Bridges And Adams Trapped In The Ghetto Of The Comfortable Third.

Utterly Predictable: Anyone seized with the notion that the Nats new leadership team might actually make a serious effort to face up to the enormous challenges confronting New Zealand and the world should now un-seize themselves. The new Opposition Finance Spokesperson, Amy Adams, has made it very clear that National will be governing, as it has always done, for the only New Zealanders who have ever counted for anything in its political universe – farmers and businessmen.

OH, WHAT A SURPRISE – it’s Amy Adams! On the day after Steven Joyce announced his retirement from politics, Simon Bridges appoints the runner-up in National’s latest leadership contest as his Shadow Finance Minister. So far, so utterly predictable.

Equally predictable, but a lot more depressing, were Adams’ announced priorities. In her first press release as Opposition Finance Spokesperson, she singled out “Labour’s overseas investment changes, employment law changes, and proposed new taxes as things that would ankle-tap the country’s medium-term economic performance.”

Anyone seized with the notion that the Nats new leadership team might actually make a serious effort to face up to the enormous challenges confronting New Zealand and the world should now un-seize themselves. Adams has made it very clear that National will be governing, as it has always done, for the only New Zealanders who have ever counted for anything in its political universe – farmers and businessmen.

Just listen to Adams assessment of National’s economic stewardship:

“New Zealand currently has one of the strongest economies in the western world. That’s not an accident. That’s a result of the hard work of New Zealanders backed by the strong economic plan of the previous National-led Government”.

Strong economic plan? And what might that have been? To open the floodgates to tens-of-thousands of immigrants? To facilitate the transformation of New Zealand’s agricultural sector into one huge dairy farm? To quietly inject the trade union movement with yet another cocktail of immobilising drugs? To dole out millions of dollars in corporate welfare to the National Government’s most generous friends?

If Adams’ only measure of success is the growth in GDP under National; or, perhaps, the appreciation in the value of urban real estate; or, the increasing share of New Zealand’s economic surplus currently being distributed to shareholders, at the expense of wage- and salary-earners; well then, yes, her party’s “strong economic plan” may be rated an unqualified success.

That Adams clearly cannot appreciate that all of these positive outcomes need to be set alongside a much longer list of negative economic and social consequences: homelessness, rising inequality, declining health and educational outcomes, environmental degradation; merely reinforces her own and her party’s location among the comfortable third of New Zealand society.

National’s capacity to present itself to the New Zealand electorate as something more than a crude political vehicle for the advancement of narrow sectional interests can only diminish while its leaders feel free to spout such facile and uninspiring rhetoric.

Adams’ words betray her party’s continuing failure to accurately interpret the result of the 2017 general election. Under a proportional electoral system, the support of just one third of the population is simply not enough to guarantee victory.

That National’s support manifested itself in a Party Vote of 44.5 percent only indicates the continuing depressed levels of electoral participation. If the progressive political parties can secure even a modest lift in the participation rate of their supporters (and if anybody can do that it’s Jacinda Ardern) then National’s share of the Party Vote will be driven down even further. Without a coalition partner commanding approximately 10 percent of the Party Vote, Adams’ hopes of re-booting National’s “strong economic plan” will be unfulfilled.

Conservatism, as Winston Peters demonstrated so adeptly at the head of NZ First throughout 2017, is a political philosophy capable of transcending sectional boundaries. Conservatives appeal to their fellow citizens from the much more solid foundation of shared values: individual freedom and responsibility; cherished cultural and religious traditions; the principles of equity and fairness. Values as likely to be found among the poorest members of society as the wealthiest.

Certainly, conservatives are hostile to the claims of the mob, but they are no less hostile to the grasping selfishness of the elites. The power of the state is important to conservatives not only because it guarantees law and order, but also because it alone is strong enough to resist – and, if necessary, overawe – the special-pleading of the heedless rich.

While Bridges and Adams espouse a social and economic programme which reeks of sectional self-interest, the National Party’s ability to break out of the ghetto of the comfortable third will continue to be compromised. If, between them, they are unable to convince the New Zealand electorate that a principled conservative party called “National” still exists, then they may soon find it necessary to re-invent one.

This essay was originally posted on The Daily Blog of Wednesday, 8 March 2018.

Note To National MPs: Pick Judith, Or The Members Will Pick Her For You.

One Way Or Another: If National's members discover that their party's caucus is no longer capable of identifying who, in the largest possible measure, possesses the qualities required to lead the National Party to victory, then they will insist on doing the job themselves.

THE NATIONAL PARTY CAUCUS should make Judith Collins Leader of the Opposition. They should, but they won’t. Like the Labour Party caucus in 2011, the Nats will allow their hearts (or possibly their livers) to over-rule their heads. They’ll opt for the candidate/s they want – rather than the candidate their party needs. And, by telling their party to run-along and let the professionals handle it, they will unleash exactly the same debilitating internal conflict that kept Labour out of power for 9 years.

Why? Because the only lesson to be learnt from history is that human-beings are incapable of learning the lessons of history.

Anyone listening to Judith Collins being interviewed by Guyon Espiner on this morning’s (26/2/18) “Morning Report” couldn’t help but be impressed.

For a start, she had the gumption to show up in RNZ’s Auckland studio. Although all five of the candidates vying for the National Party leadership had been invited, all but Collins declined.

That decision, alone, is enough to disqualify Amy Adams, Simon Bridges, Steven Joyce and Mark Mitchell from leading a round of applause – let alone the largest political party in New Zealand.

More impressive, however, was Collins’ ability to express her thoughts clearly, forcefully, succinctly and with a well-judged measure of good humour. Unlike Amy Adams, she doesn’t gabble. Nor does her tongue appear to be engaged in a wrestling-match with every vowel attempting to make it past her teeth – as is the case with both Simon Bridges and Mark Mitchell.

Only Steven Joyce is competitive with Collins when it comes to articulateness. Unfortunately, he always sounds as if he’s privy to some private joke: something about which his listeners know absolutely nothing. There is about the man a fundamental lack of seriousness which sits very uneasily with the role he is now seeking to play. Conveying the impression that the voters are all just hapless players in some vast cosmic comedy may be acceptable in a highly successful campaign manager – but not in a potential prime minister.

The other explanation for Collins’ articulateness is that she actually has something to say. In marked contrast to the torrent of empty platitudes and/or self-aggrandizing puffery pouring out of the mouths of the other candidates, Collins talks about politics. Given that she is in a race for the political leadership of New Zealand, that is both refreshing and gratifying.

That Collins’ politics is frightening to liberals, socialists and other harmless living creatures is neither here nor there. Said socialists and liberals are not her primary audience.

The New Zealanders Collins is speaking for and to are not the sort to be found in the university common-room – nor yet the secondary-school staff-room. They are not liberal arts students or aspiring film-directors. Not many of them will be found on the factory-floor, in the warehouse, or laying bitumen on the motorway.

Collins supporters are much more likely to be found in small, owner-operated businesses and family-farms. She will get a good hearing from women operating in positions of mid-level responsibility: the working mother who looks after the wages in a medium-sized enterprise; the manager of a retail outlet employing three or four shop assistants. Men of an authoritarian temperament (and there are a lot more of those than most people would like to think) will urge Collins on with lusty cheers.

Most supportive of all, however, will be those wealthy, hard-core conservatives who bridle at the regulatory “madness” of health-and-safety legislation; the enterprise-stifling provisions of the Resource Management Act; and the sheer effrontery of trade unionists and public servants. The sort of people who know that life under free-market capitalism is a zero-sum game – and who have no intention of remaining on the losing side for one second longer than is absolutely necessary.

In short, Collins appeals to the sort of people who have always made up – and continue to make up – the vast bulk of National Party support. The sort of people who do not take kindly to having their clearly expressed preference over-ridden by the ambitious ne’er-do-wells and wannabes who came to them for the money and behind-the-scenes backing required to secure a seat in the New Zealand Parliament.

In short, the sort of people who, should they discover that National’s caucus is no longer capable of identifying who, in the largest possible measure, possesses the qualities required to lead the National Party to victory, will insist on doing the job themselves.

This essay was jointly posted on The Daily Blog and Bowalley Road of Tuesday, 27 February 2018.

National’s Moderates May Win This Leadership Battle – But Can They Win The War?

All Smiles - For Now: A victory for the moderate Amy Adams will not sit well with the National Party rank-and-file who, pretty obviously, favour the more right-wing Judith Collins for the role of Opposition leader. Moreover, the longer the race continues, the more pressure Collins’ rank-and-file supporters will be able to apply to their local and/or List MPs to give her their support.

IN THE RACE FOR OPPOSITION LEADER, the numbers are solidifying around Amy Adams. A consensus is forming among the journalists of the Parliamentary Press Gallery that Adams, with 20 votes, is at least 2 or 3 votes ahead of her nearest rival, Simon Bridges. The moment Adams assures the National Party Board that she has no intention of dispensing with the services of National’s chief strategist, Steven Joyce, her lead will advance by at least 4 votes. At that point, Adams will be only 4 or 5 votes shy of the 29 votes she needs to become Leader of the Opposition. If Mark Mitchell can be enticed into Adams’ camp (with the offer of the Deputy’s spot, perhaps?) then it will require only 1 further defection from either Team Bridges or Team Collins for the game to be over.

A victory for Adams will not sit well with the National Party rank-and-file who, pretty obviously, favour Judith Collins for the role of Opposition leader. Moreover, the longer the race continues, the more pressure Collins’ rank-and-file supporters will be able to apply to their local and/or List MPs to give her their support.

Team Collins’ argument that only their candidate has the strength and decisiveness to keep National polling in the mid-40s is already beginning to tell with those MPs positioned at the bottom of National’s Party List contingent. Indeed, some have already moved quietly to join Collins’ very small band of supporters – just 4 to 7 strong at this stage.

From the vantage points of both Adams and the National Board, it therefore makes sense to hold the Leadership ballot as soon as possible.

The less time Team Collins has to raise a clamour from the membership for their candidate’s election, the easier it will be for Team Adams to nibble away at the edges of Bridges’ support.

The Board, meanwhile, has every reason to fear that Collins’ efforts to rouse the membership could very easily set the National Party up for exactly the same “Us” versus “Them” struggle that tore the Labour Party apart between 2011 and 2013. (That was the fight which erupted after Labour’s parliamentary caucus imposed a leader on the wider party organisation that it clearly did not want.) A swift and decisive victory by Adams would, from the Board’s point of view, be less likely to provoke such a debilitating outcome.

The pressure is, therefore, on Adams to accede quickly to Joyce’s and Mitchell’s demands, so that, having pocketed their votes, she can commence the deal-making required to deflate Bridge’s numbers.

This is the point at which Bridges would be well advised to secure what he can from his position (a place in Adam’s “Kitchen Cabinet”, perhaps?) by magnanimously marching as many of his followers as possible into her camp and, figuratively, crowning her National’s Queen before the smoke of battle has had time to clear. The title of “Queenmaker” is not one to be discarded lightly!

With the serried ranks of the now largely unified National Caucus arrayed against her, Collins could elect to either fight it out to the bitter end, or, to lower her banners and join in Adams’ victory feast.

That meal need not taste too bitter in Collins mouth. After all, a victory for Adams can only be interpreted as a victory for the Key-English status-quo. Collins and her followers, convinced as they are that, ideologically-speaking, that status-quo has positioned National well to the left of where its members and voters believe it should be, need only wait for the polls to register conservative New Zealand’s disappointment at the National caucus’s failure to elect their champion. When that happens, Team Collins’ banners can, once again, be unfurled; and the battle for the heart and soul of the National Party can recommence – minus Amy Adams.

UPDATE: This morning (20/2/18) Steven Joyce further complicated National’s leadership contest by announcing his own candidacy for the top job. Clearly, the contest is now set to run until Tuesday 27 February. Team Collins will, therefore, re-double its efforts to mobilise the National Party rank-and-file in her support. Also stepping-up their effort will be National’s Board. It is now absolutely imperative that the two front-runners – Amy Adams and Simon Bridges – strike a deal. With Labour at its highest poll-rating in 15 years, the last thing National needs is a divided Opposition caucus.

This essay was originally posted on The Daily Blog of Tuesday, 20 February 2018.

Princess Stardust versus The Crusher Queen.

Demolition Woman: Who is best placed to demolish Labour's Jacinda Ardern most effectively? Simon Bridges? Amy Adams? Some other National MP of whom the overwhelming majority of conservative voters have heard next to nothing? Or the woman tens-of-thousands of conservative voters already admire for her take-no-prisoners approach to parliamentary politics – Judith “Crusher” Collins?

IT’S GOT TO BE JUDITH COLLINS. There will be many in National’s caucus who bridle at the very suggestion of Collins replacing Bill English. “She’s too divisive!”, they’ll cry. “She carries too much baggage”, others will mumble. “It would be the Woman of Yesterday going up against the Woman of Today”, the pundits will pronounce. “Jacinda’s relentless positivity would leave Collins battered and bleeding in the rubble of her negativity.”

And all of them would be missing the point.

The sort of leader the Right chooses when the Left has been in power for nine years is always very different from the leader it chooses when the Left has been in power for less than nine months. The former needs to present himself as the friend of continuity: the man who will hold the country together; the fresh pair of eyes in a familiar landscape. The latter must be a demolition agent: someone who can smash to pieces the dangerous installations of left-wing radicalism; a living rebuke to socialism in all its forms: a crusher.

The most vivid exemplar of the National-Party-leader-as-demolition-agent was, of course, Rob Muldoon. The redoubtable Norman Kirk, himself, would have struggled to match the political force-of-nature that was Muldoon. The mild-mannered Bill Rowling stood no chance at all.

What do you say to a man who wisecracks to his followers that he has seen “the shivers running ‘round Bill Rowling’s body looking for a spine to crawl up”? (And here you were thinking it was Donald Trump who invented that sort of political invective!)

Muldoon’s weapon-of-choice against the Rowling-led Labour Government was his self-proclaimed mastery of all things economic. Presented with the political gift of the 1973 Oil Shock – which injected a virulent booster-shot of commodity price inflation into the already inflation-plagued economies of the West – Muldoon seized upon the Labour Government’s policy of borrowing heavily overseas (to prevent the New Zealand economy from falling into recession) as proof of its economic recklessness.

Given that the debate on whether or not Grant Robertson should relax his grip on the nation’s purse-strings is likely to grow ever more heated over the next few months, it would make sense for National to elect a leader who is ready, willing and able to expose and exploit the divisions over the proper level of public debt already widening within the government’s ranks.

Who is best placed to do this most effectively? Simon Bridges? Amy Adams? Some other National MP of whom the overwhelming majority of conservative voters have heard next to nothing? Or the woman tens-of-thousands of conservative voters already admire for her take-no-prisoners approach to parliamentary politics – Judith “Crusher” Collins?

The expectation of a head-to-head contest between the Kiwi equivalents of Game of Thrones antagonists Daenerys Targaryen and Cersei Lannister extends well beyond the boundaries of the political Right. Collins is one of those rare politicians who, like Rob Muldoon, are able to imbue their bids for leadership with a sense of political inevitability.

Jacinda Arden displayed considerable political skill in masking the scale of her ambition until she was certain of success. From the moment she trounced Julie Anne Genter in the Mt Albert by-election, however, that same sense of inevitability was all around her as well.

It was the tragedy of Bill English’s career that, in spite of his supporters’ best efforts, not quite enough New Zealanders were able to look at him and see a prime minister. A highly competent finance minister? Yes. But, a prime minister? Yeah-Nah.

The question National’s caucus needs to ask itself is how many New Zealanders look at Simon Bridges, or Amy Adams, and say to themselves: “That person is going to be prime minister one day.” Does either politician possess that twinkle in the eye; that infuriatingly knowing smirk; which betrays the leader’s intimate acquaintance with Destiny?

The other factor National’s caucus needs to consider is whether its leadership candidates are strong enough to truly test Jacinda? This is the question that the Labour caucus and party never answered honestly in relation to John Key. It would be astonishing if the National Opposition repeated the folly of sending one leaden amateur after another to do battle with such a consummate sprinkler of stardust.

It is a huge mistake in politics to pit like against like.

Judith is nothing like Jacinda.

This essay was originally published in The Waikato Times, The Taranaki Daily News, The Timaru Herald, The Otago Daily Times and The Greymouth Star of Friday, 16 February 2018.