Seinfeld’s lessons for NZ Labour

Comment: There is an episode of Seinfeld in which George decides to reverse his usual choices and do the opposite of everything he normally does. His life changes for the better, as he lands a girlfriend, a job with the New York Yankees, and a nicer apartment.
As Chris Hipkins watches on in Liverpool at UK Labour’s conference this week, he must look to George’s example given the last election result.
He is fortunate that we are in a golden age of centre-left political thinking. Progressive think tanks, academics and the real-world experience of the Biden, Albanese and Starmer governments provide considerable inspiration for a New Labour, New Zealand.
Wealth Creation
Economic growth and wealth creation is sorely lacking from New Zealand’s political discourse. As Mike Moore framed free trade as a project of the political left, Starmer’s Labour embraced wealth creation as a progressive cause, asserting that a wealthier Britain is essential to deliver improved social spending and outcomes. This is an argument that will increasingly resonate in austerity New Zealand.
Economist Mariana Mazzucato advocates for a “mission economy” and a reinvented public service to deliver it. She provides Labour a framework to develop policies for a wealthier country. Citing Kennedy’s moonshot, Mazzucato advocates the setting of bold and ambitious missions, which are achieved by collaborative state and private sector action, innovation and investment.
Some “moonshots” are now essential to address New Zealand’s existential threats. These include greening electricity generation, funding resilient infrastructure, and reversing our brain drain. Labour should adopt collaborative policy solutions to address these challenges.
Adopting a national strategy to materially increase the value and diversity of our exports is increasingly urgent. We need to improve our current account deficit to maintain the lifestyle in which we have become accustomed. Creating new markets and opportunities for high-quality, high value, branded and niche products and services is one way of achieving this.
Our trading partners and competitors are pursuing versions of a Green Industrial Strategy, with productivity, higher wages, supply chain resilience, enhanced infrastructure, national security and environmental impact among myriad objectives. 
A mission-led New Zealand industrial strategy would reflect all or some of these in accordance with our priorities, shaping both our export and domestic policies. Both the state and private sectors need this certainty to invest for the long term, essential to create a wealthier and better New Zealand.
For The Many Not The Few
Increasing our national wealth allows a more coherent response to Thomas Piketty’s alarm over increasing wealth inequality, through both redistribution and tax reform. Aligning our tax policies more closely with Australia’s would reduce both political risk for Labour and economic risk for New Zealand. 
Former finance minister Michael Cullen provided a framework for a fairer and more efficient tax system which more closely aligned with our far more prosperous neighbour, while reducing wealth inequality and encouraging productive investment. 
Alignment allows us to participate in the scale of a larger economy and avoids the national peril that might arise from more radical ideas such as a largely untested wealth tax.
Bamboo Diplomacy
While everyone agrees New Zealand should have an “independent foreign policy”, the concept is apparently so vague that its pursuit may have catastrophic consequences for our economic or security situation.
New Zealand should draw inspiration from similarly trade-reliant powers such as Vietnam and other Southeast Asian nations, which practice various degrees of “Bamboo Diplomacy”, a pragmatic approach to dealings with major powers and the global order, to be “friends with all and enemies with none”. Former Victoria University of Wellington academic Nguyen Khac Giang describes a foreign policy approach which emphasises national interests, but “bends without breaking”. 
Such an approach happily aligns with our country’s history of active and progressive foreign policy, which usually put New Zealand on the right side of history, sometimes against contemporary orthodoxy – such as the invasion of Iraq in 2003. Our foreign policy needs to be grounded in our values and traditions while bending to prioritise our national interests, perhaps the most important of which should be our economic wellbeing.
Purposeful Positive Populism
As well as a wealthier, fairer, and enemy-free New Zealand, we need policies which are positive, popular and grounded in empirical evidence with expert support. 
We need a government committed to levelling the playing field for special interests – one that does this by cleaning up standards of governance, eliminating conflicts and opportunities for undue influence or even corruption. Voters want good government and may also be ready for progress in the social sphere such as drug reform, given the progress that many like-minded nations have made in recent times. Labour need look no further than the sober analysis of the Helen Clark Foundation for evidence-based advice on both topics.
Labour can enjoy a change in its fortunes if it is brave enough to follow George’s lead on Seinfeld and do the opposite of much of what it has been doing, while contrasting its offer from that of the current government. 
Advocating for a wealthier country, a fairer tax system, a smarter foreign policy and some evidence-based positive populism might well do the trick.