OPINION: ACT's cult of personality

Yesterday, Cathy Odgers wrote about the demise of the ACT party.

In doing so she highlighted the belied structure of political adherents of smaller parties.

ACT was always a cult of personality
I have always looked on ACT party supporters with mild amusement. To a person they have always been part of a cult of personality. Firstly it was to Roger Douglas, then to Richard Prebble and finally to Rodney Hide.

Their fascination with labels like classic liberal, libertarian etc shows a deep misunderstanding of the New Zealand electorate, which doesn't have a clue what such terms mean.

It is the same mistake Labour makes when they label National as Tories.

Such labels come from the politics of elsewhere. Interestingly, ACT supporters use the word Tory to disparage National almost as much as Labour party supporters. It isn’t surprising though when you look at where the ACT party came from. It was spawned from Labour.

The people who originally came to ACT were the right of Labour spurned by a resurgent union wing.

Along the way they picked up the young who had never known compulsory unionism and the liberal economic believers. But they all still have an inherited and an abiding loathing for the National party and so never could comfortably work with them.

Not in it for the long game
If the ACT party ceased to exist - which is largely did after Don Brash raided their base in 2005 and now after he raided their party - I suspect many ACT supporters would give up on politics or return to local body politics where the majority of them are bit players there too.

I asked a long term ACT supporter what they would do if the party ceased to exist and they told me that they would get an interest in something else. 

They had no interest in joining any other party than the ACT party. That told me right there that ACT supporters didn’t really understand or grasp that politics is a long game or that you need to grow your base. Their ideas are still valid. But because of a tribal adherence to amorphous “core values” they can’t and won’t engage with any other party.

They are remembering a party that no longer exists, the party they left behind when they went overseas failed to change with the times and the electorate voted accordingly. ACT supporters talk of core values but I doubt any of them could even tell me what they are.

Greens show the way (and don’t, at the same time)
The Green Party has shown how the religious fervour of a small party can be built upon to become a major player.

They have removed the embarrassing activist core that people like Sue Bradford and Keith Locke epitomised. They have instead promoted reason and sensibility.

Russel Norman looks and acts like a person responsible enough to lead the Greens into a governing relationship.

The Greens have grown outside their own cult of personality that was created by Rod Donald and Jeanette Fitzsimons. Through death and retirement they have had to revitalise the party, and they have broadened their base.

The Greens still sit outside the decision making process, however, because they still have at their core a vestige of loony socialist policy wonks and shouters. They are diminishing though as the party grows and becomes mainstream, collecting along the way the reasonable and sensible workers a large party needs.

The Greens need to cut a significant deal with National or they risk forever being the bridesmaid of Labour.

Why ACT won’t survive in its current form
The ACT party won’t survive in its current form.

That isn’t because they only have one MP.

It is because the religious adherents to the cause have given up. They should go though. They showed their political ineptitude when they allowed their cult leader to be rolled by another cult leader from outside the party. In that particular dog fight there was only one dog in it, unfortunately that was the one good fight he had.

Not showing ruthlessness after the coup and axing the adherents instead saddled Don Brash with them. They simply didn’t want the ACT party to grow. As new memberships rolled in during the early days after the coup many of the staffer expressed concern that these new members weren’t “pure”. They didn’t want the party to grow because they were happy with it small and pure. That is a recipe for marginalisation.

The “purists” in ACT will now become like the Liberatarianz, who I class as the happy hand clappers of politics. They have the best songs, the best logic, the best arguments but always sit on the outside shouting at those on the inside of the tent that they aren’t pure enough.

Change National from within
I have had many, many discussion with Liberatarianz and with ACT supporters. I've told them they should join National and change the party from within. 

I reasoned that because they were committed and enthusiastic that they would soon, through energy alone, be stacking the key positions in order to control selections of “right thinking” candidates. The conversations peter out about then though as they realise that they will have to pollute their purity in order to achieve their goals. They sagely tell me that they couldn’t do that because it would diminish their message.

It matter not a bit to them that the message is currently falling on deaf ears, what matters is that they are pure.

Small parties, by insisting on purity and being camped outside the tent, forever doom themselves to irrelevance. It is far better that they sit inside a tent and contribute and move and change policy in a party that can effect change.

So far only the Green party have proven to be adept political students. ACT must change or it will die, politics is that simple.

Cam Slater blogs as WhaleOil. HIs opinions are his own, not those of NBR.