Welcome to the third annual political awards ceremony! Here, I speak to the biggest wins and most egregious errors of the year just past, bringing attention to those who got less than the cause célèbres.
The David Cameron award for biggest upset: Wayne Brown
Sure, by Election Day this was entirely possible, but at the start of the local elections nobody expected the biggest winner to be a 76 year old whose big achievements were in power management decades ago, who had last been in public office in 2013 (and never in Auckland itself), and who had been defeated in an 8500 to 2500 landslide. To win required an impressively persistent campaign strategy and plenty of errors from his opponents - no hate on Labour’s Efeso Collins, but this was the golden opportunity for his turnout strategy, and it proved to be the wrong choice. Stay tuned for the next article for 2023 predictions to hear more on Mister Brown.
The runner up shaking/crying/throwing up award for most upset: Gaurav Sharma
I found it hard to figure out what to say about him, because this said so absolutely little about the state of our politics. This was the high school drama approach on full display that many people, myself not excluded, have been plenty guilty of: bristle at some perceived slight or fault, don’t trust the other party to hear your complaint, and blow up for all to see. Only this was from a 36 year old doctor who made it into Parliament. I would admonish him to use his words, but good god, man, not like that! If this whole sorry episode speaks to anything, it is that party selection and induction processes (while especially suspect on National’s part) must improve across the board. And that if 1,242 Hamiltonians can vote for the Momentum Party, nothing will ever convince me that high schoolers voting could be more of a menace.
The “where are they now?” award for moving on: Paula Bennett
Imagine my bemusement at turning the TV on and seeing the Deputy Prime Minister selling properties in Queenstown. Let’s just hope they don’t have any meth in them.
Runner-up: Hamish Walker
Two former National MPs on the very same program, but one was thriving and one still looked like a loser. No prizes for guessing which was which.
The Leonardo DiCaprio Oscar for Catch Me If You Can: George Santos
Man’s brought laughs and cheer over Christmastime. Every time I see a new lie he told it cracks me up. Answering concerns about your integrity with “but Hillary Clinton” six years on is just the icing on the cake.
The Let the Wookie Win Award for Five Dimensional Dejarik: Grant Robertson
Stay posted for the next article after these end-of-2022 listicles, which will elaborate on this one.
The Baldwin Street award for worst hill to die on: Marama Fox
Why a witty, charming leader who didn’t deserve to lose in 2017 decided to make defending the Parliament protestors her gospel, completely against the position of her own party, I shall never know. (I’m probably going to discuss the odd light the protest threw on our society, particularly the Wellington left) in an article some time this year. To insist that Trevor Mallard had engaged in tactics akin to American psychological torture of innocents…??? Let me explain just one of the many key differences between a CIA black site and the Parliamentary lawn: you can get up and leave.
Runner-up: David Seymour, again (shared with the ACT caucus instead of Guantanamo Trev this time)
Who in the living daylights picks being against the indexation of tax brackets to inflation as their stand to make? The wonderful unionist Connor Molloy has a good, clear explanation of this wonkish topic here. It’s such a bafflingly incoherent political stand (I had to read the whole newsletter to come to this conclusion - the price I pay to blog) from a notoriously on-message party that it feels like it came from the opposite side of the aisle.
The Strong Team More Team Better Team award for political management: Rishi Sunak
On the serious side: he hasn’t been rolled yet, and while nothing could stop this Tory ship from listing, he hasn’t sighted any icebergs, never mind set up a collision course. This places him around the top quartile of every PM in the past dozen years. On the silly side: he instantly reinstated Suella Braverman to one of the top four Cabinet positions…six days after she resigned, both as a political manoeuvre and over a scandal. Which promptly restarted the scandal again, never mind the political trouble. (Did I mention she is on the record as saying sending asylum seekers from Britain to Rwanda is her “dream” and “obsession”?)
The Lazarus with a triple bypass award for political survival: Boris Johnson
BoJo performed so badly that the British government literally, without exaggeration or hyperbole, could not function by the time he resigned, so utterly had he destroyed trust within even his own party and Cabinet, and clogged Whitehall with endless distractions. Mere months later, his name was number two in contention for a comeback to replace Truss, his allies are already talking about a comeback coup next spring, and it would not be a surprise after a cooldown period to see him return to Cabinet. Words fail to describe a situation that only sheer astonished laughter can.
Best prediction: me, for weeks, claiming Liz Truss’s fiscal policy will put us all in trouble
As the Tory leadership contest dragged on, so did I. On and on I went about how, heedless of wider arguments about tax cuts, Liz Truss trying to solve inflation in an ailing economy by taking on state debt to subsidise the rich spending…was not good. And lo and behold! Never has a single government been so defined by a single policy: she came, she sawed through the tax brackets, she was thusly conquered.
Runner up:
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I’m perfectly willing to accept claims that the cost of living crisis is predominantly due to supply chain issues resulting from COVID and the Russian invasion. Adding on huge amounts of public sector demand when we’re all already scrambling to access and afford goods and services can’t have helped, especially when what these measures are actually intended to achieve is so unclear. We are left to fill in their good intentions or write our own narrative.
There’s also a lot of insightful thinking emerging in the past several years, some from the right and predominantly on the left, about the population and staffing of mainstream political parties like Labour (and National!) by well-educated, urban elites like me (a.k.a PMCs). They argue effectively that this is not only politically and socially detrimental, but also creates out-of-touch, dysfunctional governance where billions in spending and endless consultancy and commissions results in little actual improvement. See here for a good starter.
Worst prediction:
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🤯 Yeah, this pretty much obliterates both my Ws.
The Rangitata accountability award: Georgia, state of
The GOP keeps setting them up, Senator Warnock keeps knocking ‘em down. The latest being Herschel Walker, the Trump-backed NFL star with no relevant experience, who complained about fatherless households while abandoning and denying the existence of children he fathered; who crowed about law and order while again and again suffering allegations of violent outbursts and threats, up to and including holding a gun to his wife’s head; to insist his Christianity taught him to be anti-abortion and morally upstanding while pressuring his partners into having abortions; who spoke to the need to understand mental health needs and challenges while dismissing any mistreatment of others as irrelevant to his Senate campaign, because he had mental health issues, which…I…huh?! Good call, Georgia.
The Houdini discountability award: Sam Uffindell
In a country riven by domestic violence, that has gone far less far than we might like to pretend from the basic ills of human nature, we would do well to heed the lesson that, when somebody shows you what they will do given the opportunity and is not really interested in trying their best to make up for it, you probably shouldn’t keep rewarding them. A class act of a case study for what systemic privilege looks like on an individual level, and the harm and injustice it causes. More succinctly: party of law and order, my ass.
The “GY!BECIgJWTFAYTA?” award for eloquent rhetoric: Joe Biden
“Let me start off with two words: made in America.”
Runner-up: Joe Biden
When you’re feeling down, when you need a pick me up, something to do for a minute, always remember that Joe Biden quotes are just a Google search away.
Politician of the Year: Florida Governor Ron DeSantis
Trump’s election and Brexit in 2016 have provided a useful inflection for our narratives, both politically about the rise of populism and the far-right, and socially as the beginning of year after year sucking in various ways. Trump in particular has taken on this terrifying Teflon quality, where our rapid opposition to him conceals an insecurity that our complicated knots to trip him up with will always be cut through by his simple, unrelenting appeal. Sure, Joe Biden beat him, but one can hardly credit the man for having run a flawless campaign, delivering a landslide, or setting up an impregnable fortress for 2024.
Ron DeSantis is the first person to actually beat Trump at his own game. He’s smartly outshone him through Trump’s post-presidential years on the issue of COVID, turning to the culture wars to continue bolstering his image after, and in an enormously polarised country, won an astonishing 20-point victory in a former swing state. Now he is increasingly polling around or above Trump’s own support in the 2024 presidential primary, and is so attractive as an electable, conservative option for the party that he is practically locked into running by now. DeSantis is the new ascendant of this political era and, depending on how you calculate it, perhaps the likeliest person in two years’ time to be the most powerful in the world. God help us all.
Runner-up: Wellington Mayor Tory Whanau
This was expected to be a competitive three-horse race between Whanau, Labour’s Paul Eagle and centre-right incumbent Andy Foster. Even with Ray Chung proving to be a surprise right-wing dark horse, she thrashed her opponents. Through all the rounds of runoff counting no one else came close to even 20,000 votes, sticking more towards the floor of 10,000; she never dipped below 30,000. Low numbers to rule a city ten times the size, maybe, but that’s the nature of local politics: she gripped those who were keenly interested in civic life and she got them to the polls in a wave year against a centre-left status quo. Well done to her and the very best of luck.
2023’s brightest prospect: the Orange Man (no, not that one)
Look, I don’t want to have to actually think about my predictions right now; that’s for the next article. (Which is also a bright prospect, in 2023, to look forward to.) I’m already behind schedule, and right now all I can say in confidence is that, in 2023, we have an election to look forward to, and the Orange Man rides again. Happy New Year, let’s hope it’s a good one!
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