The Post: Right-wing dysfunction offers the left a chance. Will they take it?

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The feud between National and New Zealand First has escalated so quickly that it’s hard to keep track of who has accused whom of what. Winston Peters says Christopher Luxon is “imprudent” and, by implication, a threat to orderly foreign policy. Nicola Willis has, in return, called him a “confused” 81-year-old whose words can’t be trusted.

Luxon likewise says Peters is acting in bad faith and against “the national interest”. Peters, meanwhile, is merrily releasing emails embarrassing to the prime minister – and without telling him first.

Clearly, then, the Great Differentiation has begun, as each party seeks to boost its own popularity ahead of November’s election. In so doing, they risk replaying the fabled prisoner’s dilemma, in which two people awaiting trial could get away with just one year in prison if they both stay silent, but will face two years if each of them – lured by the prospect of going free – turns informant on the other.

Given how much the public hates disunity, National and New Zealand First could maximise their combined vote share by maintaining a veil of conviviality. Driven, instead, by individual motivations, they may emulate the prisoners’ worst outcome.

ACT, for their part, have sensibly stayed quiet during this latest stoush. But last election they and New Zealand First were at each other’s throats, their leaders trading insults of ever-increasing juvenility, so David Seymour will presumably join the fray before too long.

All of which opens up an opportunity for the left. As others have observed, MMP elections are often determined by who can best make the “coalition of chaos” label stick. This has even greater force when, as left-wing strategists observe, the public has completely lost patience with partisan infighting.

The right are currently doing their level best to pin the “coalition of chaos” label on themselves. To profit, however, the left bloc would have to present a more united front.

Such unity would have historical precedents. In 1999, Labour and the left-wing Alliance Party formally campaigned together. In 2017, the Greens and Labour jointly announced Budget Responsibility Rules that they would follow post-election.

These agreements, though, stemmed from specific personal allegiances: in 1999, Labour’s Helen Clark and the Alliance’s Jim Anderton were old comrades, while in 2017 the Green Party’s James Shaw and Labour’s Grant Robertson were ideologically aligned.

Do those circumstances apply now? The Labour and Green leadership teams certainly have a cordial relationship, and meet regularly to discuss strategy.

The fruits of this relationship can occasionally be discerned. Back in 2024, the parties put out a combined statement opposing deregulation of early childhood education. They also staged a joint press conference at Waitangi this year, aiming to show they could “work constructively together”, as Labour leader Chris Hipkins put it.

Thorny questions remain, however. What, for instance, actually constitutes the left “bloc”? The 2024 joint statement notably included Te Pāti Māori; similarly, the left leaders’ meetings used to involve the likes of Rawiri Waititi.

Following Te Pāti Māori’s public meltdown last year, however, it has conspicuously not been part of the joint manoeuvres. Nor is this likely to change while its internal turmoil continues.

Some would say the left can’t win without Te Pāti Māori, and that may prove to be true. But polling data shows the combined Labour-Greens vote rising steadily this term, from an average of 38% after the last election to roughly 45% now. A shift of a couple of percentage points, amidst an ongoing fuel crisis, could see them home.

Equally, of course, Labour may want to keep the door open to New Zealand First, an outfit some of its MPs find more congenial than Te Pāti Māori (and, indeed, the Greens). For all that Winston Peters has dramatically hardened his rhetoric against Labour, some still believe there’s always wiggle room.

Labour also remains congenitally nervous about tax, an Achilles’ heel still despite the reasonably successful launch of its CGT “lite” policy. That dictates a clear demarcation from the Greens and their wealth-tax plans.

And, though cordial, the relationship between the Labour and Green leaders isn’t comparable to the Clark-Anderton bond or even the Robertson-Shaw connection. So a formal coalition isn’t in prospect. Even something a step down – a joint policy launch, say – seems unlikely.

But a united front isn’t purely about policy. It’s just as much about tonal issues: whether each party’s approach is simply to say that it occasionally disagrees with the other’s plans – or whether, conversely, it starts characterising those plans as “madness” or “selling-out”.

It’s also a matter of a shared diagnosis of the problem and a coherent narrative about the solution. The left has famously secessionist tendencies. Set that aside, though, and it would have a much stronger pitch to a grumpy public that’s utterly fed up with political bickering – and desperate for leaders who can get stuff done.