this post was submitted on 03 Nov 2023
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It's only dumb because those two parties only real reason for existence these days is in opposition to each other as the natural parties of government (in their minds).
If National jettisoned the religious fundamentalists, now Labour has lurched to the right in an ill advised attempt to not lose the election there's even less between the two of them. Mostly just old fashioned racism really holding them back from being the same thing.
Yeah, they are closer to each other than other parties but that two sides mentality holds back a Labour/National coalition. I'd love for it to happen though, even just to see if it worked.
I'd like them to both splinter and form new modern versions of themselves rather than holding on to something 100 years old that bears little relevance to modern problems.
I suspect we have already started to see the splintering. Both National and Labour are much smaller than they have been in previous years.
And of course Labour already went through some of this with Act, Alliance, Greens etc all coming out of their ructions from the end of the 80s. But unfortunately the two brands remain; sucking most of the financial support and media narrative out of our political environment.
Greens actually get donations on par with (and sometimes more than) Labour. And the same with Act and National, though their donations are many times what Labour/Greens get. And if you count the unreported donations to their lobbying arm you'd probably find Act gets the largest share of the donation money.