In search of Labour's soul
Sunday, 28 June 2026
Andrea Vance is national affairs editor.
OPINION: Labour stages its annual congress this weekend in a position it should find comfortable.
It is outpolling National. The election is tighter than it should be for a first term government. And Chris Hipkins remains standing when, by most of the normal rules of politics, he probably shouldn't.
But underneath all that sits an awkward question.
What, exactly, is Labour for?
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The official answer is quite well rehearsed. It’s a broad church, a responsible government-in-waiting, committed to pragmatism and fiscal discipline. Its priorities are cost of living, health, housing affordability.
But beyond those talking points the answer is much harder to pin down.
That’s not to say Labour is in crisis or anything like it. It’s certainly not behaving like a party searching for itself in the wilderness.
The party looks more electorally competitive than any of the faithful assembling this weekend could have hoped for.
But does it still have a clear sense of what it wants to do with that opportunity?
For most of its history, Labour would have had a ready answer to the question.
It was the party of unions, state houses and public services. The party that believed working people deserved more security, more opportunity and a fairer share of the wealth they helped create.
The details shifted over time, but the basic mission was easy enough to understand.
The party that expanded public education and championed universal healthcare wasn't always successful, and it certainly wasn't always united.
But, by and large, it possessed something modern politics often lacks: a clear sense of whose side it was on.
Helen Clark's government may have embraced fiscal restraint and political pragmatism, but voters could still see the project. Michael Cullen was balancing the books and using the proceeds of growth to build Kiwibank, establish the Super Fund and expand Working for Families.
Instead of trying to just manage the economy, Labour was trying to shape it.
Caution has replaced that grinding work of economic redesign. After the tumultuous 2008-2017 period in opposition, the party became overly obsessed with emulating the message discipline it saw across the aisle in John Key’s National.
And then, while Jacinda Ardern’s government began with a narrative of change, that quickly ran up against the constraints of coalition with Winston Peters, and the shocks of a terror attack, natural disaster and a global pandemic.
Twinned with Ardern’s cautious leadership style and Grant Robertson’s political pragmatism there was little room for structural experimentation.
By the time Hipkins took over as prime minister, he could only triage as inflation ran rampant. (And to be fair, managerial Hipkins has never been a grand architect of political projects.)
The pragmatism hardened into habit. And it’s hard to argue against. The so-called “Ming vase” strategy - where policy and positions have been carefully rationed - has kept Labour very competitive.
It’s shaped not just what the party says but how it says it.
As one seasoned Labour observer puts it, Labour MPs and candidates now speak about policy and politics in a bloodless way that is indistinguishable from the public sector. It sounds like defending the status quo rather than challenging it.
As well as this, the incentives inside modern party structures, especially under MMP, reward homogenisation.
MPs are drilled to stay within agreed lines, not develop distinct political identities or really pursue issues independently through select committees or localised campaigning.
As someone put it to me this week, watching Labour at the moment is a bit like watching the All Blacks win by keeping the opposition tryless and kicking penalty goals.
“Yes, they technically dominated. Yes, you can’t really fault them. The record speaks for itself. But it doesn’t inspire you. It’s not a game you remember.”
Sir Keir Starmer's 2024 landslide was built less on enthusiasm for Labour than exhaustion with the Conservatives.
So, it delivered Starmer power but without a clearly articulated mandate.
The “Ming vase” approach does the job electorally. But when the vase has been carried so carefully it’s hard to tell what it contains.
That debate has become newly relevant with the turmoil now engulfing British Labour and the emergence of king of the North Andy Burnham as an alternative voice on the centre-left.
Burnham has begun talking about a “business-friendly socialism”. Ahead of congress, one of the pieces doing the rounds among Labour members is Will Hutton's recent Observer column, which quotes Nobel Prize-winning economist Philippe Aghion: “Capitalism is a spirited horse; it takes off readily, escaping control. But if we hold its reins firmly, it goes where we wish.”
The attraction of the idea is not really the latest lefty buzzwords. It is that it gives voice to something many Labour members are struggling to articulate.
How do you remain economically credible while still arguing that government should shape markets rather than simply accommodate them?
The answer may be hiding in plain sight.
Last year, the party amended its platform to elevate its historic purpose as the voice of working people.
That attracted little public attention. But it reflected a debate that has been running through social democratic parties across the Western world: are they coalitions of interests and identities, or are they, first and foremost, parties organised around work, wages and economic security?
Labour chose the latter.
The shift is already visible in the policies it has been rolling out. Capping public transport fares and bringing back universal free prescriptions are not especially radical ideas.
But they do show the party is much closer to where voters' concerns actually are than National's. Budgetary pain dominates almost every conversation on the doorstep.
That’s also reflected in our Freshwater Strategy polling in which around 45% report having to cut back on essentials or rely on debt to meet basic living costs. Nearly half of respondents said Hipkins best understood what they and their families are going through.
The difficulty is that voters can see the policies more easily than they can see the project.
What Labour has not yet done is explain how those answers fit together into a larger story about where the country is heading and what role government should play in getting it there.
Which is perhaps the real challenge facing delegates this weekend. Not finding a new North Star, but finding a better way to talk about the one they already have.
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