The Year No-one Saw Anything Coming
A National Party without John Key poses challenges for the Nats but also Labour, writes
When future generations look back on this year they will refer to it as The Year NoOne Saw Anything Coming. Not Brexit, not Trump and now – in our own little antipodean way – not John Key’s resignation.
The palpable sense of shock at the prime minister’s sudden resignation should be seen in the context of other recent shocks. The cumulative effect of all of this change is, for many, deeply unsettling. It’s one thing for unexpected change of significant magnitude to occur overseas but this sort of thing tends not to happen here.
In another sense, however, we should perhaps not be all that surprised by the Key announcement. Go out while still on top. That’s the advice we routinely offer sports people from our couches. And after all, it’s what the prime minister’s good mate Richie McCaw did, so why not the nation’s leading politician?
In that respect all Key has done is bring things forward 18 months or two years. Most pundits expected him to take National into next year’s election, secure a historic fourth successive victory, and make way for a new leader partway through the term. By going now he removes all risk to his legacy and gives his successor time to put together a cohesive team and plot a successful election campaign to which the (by then) former prime minister will lend his considerable mana.
But of course there’s more to it than that. Key’s early departure poses some challenges to National, the most obvious of which concerns the extent to which the party owes its electoral success since 2008 to its leader. Now we get to see how much of National’s long, electoral golden weather has been a function of Key’s personal popularity.
His resignation is also both an opportunity and a challenge for the Opposition parties. For Labour, in particular, whose present leader, Andrew Little, has struggled to make significant inroads into Key’s popularity, this must look like an early Christmas present. Following the conventional wisdom, remove Key from the top of National’s order and a fairly ordinary middle order is exposed. There may be something to that but it won’t be so simple. Successful prime ministers surround themselves with good people: Key has shone in no small part because of the work done by others around him, not least Bill English.
Further, National has known this day was coming. It may have come earlier than most within the party would have liked, but National won’t fall prey to factional infighting and hand Little the election on a plate. The new leader, and deputy leader, will be experienced parliamentarians and will benefit from the goodwill the public will extend to Key (assuming they are the people he backs). That goodwill is likely to show up in the next round of polls and it may be some time before we get a clear sense of the extent to which the public distinguish between Key and National.
Which begs the obvious question. Who will emerge from next week’s caucus meeting as National’s new leader? Key has endorsed English. English’s last term at the helm was a disaster but that was a long time ago and he has been an exceptionally able deputy, and Minister of Finance, since 2008. But he too, of course, has been around for a while and may not wish to assume the demands of the top position at this point in his life.
Moreover, while Key’s wishes carry a lot of weight today, that moral authority will quickly fade and other considerations – personal and political – will certainly be in play in National’s next caucus meeting. Key has been a popular and effective leader but he is a prime minister, not a benevolent autocrat, and his wishes count for only so much. He doesn’t get to anoint the next incumbent.
It’s important also to think about the deputy leadership: National will be thinking about a partnership, not just the top job. There are numerous imperatives in play: age, gender, geography, the need to construct a top-of-the-ticket partnership that (as Key and English did) appeals to the urban north and the rural south, and so on. The next leader and deputy leader will stamp their authority on the National Party for the next several years (even if the new leader loses next year’s election it’s unlikely they would be replaced), and so the party will be looking for a combination that is of broad and enduring appeal.
Above all, perhaps, in these supposedly populist times it will be looking for someone able to connect with voters the way Key has for so long. Objectively, of course, he shouldn’t have been able to do so: Key was no more an ordinary Kiwi bloke than Donald Trump is a natural ally of working people. But that wasn’t the point: what he has is a sense of self-deprecation, an ease with others and a finely tuned sense of what matters to people that National would like to bottle. They can’t, of course, but what chance a duo between a Westie Chick and a Southern Man?
Richard Shaw is professor of politics at Massey University’s College of Humanities and Social Sciences.