The left demonises the 1984-90 Labour government for trashing Labour tradition by abolishing the guaranteed job. But it did spend much more on social services. And it socialised the motorcar.
Families who had not been able to own a car or kept a rustbucket on the road only with frontier ingenuity could buy a decent secondhand import, thanks to the abolition of quotas and cuts in tariffs.
A country deals better with the world if its people and its political parties agree what counts. That goes even for big countries, as the United States found in the 1960s. It especially goes for minnows.
So what was John Key up to sniping at Helen Clark while she was in Washington? It read like petty domestic politics when the imperative was strategic foreign policy.
Do you like the idea of Labour MPs being “whipped” in to vote against whacking kids? This is not a joke question.
Beneath that superficial irony lies another: immediately after the election Helen Clark, ruing the loss of provincial seats, was swearing to abjure social engineering this term. She would not be exposed to jibes of political correctness next election.
With exquisite timing, Helen Clark will be in Washington next week exactly on the fourth anniversary of President George Bush’s invasion of Iraq. There could hardly be a more emphatic signal that the United States relationship has been renormalised.
That is not because Clark endorses Bush’s adventure any more now than she did four years ago when she refused to join it and when as a result relations cooled from the “very, very, very good friends” status her sending of troops to Afghanistan had earned her in 2001.
How big is John Key’s underclass? About one in 20 of the population, one social policy expert reckons.
About half the population manages fine all the time. The rest, who include many who are economically deprived, are mostly OK but “at risk” if something goes badly wrong.
On this reckoning, Key was never underclass. He was economically deprived but with a capable mother who got the family out. That is not uncommon but it is also not easy, especially for those not equipped with good education, strong aspirations and self-belief.
Mind the gap, they say on London tube station platforms. It is a good rule for watching politics, too.
There is always a gap between words and actions, in time and in substance. How big the gaps are can decide a government’s lifespan.
Some gaps are intentional, or at least convenient. Politicians can use a dislocation between rhetoric and reality to channel public opinion.
Friday is Australia Day. Why bother about that? Because Australia is part of us and what Australia does has great importance for us.
Australia is part of our history and culture. British interests were administered from New South Wales before the Treaty of Waitangi and New Zealand was at the federation talks. We share a great deal in language, institutions and British heritage. We share people. We down tools with Australians to watch the Melbourne Cup, as if it was ours (and it often is).
Modern mainstream politics is “values” politics. That leaves much room for manoeuvre. Choose your value and choose your policy to match. The focus is on outcomes.
“Values” enabled Tony Blair and his “new” Labour party to adjust, or just junk, many fixed “old” Labour ideas in Britain and occupy the centre.
Picture John Key the kid: restless, not keen on lessons but sharp at them when focused.
How do we know this? From his inaugural Jenny Shipley lecture in December.
“Lectures,” he said, “have never been my strong suit� When I was a student at Canterbury University � if I thought a lecture would be deathly boring I went off to play squash instead. There were many deathly boring lectures.”
Where can Labour go that National cannot? Up on to the “sustainability” uplands, Labour reckons, and stake out heritage and identity there. Just the ticket for Waitangi week, when we wonder who we are.
John Key last week served up a summer smorgasbord: red meat for the hardliners (confiscate the Maori seats), some “Kiwi way” mashed spuds, a spicy curry of government failure (Corrections) and a nouvelle cuisine mix-and-match raided from Labour’s larder (fix the underclass, whence Key can claim he came).