The National Party caucus meet at 3pm today to elect a new leader, but there’s one thing to discuss before getting to that. Lost amidst all the political chatter is the allegation, by Jacqui Dean against Simon Bridges, that set off this series of events in the first place. Indeed, that proven claim has frequently been explicitly set aside simply because Judith Collins weaponised Bridges’ misdemeanour for political purpose, and overstated its importance as “intimidation”.
Most galling came from former National employee Janet Wilson, finding who to blame for this sequence of events: “The first is Jacqui Dean, who in accepting Bridges’ apology more than four years ago displayed an astounding amount of political callowness in dragging the carcass of the issue out again.” Is it now callow to speak up about previously hidden discomfort you felt over a colleague’s behaviour? It’s not her fault she was saddled with that in the first place, it’s his. It would have been staggeringly easy for Bridges to simply not saunter over to a colleague and start talking about what he ought to do with his dick; he did it anyway.
Dean chose to confide in Collins, a leader known for being Stalinist towards her political rivals, meaning she could foresee Collins misusing those allegations. Do we now expect everybody who’s ever been made to feel uncomfortable to be a genius in calculating all the potential reasons they should stay silent? Or would we rather just encourage them to speak up and place the onus on those behaving inappropriately to cut it out?
Collins, for all her faults, also has been a genuine fighter for women against an unhealthy culture within National. Unfortunately, allegations that don’t cleanly fit a distinct narrative (e.g one foolish conservative accusing another) are often downplayed in importance. In this case, political journalists could only see them through a political lens, rather than considering them in their own right.
There are two conclusions to reach here, partly but not exclusively political in nature: one is that the potential next leader of the National Party has a new, distinct blot on his name. The other is that there is yet more evidence of a discomfiting culture in National, where men can be selected to run for Parliament in spite of their attitudes and behaviour towards women. Doesn’t take a genius to figure out why she took so long to come forward, and we can infer there’s decent odds on other, more serious allegations continuing to be sealed up, perhaps forever. The media have a responsibility to report on all of that too.
Putting that frustration aside, let’s come to the politics. The two probable leaders today are Simon Bridges or Chris Luxon. (Perennial candidate Mark Mitchell considered a run but, as always, got little support; liberal Chris Bishop contemplated having a go but, as we shall see, the liberals stand to gain more by falling in line behind Luxon).
There are three likely outcomes. Luxon prefers the first: thanks to the work of party figures like John Key, a brokered deal takes place where one of them wins and the other becomes Deputy and Spokesperson on Finance, preventing any vote. This avoids an outcome where a candidate narrowly loses the vote and can point to their margin as a reason to continue looking for a way in in the future. That’s precisely what’s motivated Bridges onwards since he lost to Muller last year, allegedly by just one vote. This is also likelier to result in Luxon declining to run at all, as Bridges is the only declared candidate so far. Unfortunately for National, this appears not to have come to pass.
Option two is similar, but will play out through how the vote goes: if Luxon wins, he may still reach the same arrangements with Bridges, while Bridges appears to intend to offer the same to Luxon if he beats him. However, if Luxon is forced to go to a vote and triumphs, he is likelier to reward the liberals, one of two key factions supporting him, by making Nicola Willis his Deputy. As she was a key figure in the Muller coup last year, the Bridges faction likely won’t be happy with this.
National appears to have a dream opportunity after the ugly events of last week. Judith Collins, a terrible influence on the party, has now destroyed her leadership, becoming the first National leader in over eighty years to lose a vote of no confidence, and is out of the way. Simon Bridges and Christopher Luxon can form a dream team that unites the party, ends the leaking, and sees them gain a bounce in the polls with their new look.
Best-case scenario, they beat a government that has next to nothing to show in the way of lasting policy achievements and may also still be battling inflation (especially in the housing market) and COVID. Worst-case scenario, they still build their numbers, ending any threat from ACT, let the leader step down and the deputy take their place, and can look forward to triumph in 2026.
There are just three problems with this fantasy scenario. They’re called Judith Collins, Christopher Luxon, and Simon Bridges.
Collins has resolved that she is going to stay on in National, and run for reelection in 2023. I think the way to explain her bizarre behaviour over the past few years, which has contributed nothing to the party, is that whatever position she currently occupies doesn’t really change her mentality. She was forced to resign from Key’s Cabinet; she came back. She lost a leadership race, then the 2020 election, then the leadership. She is still Judith Collins, political survivor, determined to fight back against everybody out there in the party and willing to do whatever it takes. The goal is not necessarily to reclaim the leadership, which she will surely never have again; the fight is the goal.
All of that means, of course, more leaking, sniping and disunity, which have been a problem for National for some time. This presents a lose-lose for the new leader. Force her not to run for reelection and not only does it look like the continuation of factionalism, but she may simply refuse come what may, forcing drastic measures. Bring her into the team, with a high-ranking portfolio worthy of her experience, and you alienate everybody sick of the Collins era. This question concerns not just what you do with Collins, but MPs like Muller whose political careers she has sidelined - do you get them back on track or make use of that fact?
Luxon is especially susceptible to this disease. The other key faction, besides the liberals who could get him to the 17 MPs he needs to win the leadership, are Collins and her quartet, who are probably thinking right about now they need her to stay politically alive or else she won’t be around to shield their faction from being squashed. A dirty deal with them - I’ve even heard Collins being suggested as a future Speaker of the House, an image so horrifying I’d rather scrub it out of my head than subject it to analysis - would naturally reinforce preexisting divisions, and undermine Luxon’s claims to be a fresh start for the party.
Luxon himself is no panacea. Well, he could be, but it’s as though National are doing everything possible to get in the way of that. He’s still perceived as a Christian conservative first, alien to the centre vote, even though, besides his maiden speech, he has chosen to talk more about his economic moderation, willing to support state intervention and consider environmental goals. To some extent, that’s just a media narrative.
Luxon has been denied opportunities to set his own narrative. Yes, Collins was the one who sidelined him into a minor portfolio, but National more broadly has an issue with unwillingness to encourage and develop potential future talent. Often, gagging their own MPs and discouraging public access to their internal debates on the issues is equated with ending all the leaking. If National spent less time playing politics and more actually formulating policy, then that'd go some ways towards enabling him - and other future prospects - to set out what they see as the best path forward. (As frequently plagues opposition parties, National suffer because much of the public no longer understands what key priorities and policies they actually stand for.)
The most baffling notion in National, though, is that marketing Luxon as John Key 2.0 is a plus, not a minus. Reason number one why that's a terrible idea: that again impedes any development of his own identity or unique advantages. Number two: a newbie MP who has made little impression is always going to come off second best in any comparison with Key. Why set your own guy up to be told you're no Jack Kennedy?
Number three, even if there is any advantage from association with Key, that diminishes by the year as the Key era - already half a decade ago! - falls further behind us. Even before COVID, few outside the National faithful were reminiscing over what foes label the "nine years of neglect". A global pandemic has only reinforced the notion that our world is utterly different to his.
National appear to be a party unwilling to take a risk on developing anyone new. (I'd still say they'll probably pick Luxon, but they can only bear to stomach the new by framing it as a throwback to the old with that godawful Key analogy.) The good news is they can always just bring back Simon Bridges. The bad news is that they would then be led by Simon Bridges.
Have we forgotten how dismally disliked he was? Talk all you want about new-look Bridges, but who’s going to be paying attention? A lot of perceptions will already be baked in, and for those willing to consider him, they’ll be seeing...a man intentionally shedding the carefree image of a rolled leader on a break to return to the role of a formal, professional political leader.
His response to Collins' allegations was to bemoan her move as "Truly desperate stuff”. That is not what a new-look man ready to get away from political infighting says. I personally think Bridges at his best can come off as honest and trustworthy. I also think he lacks the discipline to stay like that all the time. He still has the instincts and experience of a politician.
Bridges is going to make mistakes, as I laid out in the last article. Though the intro to this article counsels against the possibility, he may also face a lot of questions when he first takes over about his past misconduct towards Dean, rather than on ground like Labour's failings or whatever assists him in presenting his new public persona.
The issue then becomes if the caucus starts to consider if they have made a mistake. And that means more leaks and rumours about Luxon challenging Bridges, and then National is back to where they started. You can argue they wouldn’t risk another coup after 2020, but the media also said that about Judith, and that wouldn’t have been true even in a vacuum, let alone in a world where leaders make mistakes and opponents pounce on those.
National may still have a way forward in the next couple elections. ACT remains a potent coalition partner committing no errors of its own. Labour still needs to have something to show for their years in office, beyond good-not-great-getting-worse crisis management. The Nats do have some talent, mostly coming from the liberal wing, who could staff their front bench: keeping Willis on Housing, Bishop on COVID and interim leader Shane Reti (a behind-the-scenes policy wonk and social conservative ill-suited to the public presentation skills leadership requires) on Health are all no-brainers.
Nationalstill lack the talent needed to govern, or to recover if the worst comes to pass. They need better candidate selection to diversify their party and bring in the best talent rather than the best asskissers, and that process begins with dealing with the board. (Who Bridges has already signalled would be in his crosshairs, and whose role in the Dean affair may provide a casus belli.)
This is stuff I’m talking about because political infighting and intrigue are amusing and fun to me. But we should all care, even if you're a big fan of the government and foe of National, because New Zealand needs a good opposition, not just a good government. Labour aren't just making errors, or failing to get results - many of their decisions are also taking place without appropriate scrutiny. I’m not trying to insinuate any tired dictatorship-by-stealth nonsense.
Rather, we should remember that perfectly healthy democracies can still play home to individual laws that are draconian or ill-thought-out, particularly in how they may affect minorities or curtail individual rights in time of crisis. (While I'm very anti-anti-vaxxer, the consequences many of them now face will probably be the subject of my next article.)
Perhaps third parties will provide that necessary opposition. ACT’s silent caucus is only getting stronger and stronger in the polls, and the Greens, for reasons beyond my comprehension (perhaps COP26 crapping out?), are also gaining. Te Pāti Māori seem relatively static in the polls. All of them have little they can point to so far as actual achievements; in general, this has been an unproductive year for Parliament, beyond the bipartisan housing deal.
What is alarming to see is ACT abandoning their own political principles that have served them so well to come out against that bipartisan housing deal. The moment National actually contributed to good outcomes for New Zealanders, ACT abrogated their policy-first playing-politics-second role on the right of politics.
The dominance of COVID has meant less scrutiny on policy outcomes, and less priority given to them by policymakers. All of that leaves politicians uninvolved in the fight against COVID without much to do besides playing at political games. Hopefully National learn from that bipartisan deal (brokered by Willis, sadly not a candidate for the leadership) that the way forward from here is doing their job as public servants, not playing a musical game of thrones.
Comments