick professors.

The only way out of the mess is to turn to the immaculate outsider.

This persecuted man of the people will throw open the doors, turn the tables and sweep out the stables. Only he will say what needs to be said and do what needs to be done - without wasting either his time or (even better) our money.

Can we fix it? Yes, we can.

Traditionally, this message used to come in what for most people was rather less appealing wrapping. American Senator Joe McCarthy (who I can't help recalling when Winston tries pulling out supposedly incriminating documents on live television) was, for instance, a sweat-soaked, drunken nightmare of a man.

More recently, however, populism seems to be taking on more attractive guises. Forget fascist-throwback Jean-Marie Le Pen - the exception that proves the rule. Think instead of the striking camp-chic of martyred Pym Fortuyn who, by exploiting fears over immigration and crime, became a kingmaker beyond the grave in Dutch politics.

Or consider Pia Kjaersgaard, the feline blonde who seems to be driving Denmark's new get-tough immigration policy, despite the fact that her party is not formally part of the Government.

Or Christoph Blocher, whose rags-to-riches life-story and folksy but fierce insistence on Switzerland for the Swiss has made him and his party one of that country's most powerful political players.

And let's not forget Joerg Haider, whose party is a full coalition partner in Austria. This is a man whose sun-tanned smile is matched only by his capacity to smooth-talk his way out of accusations ranging from petty party irregularities to very, very ugly racism. Remind you of anyone?

Most of us who live in the world's richest countries are doing reasonably well at the moment. And many of those who aren't won't vote anyway. So politics seems to be changing.

Here, as in parts of Western Europe, it now seems to have grown tired of its formerly exclusive focus on the bread-and-butter issues of the economy and public services.

At the progressive end of the spectrum, this opens up new issues like worries over the environment, or about people and places about which in days gone by we knew little and cared less. Hence the rise of the Greens.

At the other end of the spectrum, concern focuses on multiculturalism and myriad other threats to the unchanging society we naively expected to grow up and grow old in. Tapping into this is the speciality of Fortuyn, Kjaersgaard, Blocher and Haider.

And, of course, Winston Peters. He, like them, may use his charisma to camouflage his true colours, to pretend that left and right are meaningless labels.

But forget the packaging, look at the contents. All of the European parties I've just mentioned have either joined or support governments of the centre-right.

It's never been any different and probably never will be.

The same, surely, goes for Winston - in the end a man of the right. No one who really knows him was surprised he hooked up with National in 1996. The shame was surely that Labour were so desperate for power that they considered going with him even for a moment, let alone seven weeks.

Fortunately, for worried wishy-washy liberals all over the country, Newton's third law of motion may apply to politics as well as physics.

If every action has an equal and opposite reaction, Peter Dunne - the man who last week put the charismatic into uncharismatic, the flashy into unflashy - may well be it.

Better Helen and Peter than Clark and Peters.

* Tim Bale lectures in political science at Victoria University.

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