Thousands of Labour Party members were huddled around their laptops and hovering over their smartphones on Saturday. There was an air of much excitement and great anticipation.
The true-believers were waiting for an email to land in their inboxes that would reveal Labour’s brand new campaign slogan. Let’s Keep Moving.
I’ve never put much stock in campaign slogans, but for the party base it’s a big deal. Maybe the attention span of some of their prospective voters only extends to three words.
But the problem I have with this new slogan is the fact that’s wide open to ridicule. And I’m not talking about the fact that it sounds like a Richard Simmons jazzercize show, circa 1985.
As the successor to Let’s Do This, Let’s Keep Moving presupposes that New Zealand has been moving swimmingly, that we’ve been on a roll, with a high-performing transformational government racking up a wave of achievements. The reality of course is their trophy cabinet is pretty bare.
Economically or socially, the well-being report card isn’t flash.
With a spluttering economy even before Covid, the failure to deliver meaningful runs on the board, material progress or greater prosperity undermines the credibility of any clarion call to let’s keep moving.
Even before Covid, under Labour’s watch, the dole queues had jumped by a further 30,000 people.
In her key note address to the party Congress yesterday, the intriguing centrepiece of the speech was Cleaning up our Waterways, with two thousand Jobs for Nature. It seems a very flimsy offering as the big takeaway, the bug nugget to anchor a key-note speech. Labour’s 5 Point Economic Plan, like “Jobs, Jobs, Jobs”, currently resembles a loose assortment of glib slogans.
Yes, Jacinda Ardern is a very savvy communicator. She knows how to sell the sausage, even when the product struggles to pass muster.
But I just wonder if Labour is pinning its hopes on the notion that most voters have very short term memories. And a dope referendum thrown in for good measure. Is Labour punting that voters will only judge their record on the past three months, not the past three years? Managing the Covid Crisis is a potent consideration, but it’s certainly not the sole measure.
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