It is a difficult time for social democrats. Since the fall of the Berlin Wall and liberalisation programmes here and abroad, old school socialists and social democrats have struggled to come to terms with the changing tides of time. The more recent collapse of the Anthony Giddens inspired ‘third-way’ Clintonism and Blairism have added to these woes.

The political third way represented by these leaders is what former Clinton adviser Dick Morris called triangulation: a fancy term for the political practice of screwing your enemies by selling out your friends. It was politics, not ideology.

It was therefore interesting to read Professor Elizabeth Rata’s recent speech to the New Zealand Fabian society. (One of the few times you will hear about the Fabians from me!).

Rata argued that New Zealand’s old-fashioned social democratic egalitarianism, and its attendant commitment to redistributive justice and a concern for the wellbeing of the ordinary fellow, is being replaced by a new cultural identity politics. Commitment to fair shares is being traded in for correct identity on the amorphous ground of ‘culture’. She is concerned about universalism being lost to a set of different tribes. The key group Rata was concerned with in this address was Māori, but the principle can be extended to many other groups.

This was interesting because it gave voice to a concern that has been plaguing (primarily, but not exclusively) the political left for some time. Since the collapse of a clear-cut economics of social democratic belief, the way to garner votes is to get a collection of identity politics groups, or groups concerned with increasing the social dividends to their constituencies.

The difficulty with this is that it may work as a political strategy for a while, but is profoundly anti-egalitarian because it prioritises who you are over what you do as a person. Surely this is the antithesis of social democratic or indeed egalitarian thought: that who you are by dint of birth should not affect your treatment by state or society.

And herein lies the rub for modern social democrats: without a modern commitment to fair shares, politics becomes little more than an exercise in knitting together groups of patronage, in a manner that rejects claims to universalism. No wonder the political left loves MMP so much – it entrenches tribes of support at the expense of the median voter and the common good.