Chris Hipkins Must Resign
The Coalition government is a coalition of death. They’ve scrapped any attempt to mitigate climate change, they’ve underfed and jailed children, they’ve thrown poor people on the street, and they’ve gutted the job market and forced people to choose between moving to Australia and destitution in New Zealand. They’re enemies of humanity who want to entomb young people with them like the pharoahs did their servants. Life has gotten worse for working people during their three years in government, and it’ll worsen if we elect them again.
The coming election should be the easiest win imaginable for the Labour Party. Instead, per the latest right-wing poll, they’re set to lose. This is attributable to Labour leader Chris Hipkins. He has the charisma of wet cardboard and he’s a pathetic loser. He refuses to release policies that could satisfy voters and he seems dedicated to throwing the election. Trying to convince him to win is like dating a guy who you have to beg not to kill himself. He’s holding anyone who values life in New Zealand hostage, and he needs to step down from Labour leadership before he hands the country to salivating fascists.
If the Coalition wins a second term, it’ll look like the Antipodean equivalent of Trump’s. They’ll know that they can get away with everything they did during their first term and then some. I anticipate they’ll start open lawfare against left-wing groups, in the same way the U.S. has started designating them “terrorists,” that they’ll weaponize the visa process to deport dissenting non-citizens, and that they’ll give the police and paramilitary groups like Destiny Church greater rein to brutalize left-wing dissenters. Escalated attacks on Māori, trans people, the poor, and every other vulnerable minority are a given, too. Everything that’s happened overseas can happen here. A second Coalition term poses a threat to myself and everyone I love, and we can’t let them win again.
We’re currently eight weeks out from the election. In the 2017 election, the Labour Party sensed it was going to lose and handed leadership to Jacinda Ardern seven weeks before voting started. She went on to become Labour’s most popular leader since Michael Joseph Savage. It’s not too late for the Labour Party to pick a new leader. Its current campaign chairman, Kieran McAnulty, has people skills and basic charisma. Comment sections are full of “middle New Zealanders” saying they’d “vote for him because he seems like a good bloke.” Labour could make him leader this week and potentially win the election. But if they stick with Hipkins, they’ll consign themselves to irrelevancy and break Labour’s power for good.
In the coming eight weeks, please vote for the Greens or Te Pāti Māori so they can exert maximum pressure on a liberal-left coalition if they win. You have to be enrolled to vote by October 25 and you can check your enrollment status here. Then, please go to every Labour event in your area and publicly ask your Labour MP there why Chris Hipkins hasn’t resigned yet, given that the polls show him losing. The point of replacing Chris Hipkins with Kieran McAnulty isn’t to get leftists to vote Labour, but to get every middle New Zealand swing voter who wouldn't vote left this election to vote for Labour instead of National. I’m a communist, and I want to see a communist Aotearoa supersede the New Zealand settler-state, but for the next eight weeks I and liberals who want to win should have a common goal: make Chris Hipkins resign so he can’t feed us to the wolves.