New Zealanders have resoundingly elected a new conservative government as Chris Hipkins, the incumbent prime minister, conceded that Labour’s six years in power were over.
The National party’s Christopher Luxon said New Zealanders had “reached for hope and voted for change” after a campaign dominated by an increasingly difficult economic situation and a backlash against Labour’s environmental policies among farmers.
Of course, we’ve had Conservative government for years but when do we get a conservative one?
In fact, whilst there was a significant swing from Labour to National the final result remains somewhat in the balance due to the proportional voting side of things. Yet again, wizened political whore Winston Peters and his vanity NZ First party may be king-makers.
Being paranoid about the 8 billion or so, I naturally hope that all the obstacles to farmers churning out as much food as they can will be abolished.
While the National Party is not very conservative they will be forced right by being in coalition with ACT.
Meanwhile the NZ Labour Party is at least as economically dry as your Tories. They at least give lip service to budget surpluses.
Having spent about a year doing activism with the local Conservatives, I see no hope of it coming from there. I joined hoping to help a liberal revolution and realised there just weren’t many activists like that.
I wanted to see the results in a bit more detail and landed on Radio New Zealand’s website rnz.co.nz
Tjey really do seem quite churlish about the whole situation. 🙂
@Western Bloke, so what are they like? Or rather, what do they believe WRT the economy, the size of the state, benefits, immigration etc?
Rishi is 20% behind in the polls, they’ve Jeremied the economy, the Third World is openly dissolving England, and most Conservative voters are undecided between the hemp rope and the lion squad.
So our little tiny Bharat Minister decided to use his Big Speech (he stood on a box, bigots) to announce:
* Smoking ban
* More fannying about with the national curriculum
* No tax cuts of any kind
While grinning.
Lions Party. x
The vile Jacinda Arden is now at Harvard where she is “focusing on online extremism”.
Perhaps she could raise her eyes from the screen and acknowledge the actual extremism on display there. Except that’s not going to be the type of extremism she’s interested in.
MC,
“so what are they like? Or rather, what do they believe WRT the economy, the size of the state, benefits, immigration etc?”
I heard almost no-one talking about the economy, benefits, immigration. Lots of talk about local services, and the whole emphasis was about providing more of them, rather than hey, let’s cut the council tax instead.
And if you look at how Conservatives talk about things in the news, this is what they’re like. Rishi cutting HS2, but he’s going to piss it all away on regional rail instead. Conservative MPs wanting their ticket offices kept open at huge cost just so a couple of old people in the town can get around*. They don’t think in terms of saving taxpayers money.
The only reason to vote Conservative over Labour is that they won’t get into as much debt producing state bloat.
@Western Bloke – October 15, 2023 at 8:41 am
… realised there just weren’t many activists like that.
I guess that many of them have followed the same path as me – seeing the actual membership progressively sidelined by CCHQ and eventually resigning their memberships in disgust.
Conservative? I’d say your current government (& the next) could be best described as Murphyist. So I guess you’re in for a very long wait.
The only reason to vote Conservative over Labour is that they won’t get into as much debt producing state bloat.
The Cons have doubled the national debt since they got into office promising to fix it.
John – Harvard desperately needs some paragliding Palestinians to decolonise the place.
Steve,
“The Cons have doubled the national debt since they got into office promising to fix it.”
I didn’t say that the Cons were good, only that Labour would have been worse. I don’t think Starmer will be that much worse.
WB – There is an idea of a Keir Starmer; some kind of abstraction. But there is no real me: only an entity, something illusory.
And though I can hide my cold gaze, and you can shake my hand and feel flesh gripping yours and maybe you can even sense our lifestyles are probably comparable…
I simply am not there.