The generation about to become influential will never comprehend the depth of truly astonishing ideological transformation crytallised yesterday in Beijing.
A Labour Prime Minister signing a free trade agreement in Beijing is Rogernomic’s gymnastic triumph over economic superstition. For nearly a century there could have been no greater sin for a Labour leader than to expose NZ workers to free trade with a country with “pittance” wages and some of the most publicly flouted labour laws in the world.
The Prime Minister displays her awesome political supremacy over the left by being accompanied by union leaders.
I think H Clark will go down in our history with the same judgment as Muldoon – a political master who used her power only to hold it. She could have used her political genius on the left’s black hole welfare, education and crime policies. Instead she has bribed her supporters to protect the emergence of an illiterate, barely employable, and vicious under-class.
The free trade transformation, and its implicit acknowledgement of economic orthdoxy, will be the arguments against that judgment.
If the ‘poor’ vote for Labour, and the ‘rich’ vote for National – then surely it is in Labour’s interests to keep people ‘poor’ and National’s to help them become ‘rich’.
Looking at the last 8 1/2 years, it’s clear Labour understand this only too well.