Chris Trotter

Chris Trotter (born c. 1956) is a left-leaning political commentator in New Zealand. He is the editor of the occasional Political Review magazine, and is a regular speaker, orator and singer at left-wing, union and socialist events.
Trotter has worked for unions and was on the New Zealand council of the Labour Party. He writes the "From the Left" column in the Dominion Post, and has also contributed to the Independent Financial Review. He makes semi-frequent television appearances as a political commentator.
He has attracted criticism from other broad left critics who regard his knowledge of feminist, indigenous and LGBT politics to be insignificant, particularly insofar as their own distributive justice dimensions are concerned
Trotter is the author of No Left Turn, a political history of New Zealand. Novelist, poet and critic C K Stead described the book as "a dashingly written and persuasive elegy for the Scandinavian-style socialist democracy New Zealand might have been, and at the same time a realistic (though at times appropriately angry) acknowledgement that, given the forces, internal and external, ranged against it, the chances of it happening, and lasting, were never very good."
In February 2008, he said that Helen Clark should stand down before the election and be replaced by Phil Goff, who he thought may have been Labour's only hope of regaining ground with struggling families. He has since recanted, arguing that Goff should have stood down in his turn before the New Zealand general election, 2011, arguing that David Cunliffe should replace him.