Nats about to gather to mull over Bridges’ fate
The National Party caucus will hold an emergency meeting tomorrow to hold a vote on Simon Bridges’ leadership.
Bridges confirmed yesterday that he was aware of a two-person challenge to his leadership following a devastating poll from Newshub on Monday night that put his party at just 30.6 per cent support.
It is understood within the party that this challenge ticket consists of Bay of Plenty MP Todd Muller as leader and Auckland Central MP Nikki Kaye as deputy, although neither MP has responded to requests for comment. Muller emailed his colleagues yesterday afternoon laying out his challenge for the leadership of the party, saying it could not win the election under
Simon Bridges
Bridges said yesterday morning he was keen to face the challenge off as soon as possible, and believed the ‘‘overwhelming majority’’ of his caucus would back him.
This would usually have to wait until the regularly scheduled caucus meeting on Tuesday once Parliament resumes, but National will instead meet at noon tomorrow. However, with few flights and MPs scattered around
the country, this could be logistically difficult.
This news follows an extraordinary 48 hours since the Newshub poll was released. On the numbers, National would not just be out of contention from Government, it would also lose 16 MPs.
After it was reported on Tuesday that Bridges would face a vote of confidence whenever the caucus next met, Bridges confirmed the leadership challenge on his Wednesday media slots.
Former leadership aspirants Judith Collins and Mark Mitchell both ruled themselves out of contention, leaving Muller and Kaye as the obvious ticket, as confirmed by sources within the party.
One MP who is backing Bridges to stay on as leader applauded this move, saying nothing should be done ‘‘skulking around behind the curtains’’.
The MP, who spoke to Stuff on condition on anonymity, said they rated both Muller and Kaye as MPs but did not think they were the right face for the party – because Muller was ‘‘pale, stale and male’’ and because the two were perceived to come from the left of the party.
Other MPs who spoke to Stuff on Tuesday on condition of anonymity were far from pleased with Bridges, however, saying it was hard to see him winning an election with his preferred prime ministerial ratings at 4.5 per cent.
Nothing should be done ‘‘skulking around behind the curtains’’. MP
counterfactual to the promising career of MP and Bolger government minister Simon Upton.
Only a decade Muller’s senior, Upton rapidly rose up the National ranks, becoming the youngest MP in Parliament in 1981 and taking the coveted health portfolio from Helen Clark, who had held it in the last days of the fourth Labour government. He was talked about often as a potential PM. But he hit a political ceiling and retired in 2001.
People who put Upton and Muller together say they’re similar people who chose very different paths: one, straight into politics and early ministerial responsibility, the other, a backroom guy who decided the best way to the ninth floor was to take the circuitous route through the private sector.
Muller is held up as having made the right call. The National Party left by John Key places a high value on private-sector experience. If being prime minister was the goal, it’s too early to tell who made the right call. Upton was a minister – Muller hasn’t even served a second full term as MP, let alone held a ministerial warrant.
He didn’t just vanish into the private sector. Zespri and Fonterra are no ordinary private sector companies; Zespri is a monopsony and Fonterra is effectively a monopsony, meaning a single buyer for multiple sellers. Both are corporate jewels. They’re private companies, sure, but knowing your way around the corridors of power helps a lot.
Muller’s backers will say it’s given him an insight into the engine room of the economy and he certainly held forth on the organisational tension within Fonterra of delivering high milk prices to farmers, and maximising margin for its value-add products.
The private sector was good to Muller. Auckland life was lucrative, but the call of the Beehive never went away. Indeed, National made several overt attempts to parachute him into a safe seat during his years in the business sector.
Accounts of Muller’s decision to take up the seat in 2014 differ. Some versions have it that he was told if he didn’t give it a crack, National would stop ringing, but others say the party wouldn’t just let someone like Muller go.
Detractors lash Muller as a return to the ‘‘pale, stale, male’’ era of big business and bigger egos the party should have left behind. But Muller backers equally make the point that if National plans to torch Labour for a lack of private-sector experience, Crown prosecutorcum-MP Bridges might not be the man to do it.
Both men are known to be very hard-working – as is prospective deputy Kaye. But there are lots of hard workers in Parliament. Leading a party, and leading the country, requires more than that.
As the race for the National Party leadership gets real, the key question that the party needs to ask itself is whether changing the leader is worth the cost, or whether it will be buying itself a whole lot of nothing.
Todd Muller and Nikki Kaye have now firmed as a potential ticket to run against Simon Bridges and presumably Paula Bennett. Judith Collins has reportedly confirmed she will not contest the leadership, as has MP Mark Mitchell.
Aside from the obvious political question – will we fare better or worse in the polls — and on election day — with a new leader? – there is another question the Nats need to ask themselves. And that is: how great a risk will the precedent of chucking out a leader to get a bump in the polls be for the fabric of the National Party?
Make no mistake: there is no great point of principle at stake here. The party and most of its MPs are not unhappy at the philosophical direction the party has taken under Bridges. Sure, some are temperamentally uncomfortable with some of the attacks on gangs and some of the tougher law and order rhetoric, but nothing outside the normal realms of a broad church party.
This is about a lot of the Nats thinking that people have just tuned out.
Some think Bridges has shown poor judgment in picking his battles during the lockdown, and some just hate his guts.
But there is a big risk here, and it is more than just who will perform better on September 19 and the two voting weeks leading up to it.
Once the can of changing leaders in a panic is popped open, it can be very difficult to close. Sure, there are some in National who have always been critical of Bridges, but prior to Covid19, two polls showed that he would likely be prime minister if an election had been held then.
A look at the dysfunctional nature of Australian politics over the past decade boils down to the
Political editor fact that both major parties chose leaders based on polls, rather than much else. So Kevin Rudd was rolled by Julia Gillard, who was rolled by Kevin Rudd, who got smashed at the ballot box by Tony Abbott. He was then rolled by Malcolm Turnbull, who was rolled by Scott Morrison.
That cycle has now ended, but only because Morrison won an incredible victory against the odds last May.
Australia has a vastly different political culture to New Zealand, but the Liberal Party’s decade of instability came after the almost 12 golden years of John Howard. And more than any other political leader, Howard considered John Key as the closest thing he had to a political heir around the world.
The Nats are now firmly in the post-Key/English zone.
Covid-19 has changed everything, and has crystallised many National MPs’ views of Bridges’ performance. Since he made a joke about the prime minister’s hair on Monday, some MPs have told Stuff, on condition of anonymity, that the comment was worse than the 30.6 per cent Newshub/Reid Research poll itself.
For a bloke who is actually pretty disciplined in every other aspect of his leadership — Bridges has shown a knack for identifying and seizing on good issues for National — it is the throwaway lines and taking the political mongrel a step too far, particularly in relation to the PM, that has really put his colleagues off. And according to the published polls, it has put off the public as well. It goes to judgment.
Clearly winning over as many swing voters as possible and so keeping National’s party size up is the party’s priority. But rolling a leader this close to an election, basically based on one or two polls, against an extremely popular leader and against the backdrop of a pandemic climate of fear, could set a dangerous precedent for the party, which dogs it for years to come.
... it is the throwaway lines and taking the political mongrel a step too far that has really put his colleagues off.