Man on a mission
A month into the job as National Party leader, Simon Bridges is putting his foibles on show in a bid to charm.
A month into the job as National Party leader, Simon Bridges is putting his foibles on show in a bid to charm.
New National Party leader Simon Bridges is having coffee with me in Wellington before going on the radio to do yet another interview. He’s on a mission: “To get New Zealand to know me and to like me.” I say, perhaps ever so slightly snidely: “Good luck, Simon Bridges.” This is near the end of our interview, and by then I know he won’t take offence at being mocked. He doesn’t. He laughs.
I am talking about him in the third person to take the mickey out of his propensity to talk about himself in the third person, which he Must Stop Doing Immediately, I say. This merely encourages him. The third time he does it, I may have banged my head on the table. “You’re making it too easy for me,” I protest.
He knows he’s not allowed to say that any more: “You’ve just told me.” He hasn’t yet had any extra media training for the role of leader, but I tell him I’ll send him the bill for that bit of media training. “Yeah, well, I need all I can get.” He may.
Does he really think the more New Zealanders see of him, the more they’ll like him? He says, enjoying himself immensely: “Well, I think they’ll get a sense of the real Simon Bridges.” That Simon Bridges. He’s the gift that keeps on giving. We’d better get used to it, like it – or him – or not.
He’s fairly confident his serious, if not relentless, mission to get New Zealanders to know him and hence like him will work. He does seem to suffer from an excess of confidence. “No. But in politics, if you don’t back yourself and have some belief, then you’re not going to get anywhere. But you also have to make sure you’re a listener and you’re taking on board sometimes pretty hard advice about your foibles and what you get right and wrong.”
He’s wearing a very nice suit. “Yes, it is nice.”
Some pretty hard advice. It may also be a bit … smarmy. He says his press secretary doesn’t like it.
“It is expensive. It’s a bit of a lawyer’s suit.” I ask where he got it and he says: “Oh, Auckland.” This is not what I mean, as he well knows. He says he’s not going to tell me where he got it from but then flashes the label: RJB Design, which of course I google the minute I get home. It’s probably a bespoke suit. I don’t know whether that makes it a foible.
So on to some other possible foibles. People do write some terrible things about Bridges. That he’s smarmy is one. That he’s petulant and badtempered are others. That he sounds like a yokel is yet another. When John Campbell interviewed him on RNZ National after he won the leadership contest, Campbell was reduced to pleading with his audience for someone, anyone, to please send in a message saying something, anything, positive about Bridges. Even for one who may have an excess of confidence, surely that’s an ouch.
Taking into account that RNZ has a particular audience, does he think he has a problem with his public image? “Anyone who’s in politics for a while has to develop a thicker skin. Some of the things I see about myself, if they were the case in 2008 [the year he won the Tauranga seat], they’d crush me. But now, you’ve got to let them fly over the top of your head. All of that said, I do have to be sensitive to criticisms that are for real and that actually contain some truth in them.”
Perception is almost all in politics. “I think I won … because my colleagues know me well, they know my
“You’re taking on board sometimes pretty hard advice about your foibles.”
style, they know my values.” And they also don’t like him. “They do! They do. Otherwise I wouldn’t have got there.” He won the leadership contest on the second ballot. Listener columnist Jane Clifton wrote that this suggested “he has a majority of his colleagues to convince. Bridges and Joyce had both treated colleagues so brusquely that they each lost votes they could otherwise have had.” Clifton, he says, is “far too perceptive. No. I don’t accept that … We had four or five people on the campaign, and to win on the second shows I had very strong support on the first. I didn’t need a lot to get there on the second.”
He denies he has been brusque with colleagues. “I wasn’t the public favourite, let’s be honest about that … But our colleagues know me. They know I’m someone who is collegial, who works hard, who tries to find consensus in meetings but also knows how to lead.”
He does. He asked his deputy, Paula Bennett, to get him a glass of water, in front of the TV cameras. She didn’t look best pleased and he got a reasonable amount of flak for that. “Ha! Well, you know, that’s what people do for each other … I’ve been bemused by the fuss about that. Can I just tell you I’ve made many more cups of tea for Paula than she has ever made me.”
He has already – according to me but not him – shown a ruthless side. He gave the shadow finance job to Amy Adams over Steven Joyce, who promptly announced he was leaving. This looks like a calculated bid to get Joyce to do just that. “No, no. The reality is he decided what was best for him.” After the new leader decided what was best for him.
“No. I had a clear view that what I wanted was Amy as my finance spokesperson and I did tell him that.”
Keeping your enemies close is an old and effective political trick. Adams also stood for the leadership, as did Judith Collins, who is now back on the front bench. He’s got it in for Maggie Barry, Nick Smith and Gerry Brownlee, who have all been pushed down the pecking order, I say. They are all very valuable, he says. In other words, he’s got it in for them. “No way.”
None of which may matter. A new leader after an election loss is often seen to be in a holding position. It goes without saying that he thinks it’s not the case this time: National can win in 2020, with him as leader, simply because the Labour coalition is made up of “three parties with very different views”.
Ha! But what about the baby? How can he hope to compete with Jacinda’s baby? He says he likes Ardern and wishes her “all the very best”, but come election time, “New Zealanders will be focused on substance”. Hmm. Perhaps he could have another baby, just to be safe. He and his wife, Natalie, had their third child, their first girl, in December. Another baby would be “impossible. But we can come back to that … But maybe we shouldn’t. That’s a John Key moment we don’t need.”
No, we most certainly don’t. He also promises, should one be looking for points of difference, that he won’t be pulling anyone’s ponytail.
I am semi-reliably informed that he has a filthy sense of humour, which he has presumably stored securely in a locked cupboard somewhere for the duration. He says that like everyone, he’s “a mixture of things” and that perhaps the smarmy label comes from the side of him that is “sometimes jokey and blokey”, which may sit slightly awkwardly with the side that is “earnest and serious … The reality is that we’re all products of our background.” And he is “by definition a product” of growing up as the sixth and youngest child by five years. “You’ve got all these older brothers and sisters around you, who are either doting on you or knocking you down, and that does lead to a sense of confidence in yourself.”
His part-Māori father was a Baptist minister; his Pakeha mother taught at primary schools. He both “likes and loves” his parents. He believes in God but quotes Tony Blair: “We don’t do God. I’ve got a Christian faith … so, without being cute, it’s a private faith. Did he pray that he would win the leadership? “Aah. No. Ha.”
He says he’s “tried to portray his parents as swinging voters in the past because it feels better”. He thinks his
“If you want something done, get National Party members around you; if you want fun with no achievement, get lefties around you.”