Key’s move ‘tough love’ for a dependent nation

Late in the afternoon of one of my interviews for a book on John Key, he started talking about a conversation he and Bronagh had at the end of his fourth year as Prime Minister.

“We had a talk about it,” he said. “Just kicked the tyres — are we still committed to all this?”

I let him go on. Key is more interesting when you don’t pull him up to elaborate.

“I used to worry about losing,” he continued. “Losing feels like failure and I don’t kinda like failure . . . ”

He went on for some time, mentioning the GCSB’s illegal monitoring of Kim Dotcom, just one of many frustrations that year. “I don’t beat myself up over that stuff because it has just come as part of the job . . . So we had a view, Bronagh was much stronger on it than I was — that I would be running away, and why would I do that?”

Why indeed? His troubles of 2012 had cost him only a few points in the polls. He had gone to the previous year’s election with a programme of asset sales, which no previous Prime Minister had dared put to voters in advance. He had become so popular and trusted, there seemed nothing he could not do. Why would quitting even cross his mind at that time?

That conversation haunted me, and when the Herald reported it on its front page the day the book was published, he told a press conference he had been concerned only for Bronagh. But that was not the way it sounded that afternoon. This was a man who could walk away whenever he chose. His life’s ambition was to be Prime Minister but he would not let any role consume him.

Four years further on, nobody can seriously accuse John Key of running away. He is at the height of his success, a third-term Prime Minister suffering none of the frustrations of “third-termitis”. The country is not tired of him, as it has been of every other Prime Minister to survive this long. Helen Clark once warned him the third term is dreadful. But he and his Government are still polling at 50 per cent and a fourth term looks assured if he wanted it.

He doesn’t. He has had enough. His job is not his life and never has been.

The devastation his party and all his supporters must be feeling since the announcement on Monday is probably much like his colleagues at Merrill Lynch were feeling 15 years ago when he told them he was giving up the financial heights of London and Wall St to go home and try his hand at politics.

John Key gives people so much confidence in his leadership that it is possibly dangerous. Key has enjoyed the confidence of business to a greater degree than any Prime Minister since New Zealand became an open economy, and for good reason. His international business credentials are probably better than anyone in business here.

The worry is that he may be the main reason New Zealand has been an island of stability and political contentment in a world of uncertainty. If Key believed that, would he be stepping down?

He would put the country’s interest ahead of his personal inclinations, I think. I hope. But he wouldn’t put it ahead of the interests of his family. He kept his children well away from the public when they were at school. That has become harder to do now that they are young adults and I suspect he and Bronagh worry about that.

When it comes to the country’s interest, his decision to walk away at this point could be called tough love. If the strength of the economy is depending too much on business confidence in him, it would be better if it did not. He leaves with the Government in good shape, the public accounts heading into healthy surpluses, unemployment low and the population rising on a migration wave.

If New Zealand can sustain this strength and confidence in itself without him at the helm, his achievement will be complete.

He has set a new standard of political exit, choosing the moment that gives his successor an economy in good shape and a year before the next election.

Sir John Key, as he no doubt soon will be, might not want a high-profile post politics but the respect he has won across party lines will probably ensure his service to the country has not finished.

* John Key, Portrait of a Prime Minister, was published by Penguin Books in 2014.