It might be easy. In a speech at the start of the year, Chris Hipkins warned Labour that the odds were against them, that winning back government after a single term in opposition could be accomplished only by building a massive grassroots campaign; a titanic effort was required.
Perhaps. But a number of variables – mostly outside Hipkins’ control – could conspire to deliver him to power. A massive campaign couldn’t hurt, but chance and circumstance could simply hand him an election win. Which raises the question: what could another Labour regime and Hipkins’ reprisal of the prime ministerial role look like?
The most probable paths to this restoration are a failing economy, a Trumpist outrage, a détente with Winston Peters or some combination of the three. The first scenario sees interest rates rise and another midwinter recession. The long-promised recovery dies – it’s the supermarket trolley that rolls back down the ramp, the salmon that couldn’t crest the falls, the plane that ran out of runway.
As growth slumps and business failures persist, the failures and contradictions of Willis-Luxonist Thought become untenable. Maybe there’s another misstep around this year’s Budget in the tradition of 2024’s unfunded cancer drugs and 2025’s pay equity debacle. Perhaps there’s a backbench rebellion in National. The coalition heads into the campaign in a state of open crisis, with National haemorrhaging voters to its supply partners and Labour.
The second scenario is harder to anticipate because Donald Trump is such a chaotic entity, but he’s prone to provoking confrontations with allied states that are disastrous for right-wing political parties. Canada’s Mark Carney rode a wave of anti-Trump sentiment to win an unwinnable election; Reform UK was forced to distance itself from its fellow populist during the bizarre dispute over Greenland. Perhaps the US demands our territories in Antarctica, or resumes nuclear testing in the South Pacific? It could be anything. Luxon attempts to show leadership, Winston Peters roars at him to stay in his damn lane. The opposition takes a stand against the erratic and bullying hegemon and the nation rallies around them.
In the third hypothetical Labour victory, Hipkins continues to pick up votes from the Greens and Peters from National. The possibility of a centrist two-party coalition with a comfortable majority becomes more attractive to New Zealand First than a fraught three-way arrangement with National and Act. Perhaps Peters signals this possibility during the campaign. Maybe the centre-right voters supporting his party because they’re unimpressed with National and are reassured by Peters’ commitment not to work with Hipkins, are astonished to learn post-election that they’ve voted for a change of government; that Peters did not say what they thought he said; that it was all a lie; yet another fabrication by the duplicitous liberal media.
The first concern for voters is whether Labour has any credible theory of the economy and how to fix it. Why was our Covid recovery (see above) so much worse than everyone else’s? Hipkins has pointed to the record numbers of New Zealanders leaving the country, the cost of living, lack of productive investment and the vital importance of economic wellbeing.
How will Labour stabilise prices? Is there a policy roadmap to higher productivity, lower migration, genuine growth? Or is Hipkins – like Luxon in opposition – simply declaring he’ll solve all these problems because that’s what you say? Will he spend his second tenure as prime minister loudly complaining that the wretched state of the economy endures and it’s all Christopher Luxon’s fault?
Labour’s second challenge is summed up by the – somewhat creepy – economics jargon, “elite human capital”. The previous Labour government’s primary liability was its own caucus. In six years they lost seven ministers, most of them under ridiculous circumstances. Other senior members of the cabinet – Kelvin Davis in Corrections and Children, Megan Woods in Housing and Energy – should have lost their portfolios but there was no one to replace them. Now in opposition, few Labour spokespeople ever look as if they’re applying any pressure on coalition ministers (with occasional exceptions: Ayesha Verrall in health and Hipkins, who often makes the Prime Minister look foolish – a bleakly low bar to clear).
Much of the drift that characterised Jacinda Ardern’s government can be attributed to this lack of talent – only a handful of ministers and senior staffers knew what they were doing. This does not feel like a problem solved. There are rumours of high-profile list candidates, of electorate contests arranged to bring more capable politicians into Parliament. Even if this project succeeds, these saviours won’t have built up the depth of knowledge MPs acquire in opposition.
This dovetails into the third challenge: state capacity. Late last year, UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer complained to a Westminster parliamentary committee, “Every time I go to pull a lever, there are a whole bunch of regulations, consultations, arms-length bodies that mean the action from pulling the lever to delivery is longer than I think it ought to be.”
The Ardern government encountered similar problems. In 2021, Grant Robertson established a special delivery unit in the Department of Prime Minister and Cabinet to get the state to do the things its ministers kept promising the public but which rarely materialised. Hipkins has conceded the previous government was “too cluttered and too busy”, and has promised a more focused regime concentrating on “jobs, health, homes”.
Ministers in the current government seem fairly happy with the performance of their departments, although it required a sustained campaign of terror – of sacked boards, leak inquiries, line items slashed from budgets, contractors and consultants purged – to bring the bureaucracy to heel.
Will Labour allow the public sector to revert to “the rule of no one” (as political theorist Hannah Arendt put it), and the deterioration of frontline services as funding and attention drift back to central agencies, to lavish rebranding exercises, the endless conferences and workshops, the staff wellness initiatives – all the activities that feel like governing but produce nothing the public would recognise as government?
Perhaps Hipkins learnt something from his last time in power and meditated upon these lessons in opposition. Perhaps his small-target campaign strategy conceals a sophisticated theory of the state and the economy, and if a coincidence of events returns him to office he’ll boldly seize that runaway trolley; our economy will become the little salmon that could.
The question for voters is whether “jobs, health, homes ” is a genuine plan, or just a slogan for a second Hipkins government much like the first: well-meaning, overwhelmed, and surprised to learn that good intentions are no substitute for knowing what you’re doing.
