The conservative National Party has emerged as the big winner in New Zealand’s election, roundly beating Jacinda Ardern’s Labour Party in what’s being interpreted as a rejection of the Net Zero policies which were harming the country’s farmers, as well as revenge for the draconian lockdowns Ardern imposed. The Telegraph has more.
New Zealanders resoundingly elected a new conservative Government on Saturday, as incumbent Prime Minister Chris Hipkins 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 the Labour party’s environmental policies among farmers.
“It’s a weight off our shoulders,” said sheep and beef farmer Joe Lloyd, watching election coverage on TV from his living room in the Waikato region. Mr. Lloyd had been hoping for a National-ACT coalition, and put his vote behind the minority party due to its staunch stance on standing up for rural communities.
Alastair Reeves, another Waikato-based sheep and beef farmer, said he was “thrilled” about the new government. “Labour pitted urban New Zealand against rural New Zealand, and undermined our businesses by painting us as the polluters of the planet. We’ve been bombarded by regulations. They did everything they could to knock farmers’ confidence,” he said.
Saturday’s result was a dramatic contrast to Labour’s landslide victory under Jacinda Ardern’s leadership in 2020.
Mr Hipkins bowed out of the contest with just 85% of the votes counted. The National Party and its coalition partner were projected to win 61 seats – enough to secure a majority in New Zealand’s 120-seat parliament.
Formerly the CEO of Air New Zealand, Mr. Luxon campaigned to “get our country back on track”.
The message resonated with a population suffering under a cost-of-living crisis and worried about unprecedented spates of violent crime. …
Many New Zealanders also hadn’t forgiven Ms. Ardern for how she handled the COVID-19 pandemic.
Policies like barring overseas New Zealanders from returning home, enforcing harsh lockdowns, mandating the vaccine and refusing to face up to mandate protestors camped outside parliament, all contributed to her declining popularity before her resignation.
While her policies helped New Zealand maintain its impressively low death rate, the country’s High Court went on to deem some of the government’s pandemic policies as “unjustifiable” in a functioning democracy.
The agriculture industry had it particularly tough under Labour’s six years in power. It weathered an onslaught of green initiatives that were cricised by farmers and opposition parties as unnecessary at best, harmful to the country at worst.
Had Labour remained in power, one of these would have been the world’s first tax on methane belched and farted by livestock – by 2026. A bitter pill to swallow, New Zealand farmers felt, given they are some of the most greenhouse gas-efficient food producers in the world.
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“New Zealand’s election, roundly beating Jacinda Arden’s Labour Party in what’s being interpreted as a rejection of the Net Zero”
If only we had a choice for or against net zero!
I wouldn’t be too sure that the New Zealanders have a choice either. Let’s see if in 6 months the direction of travel there has changed.
If only we had a choice period.
Sound familiar? “The message resonated with a population suffering under a cost-of-living crisis and worried about unprecedented spates of violent crime. …“
How is it they have the same problems?
Who is making all this crap happen across the world at the same time?
It was no accident that George Osborne as Chancellor racked up a massive national debt – going from £800 billion to £2.1 trillion on the back of an “austerity” policy economists decried but which the EU adopted too.
Who is pulling all the strings all at the same time?
Putting the western democracies into hock to the bankers and financiers all at the same time and racking up national debt everywhere. So when our governments go cap in hand to borrow to cover the interest and worse they will be dictated to to force more of this crap on us all.
Black Rock and Vanguard, who coincidentally are also heavily invested in big pharma companies, and the $1.5tn climate change industry.
Ardern’s WEF Party surely!
Chris Hipkins is now available to become an adviser to the British royal family.
Three cheers for the fall of that horrible, horse-faced frump – even if she did scuttle out of the limelight before the public could hurl the rotten tomatoes.
This is a defeat for the left and it has been effected by an established party of the right.
This should be noted. There is no time in contemporary Britain for setting up a new party; no chance of sweeping to purist victory over the corpses of the established organisations. The Euro election? It was a flash in the pan; a chance for a protest, precisely because it carried no administrative baggage. And even the most successful insurgent, conservative parties in comparable countries – Le Front National, the AfD – are polling at around a quarter of the electorate – something they do, moreover, under PR.
All we can do, then, is to support the least awful option and drag it right – as we did in the seventies, once the Tories ditched Heath and gave us Thatcher.
Let us hope and pray that the public realises this in time. All revolutions – and that is what we are confronting today – profit from the division and impracticality of the right. Had the French right in 1789 supported the centre, there would have been no Terror. Had the Russian monarchy thrown its weight behind Liberalism in the later nineteenth century there would have been no Bolshevik regime. To deprive the left of a victory which would be truly dangerous this time round – they’re still Corbynites and Starmer himself is hard left (look at his political history) – we have to rally even to the tatty, squalid banners of Sunak.
There Is No Alternative.
Reward this government for their lockdowns, protest bans and ‘vaccine’ mandates? Never. They’re also keen on the net zero rubbish.
There’s no alternative with guaranteed result, or even much hope of a positive result, but that’s a reflection of how much trouble we’re in.
But there is no “established party of the right” in the UK, and there hasn’t been for a long time. The “populist” Tories under the “populist” Johnson brought you “covid” – the most socialist “pandemic” in history. They will not touch the socialist NHS, they legislate to restrict freedom of speech, they want to ban smoking, they will be telling us what cars we can buy, what boilers to have in our homes, and they will not protect our borders.
Labour will be worse, but I barely care.
Who or what will “drag it right”? Only one thing I can think of – if they worry they will lose the election. Even then (1) I am not sure the leadership care that much about elections and (2) let’s say they win the election by pretending to be “right wing”, what on earth makes you think they will not carry on with the same policies we have now?
The long march through the institutions means that those bodies are no longer neutral or impartial, any conservative policies come with a built-in headwind because of this.
True, but I see very little effort and very little in the way of conservative policies coming from the Tories, the party that brought you lockdowns etc.
I entirely agree, that long march has also damaged the quality of candidates being selected for Conservative party positions. Many of them would have been rejected if the local party members had their say.
Another reason that the Tory party ought to be destroyed as a political force and replaced. I doubt it will happen.
Funnily enough Hitchens’ latest blog sees him advocating voting Tory, having advocated their destruction previously. According to him it’s too late. He may be right – he often is.
Mail Online – Peter Hitchens blog (mailonsunday.co.uk)
He’s often too late with his warnings, his book on the destruction of the education system was published 60 years after most of the events described.
Perhaps one day we will learn to take responsibility for our own actions again. My WWII-fighting parents are spinning in their grave.
Maybe sometimes late, but better late than never. He called the “covid” situation from the start.
Yup expect my folks also spinning in their graves.
I have a lot of time for him, although maybe a bit less than for his late brother.
I explain to those that will listen that I am not angry with our current situation, merely incandescent with rage.
I think he’s a force for good, on balance. Don’t know much about his brother, other than idiot trolls who post stuff on his Twitter like “you’re not as smart as your brother, how can you possibly have the same parents etc”.
Incandescent with rage, yup. I’m used to it now, assume it will be like this for rest of my life. Will continue to enjoy life, don’t want to grant the bastards any kind of victory.
They will have to take my enjoyments from my cold, dead hands. And they’ll have to fight me even for those.
Thumbs up emoji
I’m more in the mind NOT to bother voting. By voting, you are giving consent to the degradation of the Magna Carta and the Bill of Rights 1689. Guy Fawks was right!
I do believe he still thinks it’s all a big cock-up…..At the same time in 2020 IO remember him making a point that….Once you give power over to a government, you never get it back without a fight. I was called a conspiracy theorist so far down the rabbit hole just for pointing that out. He did ask me to remember the conversation, oh yes I do remember it and I was right!
He has never really said much about what he thinks was behind the Covid response
It was the CCP through the WHO that brought us lockdowns as these were applied in almost all countries irrespective of whether left of right. In fact Sturgeon, Drakeford and the left in general wanted harder and longer lockdowns – and consider Ms Susan Michie. And then there was Ms J. Ardern and Master J. Trudeau, both of whom are firmly on the left and chums of both the CCP and Klaus Schwab. With the exception of Sweden and Florida, nearly all governments were toothless and had abandoned their responsibilities to protect the freedoms of their citizens.
I guess it depends how you define left and right. One of the key parts of the definition for me is the proper role of the state in the lives of its citizens, the tension between the “public good” and private rights. Judged in the that light, I struggle to think of many national governments in the rich world that I would consider “right wing”. Just variants on a theme. South Dakota was a notable exception – a place where the balance is more the way I think it should be. But that’s not a country.
The left has always been about the rights of groups, initially the working class, now it’s migrants, trans people etc. True right wing parties focus on the rights of individuals so any party in favour of net zero and removing people’s right to drive the car of their choice or heat their home in the way they want to isn’t on the right.
Totally agree.
And now Tredeau has a Bill going through much like the online censorship Bill we have that will enable them to censor podcasts. See Russel Brands video on Rumble. At least in Canada, they are waking up to the dangers of censorship and most in a poll don’t want it.
All those downticks because….?
The Conservative Party is now so corrupted and controlled by global NGOs and financiers it is incapable of nurturing and promoting small c conservatism. The Party isn’t fit for purpose any longer and it not worth talented, principled Conservatives people being associated with this rotten business.
When a management with a reputation for brilliance tackles a business with a reputation for bad economics, it is the reputation of the business that remains intact.
Warren Buffett
I won’t be voting for the Blue-Green Socialists or Schwab’s puppets, Sunak and Hunt.
You say “There is no Alternative.”
I say They Aren’t an Alternative. Whether we vote for the Blue-Green WEF Puppet Sunak …. or Red-Green WEF Puppet Starmer makes virtually NO DIFFERENCE whatsoever.
The Blue-Green Socialists destroyed this country with their Covid Tyranny.
There is a huge pro Palestine demo going on in London currently.
So the billionaires in New Zealand decided they really liked their old lifestyle?
Let’s see what the government actually does and whether it suddenly experiences inertia should the policies differ greatly from those being promoted elsewhere.
Long live the fallen idols….
Has there ever been a more hateful politician than Ardern with her faux sincerity and authoritarian virtue-signalling ego-trip?
Trudeau comes very close and is a similar sanctimonious hypocrite.
Is that spelled “nastylittleshite”?
I do believe the Laurence Fox quip is apposite at this point.
This doesn’t mention that NZ First won quite a few seats as well which should make the NP/ACT government more secure than at first appears.
Common sense prevails. Good riddance to St Jacinda and company, what a spiteful beast she was. Just need Canada and Aus to come to their senses now. However let’s see what happens in the next few months.
I think Canada is the testing ground capital for de-banking!
This would be good news IF the National Party hadn’t fully support Adhern’s Covid Tyranny.
She, of course, was “saved” from humiliation by the Globalists who were orchestrating the Tyranny.
And rewarded by out wonderful Prince & Princess of Wales that can never do any harm.
People go mad in crowds and only recover their senses slowly one by one. One day the Liberal Progressive tyranny might only exist in history books. But then again we never seem to learn from history do we?
If they get their way the film Equilibrium comes to mind.
The delusion of elections continues. Meet the new boss, same as the old boss…
Good riddance to bad rubbish.
Can we now expect a warrant for Arden”s arrest?