Marlborough Express - Weekend Express
Nats look to staunch the bleeding
TALKING POLITICS
As in the old game show The Money or The Bag, the National Party caucus chose the unknown quantity in the bag last week because . . . well, Todd Muller could hardly do worse than Simon Bridges and his flaws can be rectified
(somewhat) in post-production. The political cosmeticians can be relied on to present Muller’s underwhelming presence in a positive light: expect to hear a lot about Mr Reliable and The Quiet Achiever. Muller’s deputy, the Auckland Central MP Nikki Kaye, is there to provide the sparkle factor.
Kaye also represents the urban liberal wing of the National Party. However, Muller (who voted against the recent bill to legalise abortion) happens to be the third consecutive
National leader from the socially conservative end of the party spectrum. Beforehand, Muller’s farming background was the only thing widely known about him.
Since time immemorial, a certain tension has always existed between the National’s small business/rural factions and its Auckland base among major corporates, bankers and currency traders. When John Key was King those ancient rifts didn’t matter. Everyone got in behind.
Obviously, Bridges wasn’t Key – or even Bill English – and Muller isn’t Jacinda Ardern, either. He’s been chosen as the damage limitation option, and anything else will be a bonus. One complicating factor that might have made the final vote closer than the polling logic would suggest is the former Air New Zealand chief executive Christopher Luxon, the party’s much-anticipated candidate for
Botany. For the past nine months, John Key has been touting Luxon as a future National leader.
To that end, the caucus could have chosen to stick with Bridges on the basis that he would resign after his election defeat, clearing the way for Luxon’s elevation. Ultimately though, the caucus voted for Muller not as the future face of the party but as the only available solution to its immediate problems.
With luck, Muller will pull enough extra votes to save some of his colleagues in list positions and in marginal electorates including Kaye, who enjoys only a slim majority in Auckland Central. No doubt, Muller will be a popular choice among the farming sector on which the country will increasingly depend. Finally, he’ll delay Luxon’s ascent long enough for everyone to find out if Luxon is anything more than just a twinkle in John Key’s eye.
Bridges can’t really complain. A smarter operator would have put National’s alleged business expertise at the service of a country in crisis and forced Labour to churlishly reject his patriotic offers of assistance. Instead, Bridges chose to snark from the sidelines.
Historians will compare him to Phil Goff in 2011, another middleweight successor to his party’s heavyweights who proved to be just as ineffectual against a charismatic prime minister. Goff got replaced by a decent bloke (David Shearer = Todd Muller) and in turn the decent bloke got rolled by someone who subsequently failed to live up to party expectations, and to his own hype.
Yes, if history repeats, Christopher Luxon could end up being the centre-Right’s equivalent of David Cunliffe. Faced with that alternative universe, Muller looks like a very sound option both before, and after, Election Day 2020.