Nats had better be sure

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 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.