Buffoons in arms — New Zealand’s BoJo Fan Club

National Party leader Simon Bridges could find some hope in British Prime Minister Boris Johnson’s rise to the top job. After all, Johnson had once declared his chances of becoming Prime Minister “are about as good as the chances of finding Elvis on Mars, or my being reincarnated as an olive”.

Many think the same about Bridges. So it was that Bridges seemed to reach for same of the same oratory Johnson tends to deploy when delivering his verdict on Johnson’s success.

Honesty triumphed over diplomacy, and Bridges announced Johnson was “buffoon-like”.

He went on to say Johnson sometimes ended up with “marmalade on his chin”.

It did follow 90 seconds of Bridges’ singing Johnson’s praises with words such as “impressive” and saying he was the right man for the times in Britain. He later described the buffoon comment as a “term of endearment”.

Others politicians were also happy to wax lyrical about Johnson, leaving out the honest part of the critique.

Deputy PM Winston Peters declared him “a seriously intelligent chap” with great courage and charisma.

NZ First’s Shane Jones (perhaps the

closest to Johnson that New Zealand has, on Bridges’ definition) picked “colourful”.

The National Party’s Judith Collins also tweeted an enthusiastic: “Oh, praise be! Hope for the UK” at the news.

Nor was it only politicians.

One senior MP was incredulous about a journalist’s (ahem) appreciation for Johnson and demanded to know the considered reasoning behind it.

It was explained that as a general rule, journalists favoured the path to chaos.

It was also explained that the first brush with Johnson was in 2013 on former PM John Key’s visit to City Hall in London.

The media arrived to hear Johnson belting out Alouette at the top of his voice.

He emerged before Key arrived to meet the media and shook a pot plant’s hand as a stand-in for Key so the cameras could check the lighting and angles.

The second encounter was four years later when Johnson visited NZ and asked at Zealandia whether, if a kiwi “really, really tried”, it could fly. He was very, very funny. “And that is my considered reasoning,” the MP was told.

Most of those marking the ascent of BoJo, from PM Jacinda Ardern to Bridges, described Johnson as a friend or champion of New Zealand.

This is presumably based on Johnson’s previous statements about things such as a Commonwealth labour mobility zone, improving the lot of Kiwis wanting to work and live in Britain. It is an idea on which Johnson has waxed and waned, depending on his ability to deliver. When in a position to deliver, he tends to wane.

But Johnson seems to enjoy the same suspension of disbelief in keeping his promises as Peters himself. Lofty statements are treated with a grain of salt. If they never come to pass, that is okay because it was the thought that counts.

In short, Johnson is funny and funny makes a lot forgivable.

That is more than can be said for a Green Party advertisement in retaliation to the National Party ads against the Government’s so-called “car tax” proposal.

The sudden outburst of attentiongrabbing ads and extended interviews by the Prime Minister may be explained by the fact Colmar Brunton is currently polling for the next 1 News poll — and all the parties know it. It has precipitated a rather unseemly scrambling to try to nudge the political dial.

That could also explain why Labour’s internal polling results from UMR have been leaked to Newstalk ZB and Newshub, reportedly showing National on 38 per cent. It almost certainly explains why last week National went into its frenzy of advertising on the so-called “car tax” — Bridges will not want his party conference this weekend punctured by a dud poll.

The Green Party decided to enter the fray with its spoof ad. It used a National Party ad of Bridges in a used car yard with a voiceover that was a rather exaggerated version of Bridges’ already exaggerated accent.

Alas, the Greens had forgotten how sensitive their own members were to socalled “dirty politics”.

This was more at the level of ever so slightly smudged politics but nonetheless within an hour or so the party pulled the ad after a torrent of objections from Green Party supporters and members.

The mistake they made was to target the man, rather than the ball.

Poor old Green Party co-leader James Shaw started by defending the ad as “meta” but soon had to front on the backdown, saying he had thought it was funny but if you had to explain your own joke it clearly wasn’t.

Bridges came up with the rather clever line he was holding the Government to account while the Green Party was holding his accent to account. For one brief moment, that accent became a political asset instead of a liability.