National has credible path to taking power

Because it is MMP, small changes in support can have big consequences

In a bygone era, before Covid arrived, this particular weekend was to have been the National Party’s election year conference. And the question would probably have been whether National’s handsome lead in the polls could be sustained by an unpopular leader during the scrutiny of an election campaign.

Covid-19 put paid to the conference, and such has been the upheaval in politics that National’s 38 per cent in the poll compared to Labour’s plunge to 50 per cent is considered cause for relief in National.

The poll (1News, Colmar Brunton) reinforces a scenario in which Jacinda Ardern’s Labour and the Greens would form the next coalition Government with combined support of 56 per cent, and that Todd Muller would have limited the damage National would suffer.

In fact, National is closer to power than the poll might suggest.

Because it is MMP, small changes in support can have major consequences.

National has a clear path to power. It is not necessarily a probable path but the elements required are certainly not improbable.

In general, it would involve Labour losing about five points to National in the next three months, and New Zealand First and the Greens falling short of the 5 per cent threshold without a seat.

For example, with Labour on 45 per cent, National on 42, Act on 4 (assuming it holds Epsom), the Greens on 4 and New Zealand First on 3, National and Act would form a Government.

That would see Labour lose five points, National gain five, the Greens lose two, New Zealand First and Act to increase by one point.

It is not far-fetched. New Zealand First might scrape home but the electorate appears to be tiring of Winston Peters’ belligerence.

There will be other combinations of votes that get to a similar outcome.

Given that in the past five weeks,

Labour has lost nine points acquired during the Covid crisis and National has picked up nine, and that before the crisis Labour was on about 40 per cent, there is still room and time for support to slosh about some more.

The survival of the Greens will be a more important issue this election than in perhaps any other.

And its six points at present puts it dangerously close to the 5 per cent threshold required by parties without an electorate seat, and dangerously close to leaving Labour stranded and out of Government.

The Greens have tended to get less in elections than the polls have suggested. And as National’s pollster David Farrar points out, in the past two elections, they have done 1.5 points worse than Colmar Brunton has put them.

So what would it take for Labour to lose another five and National to gain another five? What do Jacinda Ardern and Todd Muller have to do? Events of the past two weeks have shown that Muller does not have to do much.

Government failures around the Covid-19 response are likely to be a more decisive factor in shifting support — the term Government including both operational and political.

Muller was not highly visible last week when the testing failures came to light. He left most of the running to Michael Woodhouse, his health spokesman.

Muller, of course, has to be credible. Unlike David Shearer, the exLabour leader whom Labour likes to compare him to, Muller is actually improving after a poor start, not getting worse.

He has got serious strategic operators behind him in the form of Janet Wilson, Megan Campbell and Matthew Hooton.

And he is hitting the right targets from National’s perspective.

While National’s characterisation of Ashley Bloomfield, the director general of health, as a blameless hero in the testing debacle is utterly inaccurate, its targeting of Health Minister David Clark is a political winner.

Clark’s oversight was as equally woeful as Bloomfield’s performance.

Clark has gotten worse over the Covid period, to such an extent that he has become a liability.

With four more sitting weeks before Parliament rises, Ardern has choices. She can do nothing and hope that the interest in Clark fades; she could keep him locked in the proverbial attic for the next three months, letting him out rarely and with supervision; or she could quietly seek his resignation on the basis he had become a distraction.

That was the way that Clare Curran left the executive. None of her errors were deemed serious enough to warrant being sacked, but by the end, an accumulation of events and mounting pressure led to her resignation.

The added difficulty Ardern has with Covid is that despite installing the crack management team of Megan Woods and Air Commodore Darryn Webb for managed isolation and quarantine, a line has not yet been completely drawn under the past.

Woods and Webb still have to release the fast audit report they commissioned almost a fortnight ago to identify processes and procedures at the border that could be improved.

It is likely to highlight gaps that have already been addressed, but gaps nonetheless.

But the number of credible complaints should be starting to diminish under new management.

There is waning appetite for hardluck stories by arrivals who are being forced to spend a fortnight at a fourstar hotel, being fed and watered before being released into the community.

The message Woods and Webb delivered to arrivals themselves to play their part before joining the team of 5 million resonated.

A big potential problem Ardern has with Covid-19 management is the issue of community transmission.

Bloomfield has been at such pains to emphasise that despite the blunders around the lack of three-day and 12-day testing, there had been no new community transmission. The flip-side is that if and when it does come, it will be viewed as a big failure.

Labour will argue that if the system responds quickly enough to contain it, that should be viewed as a success.

Management of border arrivals into isolation or quarantine is not a simple issue, despite National claiming it to be. It is a logistical challenge that involves dozens of venues, hundred of systems and thousands of people.

The simple fact is, however, that it will become increasingly tied to success or failure at the election.