Politics Jane Clifton
There’s no risk of National’s new leader boring us.
Sometimes there’s no getting away from the puns in politics. The new National leader has some bridges to build – the first over a troubled caucus.
Externally, he shouldn’t have nearly as big a problem. Simon Bridges’ election will energise our politics. He’s boisterous, gutsy, personable and smart. There’s no risk, as there often is with Opposition leaders, of his boring the public. And since generational change is the premier political appetite these days, he and Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern make an uncannily photogenic cruet set for the glossy mags.
Bridges ticks so many boxes it’s a bit corny. He is Westie-born, made his career in provincial Tauranga, speaks like a tradie rather than the Oxford masters law graduate he is, is a father of three – and, wouldn’t you know it, is also kind to animals. His first political coup was a successful private member’s bill to increase penalties for animal cruelty.
Bridges has flasher academic qualifications than any National leader, or indeed New Zealand prime minister, since he’s been alive. And though he’s not yet a media darling, he shares with Sir John Key a welcome inability to say “No comment” or any of its variants. It’s always time for Simon Says.
However, as with all contested caucus votes, not all his colleagues are as confident about him as he is, and that he won on the second ballot shows he has a majority of them to convince. He appears to have suffered from “coolest kid in school” syndrome, being far cleverer than anyone else in most rooms and – a cardinal sin in New Zealand culture – failing to pretend not to know it.
THE GOLDEN RULE
The five-way contest to replace
Bill English brought up yet again a golden rule that a surprising number of politicians never learn – or vainly assume couldn’t possibly apply to them. It’s the one about being courteous, especially to those junior to or less gifted than oneself.
How they treat people on the way up may not prevent serial ill-treaters from reaching the top, but it sure accelerates the greasing of the skids under them later. Labour’s David Cunliffe would have been lucky to scrounge a gnawed pencil stub from his caucus by the end of his short leadership stint. Australia’s Kevin Rudd’s nadir was at more than 30,000 feet, making a stewardess cry because he disliked his sandwich – the appalling resonance with voters accelerating his demise.
It’s not complicated. If lots of the people you work with think you’re a bit of an arse, voters take an important message from that. Bridges and one of his unsuccessful rivals, former Finance Minister Steven Joyce, had both treated many colleagues so brusquely that each lost votes they
Bridges speaks like a tradie rather than the Oxford masters law graduate he is.
could otherwise have had. By some accounts, Bridges would have bolted home had he shown the humility and good sense to mend fences with MPs he had rubbed up the wrong way. Amy Adams’ support was ballasted by MPs vehemently resistant to Bridges, and Mark Mitchell’s run – shelved at the last minute but comfortably into double figures – was aided by an antiBridges sentiment, too.
Also unsuccessful for misconstruing the inflection in the phrase “charm offensive” was the public favourite, Judith Collins. While cultivating and mentoring younger colleagues, she has calculatedly brought so much
trouble to her leaders’ doors over the years that any niceness, when it manifests, is simply not trusted.
However, Bridges is unlikely to find himself in Cunliffe’s predicament. He has much stronger caucus support than Labour’s ill-fated ex-leader and the ability to fatten it up quite quickly. He hasn’t tried to play the party against the caucus – that was Collins’s strategy this time. Most important, he has every chance of appealing to National voters and restoring the party’s electoral prospects, and popularity is like Clearasil to intra-caucus grudges.
NO RE-JOYCING
But again, like all new leaders, he has some nonnice-guy chores. In this vein, there will be no re-Joycing. Joyce’s days as finance supremo, and even campaign maestro, are almost certainly over. Bridges knows a caucus majority supports Joyce’s relegation – and not just because so many resent his having been reportedly beastly to them in person.
He’s the last bastion of the iron-fisted KeyEnglish-Joyce era – massively popular but not exactly collegial. Other MPs’ bright ideas were often summarily batted aside because John/Bill/Steven already knew what was best. Joyce’s ill-advised leadership run – he barely beat Collins – has not helped safeguard his future.
However, there will be no Collins-oscopy. It’s a no-brainer that “Crusher” Collins is a major frontbench weapon, and the only ticklish question is whether to give her the finance portfolio ahead of Adams. In the spirit of caucus faction unification, Adams’ experience and competence would make her a logical choice for that senior job. But Collins may be more the demolition unit required, given that – with the popular Ardern a risky target – National needs to concentrate its firepower on her key lieutenants and policy agents. They’re all squarely in the finance zone: Finance Minister Grant Robertson with his narrowing fiscal options, Phil Twyford with the logistical nightmare of new housing and Shane Jones with the billion trees and the regional development mega-fund.
Bridges’ other challenges are more cyclical. The risk for new opposition leaders is one of rearranging the deckchairs not so much on the Titanic but on the Mary Celeste. Traditionally, first-term oppositions face a mandatory Bermuda Triangle of irrelevance till the novelty of the new government wears off and the first of the inevitable falls from grace by inexperienced or vainglorious new ministers begins.
He is also up against awful succession statistics. The pace at which oppositions have changed leaders for failing to lift poll ratings has accelerated greatly in the past 20 years, so that the political commentariat was picking the next couple of National leaders even before Tuesday’s ballot chose Bridges.
That talk will still for now, as he commands the traditional honeymoon of media attention. Bridges has shrewdly refrained from vowing to do more than refresh the policy platforms that, after all, got National the most votes not six months ago. One thing’s for sure, though: the next Simon Says instruction won’t be “sit on your hands”.
There will be no Collins-oscopy. “Crusher” Collins is a major frontbench weapon.