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Commentary
Publicly, the National Party claims that it did everything it could in the election campaign and is silent about the leader in the room. But it’s time to ditch the blue tinted glasses, writes Tim Murphy.
Who of the 34 national parliamentarians meeting today in Parliament will tell their leader Judith Collins that the Empress has no clothes?
They meet as a caucus on Wednesday and reportedly begin individual sessions with the National leader to review the dire outcome of the party’s elections, gaining 26.9 percent of the vote and losing 19 seats, and his campaign nearly mocking.
Since that result, however, the excuses emanating from Collins and his acolytes have been legion: it was Covid, stupid; taking the lead for 13 weeks was a “great hospital pass”; Auckland’s second blockade disrupted campaign plans; ACT; National voters turned to Labor to block the Greens; indiscipline of the caucus; Jami-Lee Ross leaks; Simon Bridges; Todd Muller; Matthew Hooton; Denise Lee’s email; Jacinda is an act of God.
Rather, there have been attempts to make themselves and the public believe that Collins’ own efforts were exemplary, committed, optimistic, and hard-working; that everything would have been much worse without her; that the seats were saved, not lost, by the campaign led by her and her deputy Gerry Brownlee; They all went out of their way and that’s all you can ask for.
It has been a bit of an out-of-body experience, and worse, it appears to be more than bravado designed to keep a brave face in front of the public. Could the National team on the bridge really believe it was the iceberg’s fault?
It was Hooton who wrote after the election that National’s grand caucus of the last term, having won 44 percent of the vote in 2017, never really accepted that it had been rejected by voters and backed down in blaming New Zealand. First for stripping her of her share. when he partnered with Labor. Hooton suggested that reality was not verified, but the belief that things would return to their natural state in time was.
Now, after being beaten, the party accepts the need for a ‘review’ of its performance and processes, but its cascade of excuses so far does not inspire confidence that it will be what is needed, a kind of truth and the reconciliation.
For professional politicians to keep a straight face while claiming that Collins campaigned well, Brownlee’s campaign was communicating effectively internally, and that everyone did the best they could is delusional.
Collins always brought too much political baggage to paper: the dark and disloyal things that she now claims (for her over others) are at the center of voters’ rejection of her party. He didn’t have the political retail appeal to make people like her and National listen to him. She scorned the party’s most popular figure for decades, John Key, in her book just months before the election.
Strangely he deviated from his rhythm and had little energy and low impact during many of his 13 weeks in charge before Election Day: Ardern had only eight weeks as the leader before winning in 2017, elevating his party by 13 points. percentage since the mid-20s in the process.
Collins and his followers celebrated old-fashioned “victories” such as interrupting and talking too much about Ardern in the first debate. The Labor Party observed their discussion and analysis groups the next day, and after each debate, and saw the opinion of the people who told them that the real “victory” was theirs.
Collins joked, raised an eyebrow, and seemed increasingly agitated on the evening television news. In the background of the campaign, he called Ardern a liar over the claim that Labor would still introduce a Greens policy of a wealth tax, with a taunt that the prime minister should sue. And he lost the big people vote with a strange comment about fat people needing some personal responsibility.
In the final days of the campaign, when an inevitable defeat loomed, Collins hinted that National had been in the mid-20s in internal polls before taking office, but still, on the eve of the election, he told the AM Show that I expected to arrive in the late 30’s. Day. Before.
After the loss, he suggested that National might have been “in his teens” if he had followed the trajectory before Collins. There’s a bit of a restructuring of the story there.
A leader brings out the best in her team. In this campaign, the three leaders in the caucus, Collins, Brownlee (an ‘interesting series of facts’) and Paul Goldsmith ($ 4 billion) had surprises. His team played accordingly.
Collins claims National took a five-point hit in its internal polls after Denise Lee’s email criticizing Collins and her captain’s call announcing an Auckland Council review was leaked to Newshub. The leader blames the act of filtering, the indiscipline that led one deputy to filter another’s criticism of Collins, for the damage. Not the content from that devastating email from Lee. Remember, Lee took aim not only at Collins ‘whimsical ad, but more importantly, he broadened the dissatisfaction to criticize Collins’ action as “incredibly poor form and shows a shockingly bad example of poor culture.”
In the heat of the campaign battle, MPs looked the other way, prepared to follow Collins’ publicity rather than listen to what turned out to be a pertinent criticism from a colleague.
The bad culture Lee noticed, rather than how it leaked, might have given National success in the polls, but that’s far too awkward a narrative for what is being framed these past 10 days.
On a broader scale, National cannot yet decide whether Ardern’s Labor gained public endorsement of its Covid-19 response or not. National MPs have spent six months claiming that Labor has been asleep at the wheel, reckless, hopeless and deficient. Now, looking around their huge bench hall, they seem to believe that the pandemic won the election for Labor, with the public happy with the situation in the country. You cannot have both.
As for Covid disrupting its public campaign, is anyone seriously suggesting that Collins was going to draw huge crowds? She is not, and was not, that kind of politics. While Labor, ACT, and others rolled out finely honed digital campaign responses, National and NZ First considered not holding imaginary public gatherings of the Muldoon-era Wiri wool shop.
On election night, Collins tried to convince herself and her cheerleaders that National had the most comprehensive policy package of any opponent she had ever seen. It was a great claim. But many of his most important policies were flawed (Goldsmith’s fiscal hole in fiscal policy) or profoundly incomplete (the bizarre, multi-billion dollar, geologically unlikely promise of tunneling both in the Brynderwyn ranges and in Kaimai, an answer to a question no one was asking).
National always faced it, with the electorate’s historic aversion to ruling out a first-term government. But it is very likely that he has made his situation worse, not better, by ditching the leaders, the infighting, and ultimately choosing the wrong person to carry his flag.
Collins will see it this year, of course, and probably next. No one wants to take over until the smoking ruins have been cleared and the foundations for a new structure are in place.
But internally at least, as MPs meet this week without the distractions of former colleagues waving silver platters, it is probably time to put the pretense aside.
Forget the massive caucus ‘optics’ awkwardly behind Collins at press conferences. Someone – Denise? – you need to start delivering some homemade truths about the failed experiment of the last 14 weeks.
