Mike's Minute: Labour need to follow the Keir Starmer blueprint

If the New Zealand Labour Party wants to get real about re-election, they should look no further than the UK Labour Party. 

Keir Starmer blew up the NHS on Friday because he said it doesn't work. He says the bloating of the numbers has not improved anything. 

Jobs will be lost. 

Before he blew up the NHS, he attacked the welfare system. He called it unjust and unfair because, essentially, there are too many people sitting on welfare doing nothing and there is no incentive for them to change their habits. 

Remember, this is a British Labour Prime Minister. 

We are also expecting the chancellor to slash more spending. Why? Because they don’t have any money. 

If only a Hipkins or an Ardern or a Robertson were anything close to this. 

What was close to this was Roger Douglas, David Lange, David Caygill, and Mike Moore - the proper Labour Party. The Labour Party many recognise as being a middle-of-the-road centrist-type party that a lot of New Zealanders could recognise. 

If what Starmer is up to works, he is Tony Blair 2.0, and the lesson Blair taught us is the same thing Bob Hawke taught us in Australia – a Labour movement doesn’t have to be about wokeness and largesse and economic ineptitude. 

It needs to be about common sense and the worker. Not a hardcore unionist, but a middle class New Zealander who gets up, makes their kid's lunches, heads to work and comes home late, a bit tired and ready for a beer and a BBQ at the weekend, living in their own home in suburbia with a belief that life is pretty good, New Zealand is pretty good and the future is moderately bright. 

None of that is hard. But I bet you it's completely foreign to most of the current Labour lot who butchered the place between 2017-2023. 

The old adage around votes and political support about the centre being large and the place to get a lot of votes, is real. 

We wouldn’t mind some wider representation. National or Labour can occupy the centre. History shows it's possible and it's successful. 

Hipkins needs to study Starmer and learn. 

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