Hope versus plan English
Labour’s delight is reflected in inverse proportion to despair in National. It never took a fourth term for granted.
But only two and a half months ago, following a successful Budget which featured a family incomes package worth $2 billion annually, National was polling close to 50 per cent.
There was no strong mood for change and those looking for a New Zealand equivalent of what happened in the US election and Britain’s EU vote were frustrated.
National had made a pretty good fist of rejuvenating its front bench with the likes of Amy Adams and Simon Bridges in leading positions.
But Ardern’s elevation makes those relatively young ministers look somewhat weathered.
English’s campaign about “a plan” for New Zealand is intrinsically tied to his successful record as Finance Minister and having set targets to get the Government’s books back in the black and done it.
It is tied to notions of security and setting new targets for a growing economy but nothing too dramatic.
English has rare moments of being inspiring. But he is almost never inspiring on television.
That’s why the “plan” has to do the talking for National — roads, lots and lots of roads, tax cuts, law and order, sanctions for beneficiaries, help for home buyers but not too much help, in fact not a great deal of difference from the campaign fare of the past three elections that have been masterminded by Steven Joyce.
In the party as campaign chairman and in the Government as Finance Minister, Joyce is an all-powerful figure — too powerful it seems for anyone to have warned him that his cunning plan to attack Labour’s fiscals last week could make him look like an ass.
But at least if National can’t recover in the next two weeks, it has someone to blame other than English. Bill English