The lesson in failure from Kamala Harris that Labour is at risk of not learning
Thursday, 4 June 2026
Janet Wilson is a regular opinion contributor and a freelance journalist who has also worked in communications, including with the National Party.
OPINION: “What a year last week was” is a slick phrase that launched a thousand memes and comedians’ careers, but it’s one the Labour Party knows nothing about.
Having been handed the political equivalent of a free pass, as Nicola Willis handed down arguably the most miserly Budget in a generation while crippling costs plague an increasing number of workers, Chris Hipkins has chosen to kick the agenda ball to touch.
National has wedged Labour between a political rock and hard place with spending cuts that place pressure on what the Red Team would do to balance the books.
Read more:
Chris Hipkins says Labour MP was right to apologise after calling Nicola Willis a ‘duck-faced horse’
Which means that despite being the party basking in the highest polling numbers, that isn’t necessarily a precursor to Hipkins raising his arms in victory come November 7.
Maybe in his efforts to be a winner, Hipkins needs to learn why other left-leaning parties have lost; for example, Kamala Harris’ defeat to Donald Trump.
The belated release of the Democrats’ autopsy into the 2024 presidential election - the subject of a political backstory of its own - found that Harris’ team relied too heavily on an assumption that voters would reject Trump, noting that “base voters need to vote for Harris as well as against Trump”.
Hating National, and assuming everyone else does too, isn’t enough, nor is being the party that’s the most trusted (in the latest Ipsos issues survey, in 13 of the top 20 issues), if you’re not giving voters reasons why they should vote for you.
Smug self-satisfaction is the curse of the professional managerial class across the world it seems, as finance spokesperson Barbara Edmonds’ “duck-faced horse” debacle attests.
There’s another finding the DNC report made which afflicts Labour as well; the Harris campaign failed to land any meaningful blows against Trump, a “defined or consistent” strategy to eat into his public standing.
I’m not saying for a minute that Luxon is anything like Trump, but Luxon earned his declining preferred PM figures on his own, not because of Hipkins.
The Labour leader’s over-cautious approach, epitomised in his party’s “small target” strategy, now finds itself marooned, allowing National to set its own election agenda over tax.
Central to National’s attack strategy is Labour’s capital gains tax, with ministers from Nicola Willis to campaign chair Simeon Brown questioning if CGT would be Labour’s only tax policy.
This has forced Hipkins and Edmonds to insist that’s the case, before Hipkins acknowledged there might be changes to government revenue “around interest deductibility for residential landlords”.
With the landlord tax continuing to be a political football, Labour has yet to explain to the electorate how it’s going to pay to reinstate $12.8 billion in pay equity cuts and keep Crown debt in check.
Up until now, Hipkins and Labour were in a position that opposition parties around the world could only dream about; with a government which made promises it couldn’t keep, partly because economic growth didn’t arrive, facing an election in the middle of a fuel-crisis that’s delivered zilch to voters.
And what does Labour do to harness - or assuage - the grievance and outrage bubbling up? Well, as Hipkins told 1News on Tuesday, we’ll just have to wait because, “we haven’t had an opportunity as a team to sit down and go through the Government’s Budget”.
“You are not serious people,” as Succession’s Logan Roy would say.
All they’re achieving right now is making themselves the Invisible Party, with a policy cupboard that’s practically bare, while the coalition parties run the agenda and voters are left wanting.
Alongside Labour’s much-debated CGT that will pay for three doctor visits, its only other offerings are free cervical screening, a family doctor loan scheme and a Future Fund which it refuses to tell voters about until after the election because it needs advice about its Treaty of Waitangi obligations.
It’s going to have to do much more than that, otherwise it will simply be reminding voters that it is the same party that increased net core Crown debt by $124 billion between 2017 and 2023.
Labour will paint National as being mean-spirited with its pitting of the poor against poor, but National will raise the spectre of Labour being the party that taxes you more and takes even longer to pay back debt.
Without a compelling roadmap of how it intends to lift the country out of rising debt and low productivity, with a tsunami of pensioners exploding operational expenses, Labour right now is nothing more than the good-vibe party, sleep-walking its way into an election.
It may be popular – although without enough allies, which is entirely another matter – but so was Kamala Harris in 2024.
One of the reasons she lost was because she couldn’t convince the American people who she was and what she stood for.
And Chris Hipkins and Labour are at risk of doing the same.