Why Todd Muller – and National – Are Toast.

Not Ready: Todd Muller’s lack-lustre and self-contradictory performances offer conclusive proof that a political leader cannot be managed into competence. National’s new boss has Janet Wilson handling his media and Matthew Hooton writing his speeches. Both are highly professional political and public relations specialists, and Muller is lucky to have them. But, they can’t be Leader of the Opposition for him.

TODD MULLER is toast. All the signs are there. The weird contradictions contained in his own public statements. The constant leaking of damaging information from inside his own caucus. The obvious delight of former colleagues as they lower their lifeboats and pull away from National’s sinking ship. The party’s been here before. Unfortunately, it was in 2002.

Just think about Paula Bennett’s bravura exit performance. Dancing up a storm with Tom Sainsbury – as if to say: “You always thought Tom was exaggerating, didn’t you? Nah, the boy never even got close!” There was something very P.J. O’Rourke about Bennett’s departure: something subversively liberating. When right-wingers turn out to have a sense of humour strong enough to make even hard-bitten lefties chortle, it says something very reassuring about our common humanity. Though some of us are loathe to admit it, we are all much more the same than we are different.

One of O’Rourke’s most memorable lines was: “First we got all the money. Then we got all the votes. Now we’ve got all the power!” Bennett’s celebration boogie, in anticipation of Muller’s failure to win O’Rourke’s electoral trifecta, has about it the same bracing honesty. Speaking of her hardcore National colleagues, she once told a startled journalist: “We didn’t come to Wellington to fuck spiders!” And wasn’t that the truth?

Muller’s lack-lustre and self-contradictory performances offer conclusive proof that a political leader cannot be managed into competence. National’s new boss has Janet Wilson handling his media and Matthew Hooton writing his speeches. Both are highly professional political and public relations specialists, and Muller is lucky to have them. But, they can’t be Leader of the Opposition for him.

It was exactly the same with David Cunliffe. Not even Matt McCarten, a.k.a “Mattiavelli”, could transform the ambitious climber who deposed David Shearer into a credible alternative prime minister. In the end, the person has to want the job enough to do what it takes to get it. Also needed is a clear idea of what to do with “all the power” once you’ve got it. This is where Muller falls short. Quoting Mickey Savage is all very well, but when a traditional Catholic talks about “applied Christianity” – what, exactly, does he mean?

It’s something which, I suspect, Muller’s evangelical Christian colleagues would also like to know. Their right-wing, fundamentalist version of the Christian message would see National taking a very different stance on a broad range of social issues from the one so clearly favoured by Muller and his liberal allies. A couple of months back, David Cormack (another PR maven) offered up his own take on National’s Christian conservatives:

“There is a large bloc in National of Christians with some pretty extreme views. They’re not traditional Christian National Party folk, but more fire and brimstone. Muller is a traditional National Party Christian, he voted No on the abortion bill’s second and third reading, he voted No on all three readings of the euthanasia bill. But he is considered not right wing enough by the large Christian bloc.”

According to Cormack:

“All of the highly conservative Christian MPs want to fight their very own culture wars here in NZ; think GOP level. Staunchly pro-Israel, really strongly anti-abortion, anti-women and gay rights. They want to fight the ‘Marxism’ that they believe has infested our schools, universities and even Labour (!)”

Contrast these hardline views with the gentle conservatism set out by Muller in his Te Puna hometown address in mid-June. Beautifully crafted by Hooton, the speech enunciated a set of values radically at odds with the proudly reactionary beliefs of Chris Penk and his comrades. Reading that speech, Muller’s opponents in the National caucus must have wondered whether their party was any longer big enough for the both of them.

On the one hand stands Muller (and Hooton) eager to keep the two main political parties committed to delivering the same neoliberal lines (albeit with some relatively minor differences in emphasis) that have bound the precious “median voter” to the aspirations of the broad centre of New Zealand politics for the best part of four decades.

On the other hand stand what might best be described as the “Radical Conservatives”. Their principal objection to the existing neoliberal order is its acceptance of what they see as the immoral and socially-destructive consequences of the cultural revolution of the 1960s and 70s. With some justification, they see identity politics as intrinsically hostile to the unequal distribution of power and wealth under patriarchal capitalism. Take patriarchy out of the capitalist equation and, in the view of the Radical Conservatives, it will fall.

These are not the sort of ideas to earn more than a curl of Nikki Kaye’s upper lip. Rightly, she foresees the wholesale rejection of such an avowedly sexist National Party by the overwhelming majority of middle-class Pakeha women. Indeed, it was to forestall such a radical-conservative deviation into Trumpland that the coup against Simon Bridges was mounted. That it succeeded only because the erratic Judith Collins anticipated taking more satisfaction from shafting Bridges and Bennett than from saving them, merely reinforces the scale of the dysfunction currently besetting the National Party.

Such dysfunction is essentially ineradicable by anything other than the annihilation of one of the two contending factions. This is, after all, what happened in the Labour Party when the Rogernomes and their careerist enablers made it more-or-less impossible for the left faction to remain within the party without surrendering their most deeply held convictions.

For National’s Radical Conservatives, the path to this annihilation solution is clear: engineer a defeat on a par with the disaster of 2002. The principal victims of such a strategy would be the party’s liberal faction. In Lenin’s famous phrase, it would lead to “fewer – but better” National MPs. A solid foundation of radical-conservative patriarchal Christian capitalism upon which National’s electoral recovery can be built.

You see now why Todd Muller is toast! Also clear, is why so many National women are now determined to give their votes to Jacinda.

This essay was originally posted on The Daily Blog of Thursday, 2 July 2020.

Does National Still Need A Street-Fighting Man?

Eyes Left! On the face of it, the election of Todd Muller and Nikki Kaye is a no-brainer. New Zealanders are clearly in no mood for a “dirty little street-fighter” and, if the polls are any indication, resent strongly Bridges’ implication that they are. To be at all competitive with Labour, National needs a radical change of faces.

WHO WILL EMERGE from Friday’s emergency meeting of National caucus as the party’s No.1 and No. 2? Will it be the incumbents: Simon Bridges and Paula Bennett? Or will the election of Todd Muller and Nikki Kaye signal National’s return to a kinder, gentler conservatism? Does Judith “Crusher” Collins’ very public renunciation of her leadership ambitions indicate her intention to swing her support behind Bridges and Bennett? Or, is she backing Muller and Kaye in return for the crucial Finance portfolio? Are Collins’ supporters even numerous enough to swing this contest, or will Mark Mitchell’s handful of votes be required to nudge the eventual winners over the line? If so, what will Mitchell’s price be?

On the face of it, the election of Muller and Kaye is a no-brainer. New Zealanders are clearly in no mood for a “dirty little street-fighter” and, if the polls are any indication, resent strongly Bridges’ implication that they are. To be at all competitive with Labour, National needs a radical change of faces. Beating Jacinda’s “Kindness” will require of the Right a credible presentation of “Kindness+”. In the best of all possible contests that “plus” would be “Wisdom”. In its present mood, however, the best “plus” the Right is likely to offer the voters is “Competence”.

Like everything in electoral politics it will all come down to numbers. Who has them and who doesn’t. In the February 2018 caucus contest that gave New Zealand the Bridges/Bennett combination it seemed pretty clear that the liberal wing of the party backing Amy Adams didn’t have the numbers. The question to be answered now is whether or not the 27 months under Bridges/Bennett have convinced enough of National’s hard-liners that dirty street-fighting is not going to win them back the treasury benches. If the polls have sufficiently spooked them, then they may be persuaded to reluctantly shuffle left. Unspooked, they will keep their nerve and wait for Covid-19’s economic shit to hit the fan.

Empirically, the hardliners can point to the impressive solidity of National’s public support across all but a few of those 27 months (the big exception being the period following the Christchurch Mosque Shootings). They might also cite the salutary impact of Bridges’ dirty social media street-fighting on Labour’s popularity. Unbuttressed by crisis and calamity, they can fairly argue, Jacinda Ardern and her colleagues are sitting ducks. Thinking of political feather-brains like Phil Twyford, David Clark and Kelvin Davis it’s hard not to agree!

Those hardline Nats with a bent for military history might compare National’s position with that of the Germans at the Battle of the Somme. The Covid-19 health crisis, like the British artillery’s horrendous opening barrage, has indisputably shaken the defenders’ confidence – but has it been destroyed? When the whistles blew and the poor Tommies rose out of their trenches and began moving steadily across no man’s land towards what they had been assured was a pulverised enemy, the German machine-gunners mowed them down like corn. Substitute utter economic carnage for those German machine-gunners and the analogy becomes strikingly clear.

The problem with political hardliners of every stripe is that they lack the flexibility of mind to put themselves in the position of their opponents. Not being able to imagine – and hence anticipate – what their enemy might do to thwart their plans, they are rendered incapable of adapting fixed strategies and tactics. The National Right has convinced itself that the Coalition Government lacks the experience and talent required to steer New Zealand safely through the Covid-19 induced recession. Confronted with ever-increasing numbers of failed businesses and unemployed workers, they see Jacinda and her colleagues freezing in the headlights of the Right’s oncoming truck. As far as National’s hardliners are concerned, all they have to do to win is make sure those headlights are kept on full-beam.

What they have singularly failed to grasp is that, as Laila Harré observed on Q+A on Monday night, the Covid-19 emergency has elevated Jacinda well above the plane of a mere party leader or prime minister. It has transformed her into New Zealand’s leader: the woman credited with doing the right thing to defend her people by an astonishing 92 percent of Reid Research’s respondents. A political dynamic is operating here that goes way beyond mere partisanship. Jacinda has not only changed the way her people look at her, she has changed the way she looks at herself. You cannot bring down such leaders, you can only wait for them to fall.

Jacinda does not have to do anything more between now and 19 September than urge New Zealanders to endure the pain. Like Winston Churchill in 1940, she need offer them nothing more in the immediate term than “blood, toil, tears and sweat”. But, if they can hold out in these fortunate islands; if they are willing to give her and Labour the votes they need to finish the job of rebuilding and recovery; ah well, then, in Churchill’s wonderfully evocative words: “the life of the world can move forward into broad sunlit uplands”. This is the new reality that the National Opposition has to grasp: that Labour does not need to win the battle of the present, if it has already won the battle of the future.

Which is not to suggest that Jacinda and her government are incapable of slipping and falling. Unanticipated obstacles, new disasters, may yet send dark clouds scudding across those sunlit uplands. If they do, then who is better placed to comfort and inspire their dispirited compatriots: Simon Bridges and Paula Bennet, or Todd Muller and Nikki Kaye?

There have been times in New Zealand’s political history when its more conservative citizens have been in the market for “a dirty little street-fighter”. One thinks of Sid Holland, who tamed the militant unions in 1951. Or Rob Muldoon in 1975, promising conservatives New Zealand the way they (not the Left) wanted it. In 2005, it was Don Brash who asserted the rights of “Kiwi” over “Iwi”. These were the leaders chosen by National for times of “Us” versus “Them”.

These are not such times. The Covid-19 global pandemic of 2020 has brought the New Zealand people closer together. They are not looking for a National Opposition determined to drive them apart.

This essay was originally posted on The Daily Blog of Thursday, 21 May 2020.

Nikki Kaye Returns To Save The Day.

A Very Welcome Return To Health: The dismay with which the news of Nikki Kaye’s cancer diagnosis was received by John Key and his senior colleagues is easily imagined. Had her affliction forced Ms Kaye to resign from parliament, the Auckland Central seat would have been up for grabs. Upon the outcome of the ensuing by-election would ride nothing less than the National-led Government’s ability to govern New Zealand in anything resembling a predictable and confident fashion. In other words, a defeat in Auckland Central would have precipitated an early general election.

 

A PARTICULARLY PLEASING sight for some very sore National Party eyes. That was the Auckland Central MP, Nikki Kaye, when she bounded into Parliament last week in remarkably fine fettle. Granted leave from Parliament to deal with a worrying diagnosis of breast cancer, Ms Kaye’s future has for many weeks been uncertain. It has also been the subject of some grim-faced discussions among National’s leading strategists – including the then prime minister, John Key. Her dramatic return to health – and politics – must be a huge relief, not only to family and friends, but also to her party.

 

National’s strategists’ concern over the fate of Auckland Central was entirely justifiable. All of them know how to count, and, of late, the parliamentary arithmetic has become decidedly tricky.

 

The loss of Northland to Winston Peters in March of last year left the Government in a pretty parliamentary pickle. With 60 seats of their own, plus the rock-solid support of the Epsom MP, Act Leader David Seymour, the Government had commanded a one seat majority in the 121 member House of Representatives. After losing Northland, however, National found itself in firm control of just 60 seats. Overnight, Mr Key’s less slavish support partners, the Ohariu MP, United Party Leader Peter Dunne, and the two Maori Party MPs, Te Ururoa Flavell and Marama Fox, found themselves with enhanced political leverage vis-à-vis the Government. The most embarrassing example of this new-found influence is the Maori Party’s emendation of National’s proposed reform of the Resource Management Act.

 

Clearly, the loss of another National Party-held seat would leave the Government in an even more precarious parliamentary position. Even with pledges of unwavering support from David Seymour and Peter Dunne, the construction of the Government’s election-year budget, and the success of its legislative programme, would be entirely dependent on the good will and support of the Maori Party.

 

The dismay with which the news of Ms Kaye’s cancer diagnosis was received by Mr Key and his senior colleagues is easily imagined. Had her affliction forced Ms Kaye to resign from parliament, the Auckland Central seat would have been up for grabs. Upon the outcome of the ensuing by-election would ride nothing less than the National-led Government’s ability to govern New Zealand in anything resembling a predictable and confident fashion. In other words, a defeat in Auckland Central would have precipitated an early general election.

 

Unfortunately for National, its chances of holding Auckland Central in a by-election are very slim. The Opposition parties, understanding that National’s failure to hold the seat would bring forward the election, would likely agree to give Labour’s Jacinda Ardern a clear run – just as they did for Michael Wood in the recent Mt Roskill by-election. Such a clearing-of-the-decks for Labour would add an additional 2,000 votes, at least, to Ms Ardern’s 2014 tally of 11,894 votes – more than enough to overwhelm Ms Kaye’s 2014 electorate majority of 600 votes.

 

Significantly, National’s Mt Roskill campaign turned out to be extremely disheartening. At the start of the operation the party’s strategists had dreamed of making good the loss of Northland by stealing Mt Roskill from Labour. Rumours circulated that National had come into possession of a new, devilishly sophisticated get-out-the-vote software package. If it could turn out National’s 2014 Party Vote, then the seat would be theirs. It was not to be. Not only did the technology fail, but so, too, did John Key’s campaigning magic. The portents for Auckland Central were anything but auspicious.

 

MMP’s rules also disadvantaged National. If a by-election is won by a candidate currently occupying a List seat, as happened with Winston Peters, then not only does the successful candidate secure the electorate seat, but the next person on the Party’s List also enters Parliament. NZ First emerged from the 2014 General Election with 11 MPs. After the Northland By-Election it had 12. If Jacinda Ardern, a List MP, won Auckland Central in a by-election, then Labour’s numbers in the House would be boosted from 32 to 33 by the arrival (probably) of Raymond Huo off its List.

 

The fate of Auckland Central has certainly presented the leaders of the seven parliamentary parties with a complex and volatile political calculation. For weeks now they have been scratching their heads and sharpening their pencils. Complicating the political maths still further is David Shearer’s imminent return to the United Nations. Voters living in the safe Labour seat of Mt Albert face a by-election as early as February.

 

Buoyed by the win in Mt Roskill, and heartened by the prospect of two more in Mt Albert and Auckland Central, Andrew Little’s “bring it on”  challenge to the new National leader made good strategic sense.

 

Which is why Nikki Kaye’s recovery must be the best news Bill English has received since John Key told him he was quitting.

 

This essay was originally published in The Press of Tuesday, 13 December 2016.