A foreseeable future

Labour's decision to focus on economic development rather than tax as its first election policy is a shrewd move, despite the lack of detail.

- Danyl McLauchlan

In a recent interview with The New Zealand Herald, Christopher Luxon revealed that every year he studies the life of a great political leader, and this year he picked Ronald Reagan.

It's a solid choice. Reagan has always been a hero to the right while being discounted as a lightweight by the left: “just an actor”. But for many historians and political scientists, his star has risen in the 20 years since his death and there's a growing consensus he was America’s most significant president since Franklin Roosevelt. Like Luxon, he entered government during a period of economic stagnation and national decline and, also like Luxon, he was an optimist. He made America feel good about itself again.

There’s a famous story about Reagan. Before he went into politics he travelled across the US giving speeches to Ford Motor Company workers about free enterprise, and he spent the long train journeys studying political theory. He called it “a postgraduate course in political science”, and he read and re-read Frederich Hayek's The Road to Serfdom, the most influential political text of the late-20th century; the bible of the neoliberal revolution.

When the Reagan government took power, it had a sophisticated critique of the dying Keynesian economic model: a theory of why the economy was failing, a coherent framework to build its replacement with a leader – “the great communicator” – who was a master at selling this vision to the general public. In these senses Luxon is distinctly un-Reaganesque.

Now, the neoliberal order seems to be collapsing, its death throes exhibiting the same morbid symptoms as the end of the Keynesian system: inflation, recession, industrial action. What comes next? No one knows for sure, but one potential candidate - especially for a small country like New Zealand - is the Singaporean model.