Matthew Hooton has a new theory of the Labour party (NBR: paywalled). It goes like this: The scary-sounding “extreme left,” fresh from suiciding the Alliance, have invaded the Labour Party with the intent of murdering it from within, with the result that the Green Party will control the government. No, seriously, that’s his theory. Methinks he’s been watching too many zombie flicks.
That theory, according to Hooton, explains why Labour has dangerous radicals like Andrew Little in charge, and why it espouses Soviet ideas like agreeing with world-leading economists on the TPP, and like lowering the cost of something everyone wants more people to have.
The two biggest planks of Matthew’s theory are also its two biggest flaws. They are: (1) Labour’s leaders are extreme left; and (2) Labour’s policy is extreme left.
Andrew Little’s biggest success pre-politics was to convince Air New Zealand not to shut its aircraft maintenance facility in Auckland. Thanks to Little’s intervention and cooperation as Secretary of the then-Engineers’ Union, it stayed open under new employment conditions. Now Air New Zealand enjoys a reputation as a world leader in plane maintenance, bringing an added profit stream, while hundreds of skilled jobs stayed in Auckland. It’s hardly anti-business behaviour.
In December, Little met with economist Jeffrey Sachs to discuss, among other things, TPP. Sachs told Little that he couldn’t bring himself to support the deal, because of all the behind the border fishhooks. Jeff Sachs said that. Joseph Stiglitz has the same position, as he stated last month in The Guardian:
In 2016, we should hope for the TPP’s defeat and the beginning of a new era of trade agreements that don’t reward the powerful and punish the weak.
Jo Stiglitz and Jeff Sachs - pro free trade, but anti TPP. Look those two guys up – they’re hardly fringe economists. Is Hooton really suggesting Stiglitz and Sachs are “extreme left” because they, like Labour, oppose TPP? If so, it says more about Hooton than about anyone else.
Most people also recognize it’s important than ever that more New Zealanders have advanced education. As machines and algorithms make ever more jobs obsolete, people need the smarts and ability to do jobs that aren’t easily replaced. As an economy, we get more educated or we get more dead. And if we want people to have more of something, one of the most time-tested ways to achieve it is to lower the price.
To sum it up: “Education’s important, and we should have more of it, so we’re making it easier to get.” Radical stuff! If Matthew wants to call that insight far left lunacy, then he’s welcome to.
Now, I don’t say this as a card-carrying member of Hooton’s so-called “extreme left” clique. Given certain events, I’m pretty sure I’d be refused membership even if I applied. Nonetheless I’m interested in Matthew’s column. Why bother putting such an obviously silly theory into the public domain?
I think it’s a clumsy attempt to change the subject. Labour’s education policy is getting too much traction for the right’s liking – they’d rather we were talking about something else. Enter Matthew’s cooked up story of Machiavellian shenanigans inside his opponents, as a lumbering distraction.
I like it when the right-wing cheer squad is reduced to conspiracy theories about the left. That tactic is the refuge of someone who wants the conversation to change. It’s a defensive gambit, and usually an unsuccessful one.