Labour’s Campaign Offered Nothing to Start With!

Labour’s slogan said it all: “Better Start Now.” It was weak, and it typified a campaign of banal nothingness that offered voters very little in the way of change.
Capped public transport at $20 a week was a decent start. But three doctor’s visits? Workers are in the grip of a cost of living crisis, and Labour brought a pamphlet to a fire. Where was free dental care? Where were weekend and night rates for the people who keep this country running while everyone else sleeps? Nothing substantial was on offer, so nothing substantial was heard.

The result points to something bigger than one bad campaign. It marks the end of the neoliberal rump that still controls the centre of the Labour Party, and it has hung on far too long. The party has been run by student politicians, a D-list team of non-entities: reformists without reforms.
Meanwhile, the left is rising elsewhere, from Manhattan to Berlin. The new left is making clear socialist arguments: rent control, public housing built for the working class, cheaper public supermarkets, guaranteed affordable prices on basic foods. Even universal basic income, which the Opportunity Party has echoed, deserves serious debate as artificial intelligence brings the prospect of mass unemployment. Labour offered none of it.

The consequence was predictable. Voters couldn’t say what would change under Labour, and workers weren’t inspired to turn out. The right had no such problem. They showed up to protect their money and their profits, and to keep radically remaking society in their favour. The New Zealand right does not apologise for attacking our rights, fundamentally and repeatedly.
It’s time the left stopped apologising too. We need to fight unapologetically for the working class, and to retire the weak reformist leaders who have no reforms to give us.

Could Labour have won decisively by turning to the socialist left?
https://socialistaotearoa.org/2026/10/01/election-2026-the-socialist-way-forward/