Labour's Eschewed Its Working-Class Roots (in New Zealand as in the U K) In Favour of the Socially 'Enlightened'/Progressive Middle-Class Professional Set: So You're Asking Why Such (WC) Voters Are Deserting Them In Droves in Both Jurisdictions (for the Conservative Party in Great Britain, and for (their ideological bedfellows) the National Party in New Zealand)?

For a good all round backgrounder on the situation - vis-a-vis the New Zealand context, that is - you could hardly do worse than consult the insightful musings, reflections and research of long-time left-wing political activist and commentator Chris Trotter, who once presented a public lecture here in Dunedin, NZ in which he graphically detailed and explained the mass exodus of party members from NZ Labour in the 1980s, once like its opposite number the NZ National Party a mass membership political party...

...and all essentially because a once socially conservative and economically leftist party embraced the very opposite: laissez-faire economics a la Reaganomics & Thatcherism and social liberalism/radicalism...