Muller-mentum puts Peters in comfort zone
After two months being politically locked down, NZ First came up for air this week, slamming Labour for not getting the country out of level 2 more quickly. Most tellingly, Winston Peters said that Covid-19 wasn’t the problem any more, but a slow economic recovery was.
Make no mistake, despite the prime minister’s dutiful reassurances that there will be differences of opinion, senior figures within Labour are fuming. That’s because NZ First’s bolshie behaviour is generally a positive for it, but can be a problem for Labour.
But based on the numbers – as of Friday, there’s just one active case of Covid-19 left in the country – it is hard to disagree with Peters. Provided border arrivals are quarantined or self-isolated, and diligent contact tracing continues, the domestic health threat appears all but over. There will be a lot of New Zealanders quietly cheering Peters’ sentiment.
And quite aside from the fact that NZ First has consistently been concerned about the need to get the economy humming again since the beginning of the lockdown, it’s now a matter of political urgency for the party. The same two polls that ended up felling former National leader Simon Bridges showed NZ First polling under 3 per cent.
And so, at the same time as a bunch of disenfranchised, ambitious and panicky Nats thought that Simon Bridges was too unpopular and a bit de´ classe´ to be the leader of the natural party of government, so Muller’s elevation has breathed some fresh life into NZ First.
Despite National’s poor polling, no-one – including those in the National Party and among the Muller camp – thought it was going to be that bad for that long. Sure, the plotters made an expedient argument that the polling simply wouldn’t recover because of Bridges’ personal unpopularity, but most thought it would bounce back by 10 points.
But Muller’s first week in charge has revealed a man unprepared for what he might do with his newfound leadership. He has kept going on about ‘‘the economy in your community’’, how important local businesses and communities are, and how those are the people he will be working for.
It is a laudable goal, but it’s a political slogan, not a plan. What was really required in Muller’s first week were a couple of bold policy announcements that would demonstrate he actually had a strategy to gee up those local economies, and one that was markedly different from Labour’s.
Yesterday we saw the first part of the plan: a $10,000 subsidy to businesses for each new worker they employ up to 10. This is designed to give businesses cashflow headroom and lessen the risk of hiring new staff. Muller has also joined with NZ First and started pressing Labour on its softly-softly approach to opening up the economy.
National’s other big post-Covid recovery policy is still a hangover from the Bridges era: a $100,000 GST cashback for qualifying businesses.
Unless Muller announces – and can sell – a coherent strategy for delivering his slogan, he could easily drift into the territory of David Shearer and David Cunliffe in New Zealand or Malcolm Turnbull in Australia and Theresa May in the UK. All coveted either the party leadership or prime ministership, but curiously hadn’t seemed to work out what they wanted to do once they got there.
Another ominous sign was that National’s front bench didn’t contain a single Ma¯ ori MP. Now if National chose its people deliberately on merit (which is never the case in choosing party front benches) and simply defended it, that’s one thing. But it appeared to be an oversight, which made it very poor political management.
That was then followed up by the cringeworthy spectacle of deputy leader Nikki Kaye casting around to find a Ma¯ ori in National’s top 12 – she nominated Paul Goldsmith, who said that he wasn’t. It simply played into every negative National Party stereotype that the party had tried to rid itself of during the Key-English years.
It was also ironic, given that one of the big arguments made by team Muller was that Bridges was going to get so smashed at the ballot box there would be no diversity in the National Party because most of its ethnic minorities and women were on the party list. Now if National gets hosed there will be no little diversity on its front bench either.
Muller’s emerging personal political philosophy – that the National Party should create the economic conditions in which people can be raised up and can all achieve their potential – is an attractive one.
But the Nats as a whole seem to have been seduced by the strength of their own economic management brand, into thinking that voters will flock back as the economic situation worsens. But the public has overwhelmingly supported the Government’s response to date – health and economic – and there is no evidence that people blame it for Covid-19 or the downturn.
There may well be a lot of people out there who are, or who have become, sceptical of the lockdown, but Muller has said the Government basically got that right. The point is that a tanking economy isn’t likely to somehow come in and turn around National’s electoral fortunes by September.
Which brings us back to NZ First, which would certainly act as a handbrake on a Labour-Green government and could be the beneficiary of National’s failure should Muller not improve its electoral fortunes.
The most uncomfortable space for Peters’ party was where it was prior to Covid: in a tight race in which one side had ruled it out. Despite Jacinda Ardern’s popularity, Labour had not been able to leap clear of National. That meant that NZ First had to necessarily hug up to Labour and do its best to differentiate while also beating out National.
Now that Labour has pulled clear, even an electoral miracle would still see National needing NZ First to govern. That puts Peters back in his strongest territory: credibly promising to go with either side.
The National policy of not negotiating with NZ First remains, but Muller was somewhat more equivocal about it when he seized the leadership, and NZ First thinks it has an in. And, it will now have far more latitude to campaign against Labour on what it views as its policy wins: a farmer-friendly Zero Carbon Act, no capital gains tax, sensible water reforms, strong defence and foreign affairs policy, and the Provincial Growth Fund.
And what about the Government? Well, depending on the poll, it is either travelling at 56 per cent or 59 per cent. So if all goes well it won’t even need the Greens to govern, let alone worry about NZ First or National. But history suggests that is unlikely.
Now that Labour has pulled clear, even an electoral miracle would still see National needing NZ First to govern.