Chris Trotter (born c. 1956) is a left-leaning political commentator in New Zealand

New Zealand

New Zealand is an island country in the south-western Pacific Ocean comprising two main landmasses and numerous smaller islands. The country is situated some east of Australia across the Tasman Sea, and roughly south of the Pacific island nations of New Caledonia, Fiji, and Tonga...

. 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

The Dominion Post (Wellington)

The Dominion Post is a metropolitan broadsheet newspaper published in Wellington, New Zealand, owned by the Australian Fairfax group, owners of The Age, Melbourne, and The Sydney Morning Herald.- Foundation :...

, and has also contributed to the Independent Financial Review. He publishes a political commentary blog on the policy.net.nz website, and makes semi-frequent television appearances as a political commentator. His blog is situated here:

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

Helen Clark

Helen Elizabeth Clark, ONZ is a New Zealand political figure who was the 37th Prime Minister of New Zealand for three consecutive terms from 1999 to 2008...

 should stand down before the election

New Zealand general election, 2008

The 2008 New Zealand general election was held on 8 November 2008 to determine the composition of the 49th New Zealand parliament. The conservative National Party, headed by its Parliamentary leader John Key, won a plurality of votes and seats, ending 9 years of government dominated by the social...

 and be replaced by Phil Goff

Phil Goff

Philip Bruce Goff is the current Leader of the Opposition and the Leader of the New Zealand Labour Party. During the Fifth Labour Government, he served in a number of ministerial portfolios, including Minister of Defence of New Zealand, Minister of Corrections, Minister of Foreign Affairs and...

, who he thought may have been Labour's only hope of regaining ground with struggling families. He has since recanted, recently arguing that Goff should stand down in his turn before the New Zealand general election, 2011

New Zealand general election, 2011

The 2011 New Zealand general election on Saturday 26 November 2011 determined the membership of the 50th New Zealand Parliament.One hundred and twenty-one MPs were elected to the New Zealand House of Representatives, 70 from single-member electorates, including one overhang seat, and 51 from party...

, arguing that David Cunliffe

David Cunliffe

David Richard Cunliffe is a New Zealand politician. He is a member of the Labour Party, and the sitting member of parliament for New Lynn, West Auckland. He served as the Minister of Health and Minister for Communications and Information Technology for the Fifth Labour Government of New Zealand...

should replace him.