Nats get ready for life after PM John Key
Is this the beginning of the end for John Key?
Don’t get me wrong, I’m not predicting any sudden demise, but familiarity breeds contempt and few politicians have ever had a best before date stretching longer than three terms.
The Prime Minister’s favourability ratings have been in slow decline for months. But he still has capital to burn. Will he have enough to fuel him first across the line for one more election? At this point, it seems likely.
That’s certainly not down to his Government’s clumsy handling of a housing crisis, spiralling dangerously out of control (and Labour adroitly capitalising on that).
Nor evidence that inequality is rising, New Zealand is all but a tax haven and essential services like public health are stretched to capacity.
New Zealanders have a history of simply voting for change, but that depends on the alternative.
Again, don’t get me wrong Labour’s duo of leader Andrew Little and Grant Robertson appear competent.
But identity politics is the way it’s played now.
What Little and Robertson lack in dynamic-duo credibility, Key and Finance Minister Bill English have in spades.
That raises two points; what platform will National try to frame the election campaign around, and what’s its plan for life after Key?
On the first, English has been downplaying the importance of his surplus for a long time now, and fiscally he has a point. Politically however, that surplus is everything toward building a campaign based on economic credibility, for which there is a clear gap.
On the second, very few leaders successfully groom a successor.
It was perhaps Helen Clark’s greatest failing, and led to a vacuum that saw Labour churn through four leaders over the eight years Key’s grip on his own party hasn’t even slightly diminished.
It’s not the end yet.