Aotearoa's left crosses the Rubicon

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The Tukituki River which Nick Smith lied about and the farmers want to destroy.

"Just been told that UMR poll has Nats 39, Lab 36, Green 14, NZF 5.1%. Not sure if it’s out yet." tweeted Duncan Garner this afternoon.

Was it David Cunliffe that did it, Labour's new hope, talking left, looking tough? Or the mass rebellion against the GCSB that saw the Auckland Town Hall packed to the rafters? Maybe the mobilisation of thousands of union members filling stadiums in Auckland, Wellington and Christchurch to slam the Nats over attacks on workers' rights? The scandal over the dam that would kill the beautiful Tukituki River? The furious outrage of recreational fishers over the snapper cuts?

Whatever it was, and it was probably some combination of these stars lining up, the tide has begun to run out under the National Government. In poll after poll the Labour - Green block appear a government in waiting with the numbers and the resolve to take the Treasury bench. Everywhere there are signs the country has reached a tipping point. From the triggering of the Keep our Assets referendum and the blocking of the RMA reforms to the defection of National Party spinster David Farrar to the Axe the Tax campaign and former EMA boss Alasdair Thompson to the Living Wage campaign.

Sometime in the last month, while scores of buses rolled up to the Vodafone Events Centre in Manukau or as tens of thousands marched against the surveillance state, Aotearoa's left-wing forces crossed the Rubicon, and as it was for Julius Ceasar's insurrectionary Populares on 10 January 49BC, conquering Rome, and reforming the grain supply, is in sight.

In Auckland John Minto's Mana campaign is rocking a city frustrated with Len Brown. In Mangere and Otahuhu local residents are organising alongside Minto to fight a new motorway. Wharfies are voting in their scores against Len the scab and from the state houses of Glen Innes to the traffic-clogged inner city Minto will present a credible alternative to the neo-liberal Auckland. Alongside that for the first time Unions Auckland have backed a slate of candidates to hold the line against the privatisers and in support of a Living Wage and fair collective agreement for the wharfies.

With the revolt against the Nats in full-swing on the streets and in the polls, socialists need to be getting stuck in, putting the boot into the Nats and the bosses at every opportunity. 

Five years after their ascent to power the economic and environmental crises have caught up with Key and his crony capitalists. Roll on 2014 - ālea iacta est.

-SA

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