Recently, I sat beside a Green MP at an event who, much to my astonishment, scoffed when the presenter mentioned John Key’s indication of wanting to tackle poverty this term. 

If politicians, advocacy groups and commentators on the left want to work on solutions for poverty and inequality, the more extreme among them need to a) stop thinking the right would eat the poor if they could, and b) change up their stale narrative about how poverty came to be. These changes need to happen before the left can even start thinking about working with the right (or probably more accurately, the centre) on how to tackle it.  

The bleeding hearts bleated on about inequality and poverty for the whole election campaign, yet they didn’t get voted into power. Key could ignore poverty if he wanted to, and yet has made it a priority in his third term. Whether that’s a cynical move to buy votes is immaterial. Here is an opportunity for the left to work constructively with government, and yet many (not all) on the left scoff at it.

This is frustrating because as someone from the left who has an insight into the political right, I know both sides care about poverty and inequality. Granted, they have very different ideas on how to solve the problem, and the right are more accepting that there will always be some level of inequality (not to be confused with poverty) in society.

Some on the left, however, need to get better at challenging their own narratives about how the problem came to be in the first place. Condensed down to its simplest form, their story goes like this: the economic reforms of the 1980s, and capitalism in general, has made the rich richer at the expense of the poor.

The reasons the right get frustrated with this narrative are manifold, but here is just one. 

When people point the finger at people who have worked hard, and tell them that their success is making the poor even poorer, whether that is true or not, they stop listening. I understand that on balance, people who do well in life got a better start, but there exists the presumption that this wealth was stolen, not created.

If anything, we need to take a long-term view and seriously tackle equality of opportunity through education. The reality in the meantime, however, is that people who have made the most of what life has given them don’t want to hear they are evil capitalists exploiting the poor. Most are just trying to make a good life for their own families.

If the left really wants to make a difference to reducing inequality and poverty, before even debating solutions, it is time for those who hold stale narratives to change it up. Stop assuming the right is out to exploit the poor.