During the grim days of Covid lockdowns, one of the few comforts for liberty-loving Britons was the knowledge that, however bad things were, we weren’t as bad as New Zealand. Tales of Antipodean authoritarianism were a reminder that things could always be worse.
Yet as the British right flounders on the cusp of electoral oblivion, the Kiwi right is insurgent, having to swept into government back in October 2023. For a while, it was Pierre Poilievre’s housing-driven revival of the Canadian Conservatives that offered the most obvious route back to power. Yet in New Zealand, we have a fully formed case study of right-wing renaissance; following a landslide Labour victory in 2020, the Kiwi right came into power just three years later, boasting a healthy working majority. What’s more, they did so with the support of younger voters – according to polls close to the election, a full 50% of voters aged 18-34 said that they intended to back one of the three coalition parties.
So how did they do it?
New Zealand’s new government is a coalition between Christopher Luxon’s centre-right National Party, the classical liberal ACT Party, and populist New Zealand First. For National, the pitch was all about aspiration, tax cuts for the squeezed middle, and a ruthless commitment to build more houses. Cumbersome regulations were out, along with ideological commitments to modish progressive ideas around race and the environment.
And for New Zealand First, headed by political veteran Winston Peters, a surprisingly energetic campaign struck the right balance between credible professionalism and rough-around-the-edges authenticity. Active efforts were made to engage younger voters on their priorities, and to promote young talent, in a party that has often been accused of pandering to older voters.
Now that the coalition has power, it’s actually using it. Unpopular water management reforms are being scrapped, plans to give the Kiwi equivalent of HMRC a mandate to deliver on a set of ‘tax principles’ have been rolled back, planned fuel tax hikes have been halted, and blanket reductions to speed limits are gone.
They’ve also significantly tightened visa rules for new immigrants, and overturned Labour’s smoking ban. Looking forward, there are ambitious plans in the pipeline to liberalise planning rules, building on localised successes in cities like Auckland. This is an active, effective coalition, with clear goals – summarised in a neat 49-point plan – and a pragmatic approach to delivering them.
There are echoes here of what Mary Harrington recently termed ‘right-progressivism’, the ‘liveliest corner of the Anglophone Right’, which combines ‘an optimistic view of technology with a qualified embrace of global migration and an uncompromising approach to public order’. Rather than wallowing in dewy-eyed nostalgia, younger conservatives are recognising the need to embrace the future.
The poster boy for this emergent philosophy is El Salvador’s Nayib Bukele, a distinctly 21st century politician who has embraced Bitcoin as legal tender, engaged in public Twitter spats with international journalists, and been firm in his rejection of prescriptive political labels. Since winning the Presidency in 2019, Bukele has ruthlessly cracked down on crime, bringing the country’s murder rate down from one of the highest in the world to one of the lowest in the world. Alongside a programme of administrative simplification and a no-nonsense approach to corruption, these measures saw the maverick Salvadoran re-elected with 85% of the vote.
Though style and context may differ, the fundamental principles that underpin the success of Luxon and Bukele are basically the same – basic administrative competence, a laser-focus on delivering stability for law-abiding citizens, and a scepticism of undue restrictions on the ability of politicians to act in the interests of the public.
Whether we ought to prefer Kiwi populism or hard-edged right-progressivism is basically a question of relative optimism. If we believe that the assumptions of aspirational 20th century Anglophone conservatism can be re-tooled and re-fitted for the 21st century, then New Zealand offers a compelling case study on how to do so. It remains to be seen whether or not the current coalition will be able to deliver on its lofty ambitions, but the initial signs are encouraging.
On the other hand, if we think that the novel challenges of the 21st century require a more radical approach, accompanied by a more aggressive political style and a more strident approach to development, then we can go further, taking our cues from the likes of Bukele, and learning the lessons of historical figures like Lee Kuan Yew.
In the lean years of opposition, commentators of all stripes will expend endless column inches pontificating about how the right can claw its way back to power. From respectable middle-class moderates, we’ll hear calls to tack towards the liberal centre, while others will claim that an ambitious industrial strategy is the key to creating a new generation of Conservatives. The PopCons will insist that real Trussonomics has never been tried, and the NatCons will tell us that we’d be alright if we all read a little more Aquinas.
All of this will be an enormous waste of time and energy. The blueprint already exists; we already know how to win power. Deliver decent jobs and decent homes for ordinary people, grow the economy by rolling back the regulatory state, reduce dependence on immigration, and ruthlessly remove institutional blocks on the ability of ministers to deliver for the public. Our pitch must be optimistic, forward-facing, and progressive – and for goodness’ sake, when we get power, we have to exercise it. Everything else is window dressing.
While such pragmatic governance might seem a radical idea in our age of political chaos, it’s one well worth exploring. We could do far worse than to follow in the footsteps of our Kiwi cousins.
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