Do Nats need a toff at the top?
ob done,’’ Winston Peters must have chuckled to himself after concluding his six-week stint as acting prime minister.
During his brief tenure, Peters succeeded in making sure the Opposition hardly got a look in. The biggest noise to come out of the National Party conference was a heavily hyphenated sore loser shot (directed at Peters) from the party president about National having dodged a ‘‘whisky-swilling, cigarette-smoking, double-breasted irrational bullet’’.
The Nats’ revival of an old Labour Party policy to reduce primary school class numbers demonstrated how visionless the party is as the faithful did their best to look enthused about leader Simon Bridges.
One could be forgiven for beginning to suspect that Bridges might be laying it on a just a little bit thick with the New Zild accent. John Key, who the electorate was clearly besotted with, was forgiven for his many speech impediments and strong Kiwi accent because he had all the aspirational state house, solo mum backstory credentials.
Like Rob Muldoon with his faithful followers, ‘‘Rob’s Mob’’, Key brought in a constituency that the Nats previously didn’t have. Bridges’ challenge is to keep the faith of Key’s crew.
Watching the new coalition bust a gut rushing to fix a heavily eroded infrastructure to make New Zild great again might be what Labour does when it gets into power, but the penny must be dropping to even the hardest core of Key’s crew just how let-go the state-of-the-nation was.
Bridges’ problem is that, in trying to ape Key’s charisma, he lacks authenticity. His all-over-youlike-a-bedspread attempts at being a grassroots noice guy fail miserably. Perhaps, instead of nice guy, what the Nats need is a bloody good toff back at the helm?
In olden days, all one needed to stand as a National MP was a sports jacket, a farming background, and proof of service in one of two world wars. Oh, and don’t forget an RP accent, the received pronunciation absolutely essential in maintaining discipline over the party rank and file and, of course, the masses.
Under the present Nats lineup of those within spitting distance of the top job is Amy Adams. She might not have a sports jacket in her wardrobe but, along with husband Don, she owns not one but three farms. (One is located in the area of the Central Plains Water Scheme with ‘‘Amdon’’ farms a shareholder of Central Plains Water).
So the squattocracy cred is there in spades, as is the RP accent, which in Adams’ ‘‘rightly so’’ chime-in refrains in the House turn more Penelope Keith the crosser one gets. But Adams doesn’t have the visceral cut-through of the only game in National Party town, Judith Collins, dearest friend of the whale’s (The Slater), and top street-fighting gunslinger.
This double-down sheriff may have had her badge taken off her by her own party and has had to do time loitering in the back saloon, but make no mistake her gun’s still in her top drawer.
Like Winston Peters, she is a top vaudeville act, and to her enemies, who are many, she provides a direct line of clear hatred, something to happily chuck rotten eggs at from the cheap seats.
When Bridges falls, watch Collins spring, like a greyhound released from the slips, as the punters cry: ‘‘Go toff, go!’’
Whatever Collins’ chances are, at least she’s a personality the electorate can grapple with, to push up against as she appeals to the Kiwi pioneering entrepreneurial spirit. After all, she’d like another chance to clear the swamp.