Muller’s challenges: Party unity and policy clarity
Being Leader of the Opposition is a hard job at the best of times. There’s the unbearable scrutiny and pressure, excruciating hours, the lack of any real power or resources, colleagues who may stab you in the back if you trip, and public humiliation if you fail.
Todd Muller is up against a hugely popular prime minister and with just four months until the election. He inherits a party that’s deeply divided, has little in the way of detailed policy and, in the latest One News/ Colmar Brunton poll, trails Labour by 30 per cent.
Muller’s initial media appearances have been impressive. He nailed his first job, which is to correctly diagnose the problem: Voters have turned away because National is seen as too negative, too fond of carping, and got its response to Covid-19 woefully wrong.
He also spoke calmly and sensibly. It’s hard to imagine Muller yelling ‘‘slushies!’’ on the floor of Parliament or criticising the prime minister for dyeing her hair.
National will be hoping that by simply having a safe, competent leader who is not Simon Bridges, they can quickly bring their party vote back up to its previous bedrock support of 40 per cent. But to be competitive this election Muller will need to do better than that.
This will not be without its challenges.
Unlike Jacinda Ardern, who inherited a united caucus following a peaceful leadership change, Muller has to work to bring his divided party back together from a messy leadership coup.
Egos are always bruised after a leadership battle. Muller has started well by keeping Bridges’ close friend and supporter Paul Goldsmith in the finance role. There will be a question over what to do with former deputy leader Paula Bennett, who will surely no longer carry on as campaign chair. Other Bridges supporters will be very sensitive to any suggestion that factional loyalty is being rewarded over competence.
This will be doubly the case for the growing Christian conservative wing within the caucus, which mostly backed Bridges. For a party which under John Key had a vice-like grip on middle New Zealand, National is increasingly finding its caucus filled with MPs with strongly conservative religious views. It has not gone unnoticed by this faction that while Muller is a conservative Catholic, many of his key backers are urban liberals.
Even making a break with carping and negativity will be harder than he thinks. Few party leaders take up the role aiming to be negative. But when journalists ask for comment on some easy hit against the Government, it takes real skill and discipline to say no. Similarly, backbench MPs and wayward candidates will delight in providing the media with unhelpful distractions on social media and elsewhere.
Where Muller has a real opportunity is with the economy. Treasury is predicting unemployment heading towards double digits. Muller is smart to lean into his business background and voters’ trust in National’s economic management.
But he has a lot of work to do here. Despite talking endlessly about its economic plan, National has so far offered little more than a few vague bullet points and discussion documents.
Indeed, the party’s initial policy response to Covid-19 was a laughable ‘‘bonfire of regulation’’, which included such policies as removing workers’ tea breaks and repealing the Gates and Cattlestops Order 1955.
Much more serious policy is required. This includes sorting out National’s position on borrowing to get through Covid19. As Key and Bill English will attest, opposing government borrowing to get through a global downturn is economically illiterate. Voters deserve to know what National would do differently.
All of this, of course, is manageable by smart and competent people. What Muller may find he can’t control is whether the public warm to him. When Ardern took over the Labour leadership before the 2017 election, we saw Jacindamania. It seems unlikely there will be much Mullermania this year.
When all is said and done, Muller risks being an unknown and unexciting politician up against a popular leader at the height of her powers. And he has just four months to prove himself. If he doesn’t, he’ll have Judith Collins and Christopher Luxon breathing down his neck the day after the election.