Leader In Waiting? If this government falters, then the Opposition Leader will be perfectly placed to become the nation’s “Jacobite” leader-in-exile: the only legitimate inheritor of the 2017 General Election; the King-Over-The-Water; Bonny Prince Billy.
Will ye no come back
again?
Will ye no come back
again?
Better lo’ed ye canna
be;
Will ye no come back
again?
– Jacobite Lament
THAT, FIVE MONTHS AFTER the 2017 election, 44.5 percent of
New Zealanders remain loyal to the National Party is astonishing. Political
defeat almost always foreshadows political desertion – usually on a large
scale. Finding oneself on the losing side of any conflict is never a happy
experience. The temptation to treat harshly the people who put you there can be
very strong.
And yet National’s support remains precisely where it stood
on election night. Conservative New Zealand is yet to be convinced that the
government of Jacinda Ardern is worthy of so much as a second glance – let
alone a second thought.
The reason for the Right’s steadfast opposition to the new
regime is very simple: they do not believe it to be a legitimate government. No
matter how many times the constitutional lawyers and political scientists
insist that the present arrangement is perfectly legitimate: that a ‘coalition
of the losers’ has always been one of the potential outcomes of any MMP
election; the Right refuses to accept their arguments.
As adherents to New Zealand’s informal constitution, they
cannot reconcile National’s stunning election-night plurality with its
subsequent exclusion from government. How is it possible that a political party
securing 44.5 percent of the popular vote – 7.6 percentage points ahead of its
nearest rival – is denied power? How can it be ethical for a party receiving
fewer than 7 percent of the votes cast, to set aside the clear preference of
nearly half the electorate?
In the eyes of a worryingly large number of voters, the
politicians currently seated on the Treasury Benches cannot be considered a
legitimate government; and their leader, Jacinda Ardern, cannot be considered a
legitimate prime minister.
The corollary to this denial is equally troubling. If
Jacinda Ardern, the leader of the party which won the second-highest tally of
votes, is not the legitimate prime minister; then the proper bearer of that
title can only be the leader of the party which received the most votes: Bill
English.
It is possible that Bill English’s colleagues are unaware of
the power of this sentiment. As Members of Parliament, they know that the only
votes that count in the formation of a government are the votes cast on the
floor of the House of Representatives; and that the brutal truth of the present
situation is – National doesn’t have enough.
Unlike so many of those who voted for them, they are moving
on. The big question exercising their minds: Who should replace Bill – and
when?
In this regard, they are, arguably, a little premature.
Jacinda’s stardust continues to dazzle us – her performance
at Waitangi being just the latest demonstration of its brilliance – but,
beneath the sparkling surface of this coalition government, powerful
contradictions are at work. The Labour-NZF-Green government is determined to
lift New Zealanders into paradise, but it lacks the funds required to pay for
their new accommodation. Even worse, it is refusing to do what’s necessary to
raise them.
By Budget Day – 17 May – it will have become demoralizingly
clear to Jacinda’s Cabinet that her Finance Minister, Grant Robertson, is about
to make liars of them all. By then, he’ll have made it clear that their
generous promises of redress and renewal simply cannot be adequately funded.
That’s when the deepening fissures in this ramshackle political construction
will suddenly and dramatically widen; and the government’s most
loosely-fastened adornments will begin falling-off.
That will be National’s Jacobite Moment.
For those who know their Scottish history, the Jacobites
were the followers of the descendants of the deposed Stuart king, James II,
whom they hailed as the only legitimate rulers of Great Britain.
If this government falters, then the Opposition Leader will
be perfectly placed to become the nation’s “Jacobite” leader-in-exile: the only
legitimate inheritor of the 2017 General Election; the King-Over-The-Water;
Bonny Prince Billy.
The National Party’s best strategy is, therefore, to make no
move against Bill English until it becomes clear whether or not Jacinda Ardern
possesses the political skill to both deliver on Labour’s promises and adhere
to her Government’s self-imposed “Budget Responsibility Rules”
If she doesn’t, then the 44.5 percent can start serenading
their Bonny Prince Billy:
“Will ye no come back again?”
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, 9 February 2018.
