To win the next election, “the Left”, as we still rather hopefully refer to it, needs three key demographics. Voting together, the Māori and Pasifika working class, professional-managerial staff employed by the state, and “progressive” Baby Boomer superannuitants, cannot fail to return a combination of Labour, the Greens and Te Pāti Māori to the Treasury Benches. The Left’s great challenge, as it approaches 2026, is developing an electoral pitch capable of mustering all three – and keeping them mustered – until the people’s votes have been cast and counted.
It’s a tall order. None of these groups present a homogeneous mass guaranteed to respond with Pavlovian reliability to the Left’s electoral stimuli.
Although in excess of three-quarters of Māori live in towns and cities, and are employed in occupations traditionally designated as working-class, the appeals of the left-wing parties are seldom presented in ways that prioritise the challenges of urban, working-class, Māori life. Indeed, they are much more likely to be presented with by policies reflecting the priorities of the iwi-based capitalists dominating the Iwi Leaders’ Forum.
The powerfully nationalist flavour of the Forum’s determination to “build the Māori Economy” obscures the socio-economic deprivation of its urbanised working class. The latter’s decline is reflected in the alarming statistic that, fifty years ago, more than half of urban Māori owned their own home, while, today, that figure has fallen to less than one-fifth. Even so, the social costs of liberalising the New Zealand economy, borne so disproportionately by Māori workers (especially those in the freezing and forestry industries) are only rarely presented unequivocally in class terms by the parliamentary Left. Certainly, in this century, Māori deprivation is much more commonly attributed to the ongoing impact of white supremacist “colonisation”.
Of the three left-wing parliamentary parties, Labour has by far the best chance of garnering the votes of Māori workers. To remind itself how this might be done, it has only to watch the television and social-media advertising Labour broadcast to voters in the Māori seats back in 2017. Whether by accident or design these ads proved to be little masterpieces of class-based communication. They portrayed the life-world of urban Māori in a way that conveyed both understanding and admiration. Unsurprisingly, Labour won all seven Māori Seats.
Pasifika workers’ loyalty to the Labour Party, and the impact of their votes, is legendary. The power of the “South Auckland booths” to save the day for Labour was never demonstrated to greater effect than in 2005 when, late in the evening, the votes cast by the Pasifika community tipped the scales in Labour’s favour, denying Don Brash’s National Party the victory which, just 72 hours earlier, had seem a dead cert.
That the surge in Pasifika voting had been achieved by Labour’s eccentric reading of the National Party’s housing policy is less enthusiastically recalled. Certainly, since 2005, there is evidence of the old adage “Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me” gradually but unmistakably diminishing Pasifika voter participation. In 2008 Labour supporters waited in vain for the South Auckland booths to “come in”. They are still waiting.
Could it be that the failure of Labour’s Pasifika Social Development minister to implement welfare policies that would have benefitted Pasifika working-class families hugely has convinced them that it is wiser to be guided by Labour’s deeds than its words. Delivering their vital support not in recognition of promises made, but in gratitude for promises delivered.
But, if the votes of Māori and Pasifika workers must be earned, then the votes of the state-employed members of the professional-managerial class are pretty much a given. It is, after all, the class responsible for supplanting the Pakeha working-class that had ruled Labour from the party’s foundation in 1916 to the “Rogernomics” reforms of the 1980s. Young, university-educated, and openly disdainful of the conservative social mores of most of New Zealand’s working-class families, these were the ones who deliberately transformed Labour from a mass party to a cadre party – them being the cadres – in the decade spanning 1990 and 2000.
And there was no coming back for the workers – not when their unions had also been taken over by the meritocratic beneficiaries of Labour’s welfare state. No, the state-employed professionals and managers will vote Labour, overwhelmingly, because Labour has made itself the party of state-employed professionals and managers.
Any credible indication that Labour is returning to its working-class roots: prioritising what Chris Hipkins dubbed, euphemistically, “bread and butter issues”; is likely to be answered by a wholesale shift of state-sector employee support to the Greens in protest. This largely confirms the Green Party’s’ status as a handy escape-pod from Labour’s mother-ship.
Regardless of their faux-Marxist rhetoric, the Greens have always been, and show every sign of continuing to be, a party of middle-class utopians, stubbornly unreconcilable with a world that consistently fails to follow their excellent advice. That they have turned into something more substantial will be made evident only when the bulk of their electoral support ceases to be concentrated in the university suburbs of Auckland, Wellington, Christchurch and Dunedin.
For the “progressive” Baby-Boomer superannuitants observing these peregrinations of the Left from the safety and security of their mortgage-free villas and/or swanky retirement villages, the once straight-forward business of casting a vote is growing increasingly fraught. Their great advantage (or disadvantage – it rather depends on one’s point of view) is that their memories of the “old”, twentieth century, New Zealand are every bit as vivid as their encounters with the twenty-first’s “Aotearoa”.
Sadly, this ability to compare and contrast is of little use. Like every younger generation in the long history of humankind, their own children and grandchildren have little time, and even less patience, for the ideological antiques so prized by their parents and grandparents.
Gen-X and the rest of the generational alphabet show every sign of being completely relaxed about pronouns; will “chest-feed” their own offspring without ontological misgivings; and enthusiastically celebrate their shape-shifting Treaty as a very good thing indeed. They simply cannot understand their elders’ reluctance to meet the requirements of diversity, equity and inclusion.
What’s worse, the “progressive” Baby Boomers do not seem to be sufficiently seized by the awfulness of the National-Act-NZ First Coalition. As beneficiaries are bashed and te Tiriti is trashed, the “democratic-socialists” of yesteryear witter on interminably about free speech, feminism, and the colour-blind content of a person’s character. Whatever happened to taking one for the left-wing team?
It probably ceased when the left-wing team appeared to be playing a different game.
*Chris Trotter has been writing and commenting professionally about New Zealand politics for more than 30 years. He writes a weekly column for interest.co.nz. His work may also be found at http://bowalleyroad.blogspot.com.
94 Comments
It will never work because TPM has no interest in doing ANYTHING that is in the interest of anybody else. If they shelve their current MPs and bring in ones who can collaborate with the others in the room and not need to yell and shout about every single thing, then they might have a chance. Warriors will in the NRL first tho.
The problem for them is that one third of the government are Maori and they are busy telling TPM what's what.....and they don't like it, cos it is racist (since they are lacking any other coherent argument). They say the ACT/NACT/NZFirst Maori are the 'wrong' type and are racists. I think they are just educated and conversative. TPM are complaining thickos. It is sad that they have somehow managed get hold of six seats when there true entitlement is two seats....but the six seats are probably a one time thing for them. Labour will need them all back if they are ever to govern again.
The segregation of workers by race above is disgusting. The real issue now is by wealth, PAYE payers vs capital gains receivers, and until those parties catch up and propose something palatable then they will be on the sidelines.
We need proper tax reform so the general standard of living for the population can stop declining. That can be from the left or right.
I agree, though I would say puzzling rather than disgusting. I counted in Trotter's brief essay 11 'Māori' and 8 'Pasifika'. It is as if he has surrendered to the identitarianism of the Critical Race Theory that has distorted 21st-century pseudo-left woke political thought.
Trotter writes as if there are no working-class people suffering the boots of the rich on their necks who are neither 'Māori' nor 'Pasifika'.
The problem New Zealand faces is the simple one of 'haves' versus 'have-nots'. The Labour Party can easily take power if it expels from its ranks all the newthink middle-class identitarian apparatchiks who run it now (including many of its MPs), and fights for the have-nots without slicing and dicing them into ethnic silos.
Let Labour's woke bugger off to the Greens, who will welcome them with hugs and kumbayaa.
https://thestandard.org.nz/is-a-transformational-left-wing-leadership-o…
He also writes as if there is no chance of any Maori or Pasifika person being successful. That having ambition or aspiration is the preserve of a white person. That Maori/Pasifika are only interested in the level of their welfare entitlements and handouts. That achieving in education, getting a good job, saving for a house, raising a family, and having a comfortable self funded retirement is something that is unobtainable if you are brown.
And that is the most insulting idea of all.
Yes, you are right, and it is well engrained into many Maori. I used to have a Maori girlfriend, her parents had been busy telling her her whole life that she would never get anywhere because she was Maori - so don't try. I did spend a lot of time trying to reverse that thinking, but they had a 20 year start on me. They did it to all their kids. I think it is quite common. None of them have been successful in life, all ended up poor, and alcohol/drug addicted with various levels of family violence involved.
They can but the voters have the ultimate decision and right now, TPM party is too radical, Labour has no leader anyone really relates too, and not really sure what Greens stand for anymore they seem too interested in offshore politics than the environment in NZ, and plagued with internal issues.
Yeah exactly. Greens used to be for the environment, now it seems they are just anti everything. TMP is full of hate against fellow kiwis, and Labour is just Labour. I doubt they could agree on anything, not that the current coallition seems to be doing that great anyway....
Back in the day, Labour used to be for the workers. Then the Chardonnay swilling, Suit wearing, University educated "Labour" enthusiasts hijacked the party. Now the workers have nobody representing them. They haven't had since Bill Rowling lost in '75. Some of the older commenters may remember the Federation of Labour, and Tom Skinner, an Ernie Abbott and Trades Hall, and other things like that from the olden days.
I don’t think you’re in the demographic that’s interested in voting left. In the tech sector there’s quite a bit of love for Chippie, greens, and even TPM. Chippie is an exceptional administrator and seems like a regular guy, I love that—my ideal leader is someone that’s worked quietly in politics for years actually achieving things. Labour is a strong liberal vote right now. Greens provide a base for a more ideological voter, there are a fair few left leaning folks that are comfortable enough in life that they indulge in such ideological voting. TPM is catching the rage of the underserved vote. They’re going to benefit from the “them” as Seymour seems to be set on driving a culture war to create an ‘us’ vs ‘them’ vote.
Most importantly I think that an economic downturn is the most likely catalyst to vote National out. Borrowing more than labour did every year bar Covid and for what, a quarter of a fuck all in tax cuts? Giving tax breaks to landlords when there’s a growing class rage over the ever increasing % of your income that is extracted from you in rent? Rampant spending cuts right when the private sector is weak and needs a strong public sector to keep a stable economy? Removing the mandate of maintaining maximum employment possible right when everyone thinks a recession is highly likely? Making the JobSeeker experience an absolute nightmare right when more kiwis are going to go through it?
Theres more than enough dry powder, all it needs is the spark of a recession.
SKF
Won't happen. Since the 80's Labour has consistently proven that it has completely lost touch with the working class Kiwis it claims to represent. Instead it has begun resorting to more extreme (I am loathe to use the word extremist) race based policies to attract disaffected minorities.
But make no mistake, those minorities have cause to be disaffected. CT refers to "Māori deprivation is much more commonly attributed to the ongoing impact of white supremacist “colonisation”." But that is the effect of economic policies which doesn't only impact Maori, but effects everyone in the "blue collar" classes. Maori more so because of the colonial governments actions in the late 1800s and early 1900s, but thereafter those economic policies have more and more favoured wealth and privilege. That those policies in themselves are not racist is evidenced by the fact that there are increasing numbers of wealthy Maori. Only not in sufficient numbers to impact the greater Maori demographic.
The so called left platform is about compensation. But the truth is there is not enough money in the world to compensate current generations for the transgressions of the past. Nor can it be done without creating further injustices. The only way forward is to create an economy where people can get real jobs which pay a decent wage to support a decent standard of living. and where ethnicity doesn't pay a part. The only group currently capable of achieving that today is the NACT coalition, like it or not.
'The only way forward is to create an economy where people can get real jobs which pay a decent wage to support a decent standard of living.'
Bollocks. Translated - 'A small cohort from the front end (by consumption) of the 8x overshot global population, should be able to consume even more'.
You clearly didn't bother with my Friday link: https://www.thegreatsimplification.com/episode/136-corey-bradshaw
What is 'wealth', if not the ability to consume? And what is overshoot, if not overconsumption?
Cognitive dissonance?
PDK think about this for a moment - Assuming there is no war to tilt the balance what will society look like in 2050 or 2100?
If you think of your response, you're basically saying we are screwed. That there is no way for human society to survive. If we do nothing I might agree with you. But I don't believe we can get away with doing nothing. That with a balanced population we can create a society that supports it's members. that is neither politically left or right, but ensures people have the right to , and do work for a decent living. Without that we are looking towards a return to the old warlord, slave-master types of society of huge inequalities, or worse. I believe that has happened before, but if we are as smart as we think we are then the goal should be to avoid it.
Yes dial the consumption back a lot, but that is a factor of population size, learn to live in sync with the environment etc and it has to be achievable. Otherwise we are all lemmings and that cliff edge is rapidly getting closer.
You are starting to sound like a stuck record PDK. We all know its going to go tits up at some stage but pretty much nobody cares. It is however possible by small incremental changes to improve peoples lives. The treaty should be scrapped and we should become one New Zealand, its way past its used by date and its time to move on.
Yes it is, and I've been at the from of that move for years. Was co-Chair of Solar Action, once upon a when. Also agree re otherising; but I've read enough history to know that it's what we do, beyond 150 of 'us' or so. What the Jews are doing to the pre-incumbent locals, is apartheid and genocide (sometimes selectively reported, and something our newly-appointed 'human rights commissioner' is going to choke.
What we have to do is teach local leadership, low-consumption ways to live, how to parry dissipation and entropy as much as possible. As to overpopulation and 'others', there will always be competition, and when bigger than local raids, it will be visually identified because of the 'more than 150' can't be memorised' thing. That is why flags, uniforms and insignia, when genetic characteristics cannot identify enough.
All a long way from the current left/right spectrum, all advocating 'growth' but just for slightly different cohorts.
As to the 'cracked record' - It's a bit like coming out of oncology with a 6-month prognosis, or being on the Titanic post-collision; you need to keep the (bigger) background factor in picture, in proper proportion. Oddly enough, I think that where we're headed, Steerage passengers will probably out-survive First Class - due to having more relevant skills.
""What we have to do...."" followed by some good ideas. But to get them considered rationally and then implemented without unanticipated consequences NZ needs a govt of intelligent adults capable of even handed analysis and even able to change its mind when the available evidence alters. There are such people - concerned and contemplative. NZ politics is not attractive to them.
"The only way forward is to create an economy where people can get real jobs which pay a decent wage to support a decent standard of living. and where ethnicity doesn't pay a part. The only group currently capable of achieving that today is the NACT coalition, like it or not."
Disagree, no party in parliament currently has the vision to grow the real economy. The current lot included, you won't see economic growth with reduced fiscal spending and tax breaks for the rentier classes.
Someone who earns income from capital without working, so not what you just described. I'm having a dig at the tax breaks handed out to landlords by NACT specifically as I view that money as a lost opportunity, since I don't think it will lead to any increase in productive output.
Being a landlord provides accommodation for those that can't afford it. It's risky.
Comrade Ardern's govt. thought it would be a good idea to screw landlords, and the average rent went up.
Who could possibly have been surprised? If it's such an instant road to riches, borrow a million and have a go.
Bollocks.
I landlords were outlawed, the price of housing would find a level where they could afford it.
The difference is what the rentiers cream.
Same number of houses, same occupants, just less wealth disparity.
But those whose fragility requires assumed superiority, might have trouble with that....
It can only be an affordable rent if the property was affordable. OK for me renting a property that cost 300k 17 years ago to my adult children. But if I win lotto and buy another Auckland house and rent it out how can the rent be affordable unless the house is cheap and the interest payments are low.
Despite owning two houses I hope this govt carries on pushing prices down by whatever means it can. That would leave my financial legacy smaller when I die but would help my children now.
Houses would be more affordable if less people wanted to buy them—which means that all those landlords wanting to buy houses are pushing the prices up.
”oh no I’ve just made you unable to buy a house, well because I had to spend soooo much bidding it out from under you I’m going to have to charge you a higher rent if you want to live in it 🙂”
parasites
Rent controls are the classic example of a policy that has the reverse effect that it intends. I grew up in London when they had the strictest rent controls, most empty houses in Europe and the preferred tenant would be a foriegn student.
If you want a drastic but probably effective policy just nationalise all land. Land does not fit with capitalism which requires changes of supply matching changes of demand.
Sing and Wing, Your knee jerk reaction shows your lack of thought. I researched rent controls some years back when I first got pushback. what you need to understand is that any law around rent controls will always fail. But what is required is a package of laws around 'social housing' as a business. i won't go into detail, but a reasonable analogy is motor vehicles. A single law enacting rent controls is like only having one law to cover roads and motor vehicles. that law might be speeds, vehicle condition, license or whatever. But just one law. Imagine the outcome? That is what a single law (rent controls) on social housing would achieve.
Depends where. and how you build.
I had a mate build 135 squares in an up-marked development, for 130k walk-in, not too many years ago. Most folk don't think outside the narrow/conventional.
More and more I see land-sharing on city outskirts, by tiny-house clusters. It looks like one way the young are reacting.
You make some reasonable points Murray.
I loathe the Greens (almost unhealthily lol), am not a supporter of TPM and see Labour as a bit of an omni-shambles struggling for identity post-Ardern.
That said, the coalition are not remotely competent enough to lead us. Goldsmith removing a minimal amount of te reo from a diplomatic invitation to an Australian diplomat for Matariki (yes, a Maori holiday ffs) is anti-Maori symbolism that will divide this country for years. Don't criticise the so-called (and ridiculous) Labour "ethno-state" and then take cheap shots at Maori to play to the white NZ power base - you are no better.
We need a serious leader who can unite us and take us forward together. We need reform that may not be that palatable in the short-term. The coalition are not it, neither is Luxon. In fact, I don't know where that leader comes from tbh.
Ardern could have done the leading - the problem is that you need 51% of the population (or a jerrymander) to be fully informed. When you have an ill-or-dis-informed populace - especially if you poll encounter groups to determine policy, Bernays style - no leader can pull it off. Or few - FDR managed to outflank the selfish brigade; a legacy which lasted about 60 years.
Referenda-voting - a la Switzerland - makes the public bother to be more informed, and is my pick of the ways forward.
But you're right - the 3-Clown Circus isn't the answer. Probably because it has yet to understand the question.
We all saw what Comrade Ardern and her bunch of no-hopers did to the NZ economy.
Left it billions of dollars in debt after authorising some of the most eccentric policies in NZ history. For example, the moronic gun buyback, Pike River, the Light Rail fail, 3 Waters, and 15,000 extra bureaucrats, to name just a few.
Look at the shambles they created by dismantling the DHB's and rolling them into one awful monolithic NZHealth ( or whatever Te Reo name it went by ) , a giant central bureaucracy run out of Wellington .... and where is Andrew Little now , the chump behind this fiasco ? ... safely out of parliament and beyond criticism ... grrrrrrr !!!!
All the people who were "saved" from Covid still died. They just didnt die from Covid. They were still 80+ years old with several co-morbidities which eventually killed them. We shut down the entire country for years just to give a bunch of geriatrics a few more months sucking soup through a straw in their rest homes.
However, now NZ has a death rate in 2023 and 2024 that is significantly higher than the 2019-2021 years. People are currently dropping like flies, and its not from Covid either.
We’ve also had record net immigration. Covid wasn’t the threat, the threat was a pandemic. It doesn’t matter if you got into a car accident or had Covid, the problem is when hospitals are overflowing with patients and the ICU is full with all ventilators in use, when your doctors and surgeons are overworked they make more errors, when the ambulance crews are understaffed due to increased staffing needs in-clinic then you are significantly more likely to wind up dead. No, those people who didn’t die during the pandemic haven’t magically gotten killed otherwise. Excess deaths on a per capita basis show that the NZ response was one of, if not the, best pandemic response in the world.
SKF
Well paid people on the government teat are devoted to an economy that is about government funding.
That list is long. Including health services and the vast number of marginal NGOs. It's more than just the overpaid non producing civil service.
Note how much of our media is devoted to these groups promoting their interests.
Maori have had enough of been used for political means by pakeha Labour to treat them as subordinate cash cows.
Need another vehicle I think. Labour are doomed. Have a look at the benches in Parliament. Labour MPs are all fat , half asleep and gormless. No talent at all. What's even more disturbing is you can see many of them are hanging on for the superannuation golden handshake to materialise and then cash out.
They're a disgrace!
Get thee hence, Satan.
Well, it's about as enlightened a sentence as yours....
There are two types in the world; empathetic, and non-empathetic. In simple terms, there are those who care for others, and there are those who are out for them-short-term-selves.
I don't respect the latter. Irrespective of label.
The bigger problem, overriding all others, is that we are collectively overshot. Put another way, we are not caring for ALL future others; an unprecedented degree of discounting. But I suspect the nuance will escape notice....
Forget for a moment what people want....what do people (a society) need from an economy?
They need food, shelter and care, for all (not select groups)...anything else is a bonus.
A political organisation that can credibly offer that will garner the required support.
Difficult to achieve unless vested interests are put aside.
"cannot fail to return a combination of Labour, the Greens and Te Pāti Māori to the Treasury Benches".
Well, however much I dislike the current coalition, the thought of an extreme left grouping in government driving an out and out socialist agenda, is significantly worse. Now, we have ACT, well to the right of National, dictating much of the agenda, but replace them with Te Pati Maori/Greens and economic catastrophe beckons.
Chris : Usually your articles are a fair and balanced critique of local politics . But today you've crossed into hysterical hyperbole with your " beneficiaries are bashed / te Tiriti is trashed " ...
... absolute bollocks ! ... I am disappointed in you , you're better than gutter trash comments ...
Who ever vote for the greens after the last several issues from shoplifting to immigrant exportation. And CT calls these people intelligent really they need their heads read. As Thomas Sowell states the voting age should be 35 as the younger the voters get the dummer the politicians get. And since now in the US (Sowell is American) people are still living at home into their late 20s early 30s they are not able to comprehend what a govt should do.
They're living at home, because your (and my) generation stole their chances.
But some folk hide from that. I apologized to my two offspring, nearly 20 years ago. Said I'd do what I could to move the dial.
Others choose to hide, deny, and indulge.
Funny old world...
I’ve encountered plenty of boomers that love to use the quote
Hard times create strong men.
Strong men create good times.
Good times create weak men.
Weak men create hard times.
And yet few have ever picked up that they are the ones that lived through good times…
Much appreciate those of you that are fighting the good fight. Creation of hard times doesn’t come from age, it comes from wealth—specifically wealth inequality becoming worse.
SKF
Labour stopped being a broad church some time ago, and went down the road of identity politics, as have the Greens. That prevents them being mass political movements.
Neither have a visible general regard for people of lower socio-economic status and seem to be composed of elites, institutionalised in to an overwhelming sense of their rightness by large organisation's group think, dedicated to central control beyond the remit of elected representatives. Doubt or healthy scepticism don't get a look in.
A bureaucratic technocracy might work if it were competent, but it's also a farewell to democracy, free speech, tolerance and other things we used to think important.
As a previously lifelong Labour voter, my defining moment was hearing Keiran McAnulty say that some of the things Labour wanted to do weren't strictly democratic, but that wasn't the way we work here. Uh, what?! And Chris Hipkins' statement about their niche marketing ploy at the start of this article kind of sheeted that home for me.
The Left will soon no longer need to appeal to the lower classes, public servants and Maori/Pasifika as these will shortly be the only ones left in NZ to vote. The white flight to Australia will continue unabated. The 14% drop in European births in 2024 signals loud and clear where this country is headed. And if you want to know how it turns out, just look at South Africa.
Don't worry KW, proportionally Maori & pakeha are both fleeing NZ together. Given that NZ is largely run by pakeha, perhaps you might pause to reflect on where the root cause for this lies? Pakeha are in charge with a centre right coalition and things are actually getting worse hahaha?
Birth rates disprove your "equally fleeing" argument. Maori/Pasifika births are only down 4% this year (which is still within the normal number of births per year over the last few years). Asian births are actually up 12% and for the first time, outnumbered Maori births. Asian people are NZ's future now, assuming they are still willing to stick around and put up with racist ideologies and an ever decreasing standard of living. There is only one race that is disappearing.
Nah, I don't think so. Sure, you are right, successful (or those that want to be successful), be they European, Maori, whatever, if they are educated and successful, they have choices, and good on them. When we talk about the left, it is not as though they have this massive group of Maori sitting around waiting to vote for them, that is simply not true. There are large numbers of successful, educated, Europeans, and Maori and people from the Islands that by and large vote National, ACT and NZFirst, because their aspirations are aligned with them. This group of educated NZers will/may go overseas, some come back, but they do vote when they are away, so just because they are not here, it will not be left to the uneducated whingers and protesters that are left behind to suddenly vote for themselves and run amok. They will never get to that position. The closest they go and will ever get was the last Labour Government, which was a total disaster for the country and will long be remembered....and probably won't happen ever again. For Labour to regain power they will need to go back to their roots, drop the racism and other silly identity politics. The Greens and TPM are a waste of space. They have the Labour voters, so so Labour must decimate those two parties to ever be able to gain power again.
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