2020 election: Todd Muller faces MPs, members, in the party’s first major meeting since disastrous defeat

Former national leader Todd Muller will face party members this weekend at a North Central Island council meeting.

He will come face to face with MPs who recently lost their seats, including former New Plymouth MP Jonathan Young and former Hamilton West MP Tim Macindoe, along with Tania Tapsell, who failed to regain East Coat, the seat left by Anne. . Tolley.

The meeting will be chaired by President Andrew von Dadelzen, who recently described Muller’s leadership offer as “pathetic” in a Facebook post that was briefly withdrawn.

It will be the first time Muller has met von Dadelzen since, and the first time he has seen council members since the election, although he has been in a caucus meeting with MPs.

READ MORE:
* Election 2020: Regional President of the National Party attacked Todd Muller’s ‘pathetic’ leadership candidacy
* Is the new image of National really more socially conservative?
* The end of the triangle and the National road ahead.

The meeting is billed as something of a reckoning for Muller, with many MPs blaming the instability unleashed by his leadership bent for his disastrous electoral defeat. The party lost two more deputies on Friday, with the publication of the final vote.

Von Dadelzen said the meeting will focus on analyzing the electoral defeat. He said it was necessary to tell some of the homemade truths about the elections.

“Those kinds of things have to come out, so that’s okay,” he said of his Facebook post.

“The caucus must move forward and we must have a free and frank discussion both at the caucus level and at the party level.

“There is a lot of frustration and the volunteers have put in a lot of effort, and we better allow them to express it freely, then you can move on.”

The regional councils of the National Party meet regularly, usually to discuss administrative points, campaign strategy and policy, but von Dadelzen said this meeting would have an emphasis on debriefing after the last elections.

“We are going to spend a lot of time to do a report,” he said.

“The more frank we are, the better.”

“We have to learn what went well and what went wrong and you have to do that at all levels of the game,” he said.

In the last Parliament, National’s successful Central North Island (CNI) group once controlled all voters from Hamilton to the East Coast. Now he has lost more than a third of the 11 electorates he controlled.

Young, one of the deputies who lost his seat, said he would attend and that the party needed to “kick the tires and find out what went wrong.”

“The CNI used to be all blue and now we have lost quite a few votes,” he said.

Todd Muller did not respond to requests for comment.

There have been some hard feelings towards Muller in the caucus. After a mental health incident, Muller resigned from the party leadership and disappeared from public view.

Some MPs believe Muller must take some personal responsibility for the instability unleashed by his leadership challenge and apologize to the caucus for playing a major role in the party’s defeat.

One member said the closed-door meeting would quickly get personal.

“They are going to kill each other,” they said.

“There have also been many internal problems, emails flying.”

But other MPs are more circumspect and fearful of burdening Muller with more stress.

“I can’t bear Todd any bad feeling,” said one.

But they said the CNI meeting would be an important moment to litigate some of the party’s problems.

“It will be a case of analyzing the reasons for such a devastating result,” said a deputy.

“There is no doubt that there were aspects in the last three years that were so incredibly bad for the country that they naturally had a very detrimental impact on how the general public viewed us.

“Until we achieve unity of discipline and a focus again on the issues that matter to New Zealanders rather than the inner workings of the national party.”