Rehabilitating the National Party - Part I: Why 46% don't mean jack s**t!

This is part one in a multi part series where we look what is eating Bill & The B team and try and figure out how to rescue the party's political fortunes. Your welcome, no thanks needed.

However before we get into this let me explain my reasons for wanting to see National back in the game  because despite whomping the party more than once in past blog posts I understand the need for a democratic opposition, even over my own distaste for the many decrepit characters which infest the party like head lice at a sleep over.

National provide a conservative balance to the liberal values of Labour and the Greens and in doing so restrain the more wilder schemes of those parties which, if let off the leash, could do just as much damage as any right wing machinations. 

Thus Democracy in NZ needs a full spectrum of political parties to be healthy and vibrant, and as much as the Left can get all twisted up about that, the alternate is the loss of dynamic tension so vital to democratic debate and we end up with some sort of one party state where all snowflakes are equal but some snowflakes are more equal than others.

And with that out of the way lets get down to things.

So, you won’t read about it elsewhere (actually you might) but the National party has a problem, actually not just one problem but lots of problems (which we will get to in our next post) that, at the end of the day, have all rolled together into the glutinous mass that now affect the party of Blue's political fortunes.

“What!?” I hear you say, as you spit your coffee all over the monitor or tablet screen, “That’s not true, that’s impossible. National does not have a problem, what in Keith Holyoake’s name are you talking about?”

Search your feelings Sparky, you know it to be true, because when you take away that 46% in the polls, that I know you’re going to try and use as justification for the argument that all is well with Bill & Friends, what else is there to show that National is fine and dandy?

And lets pause here while you take a moment to think about it...

That's right, there is nothing else going to say that Big Blue is doing good (except perhaps the vague hope that the new coalition government will somehow implode). Politics is a zero sum game as far as getting into government is concerned and while in government people are often willing to overlook the problems that a party has: they are less inclined to do so when the same party is in opposition. 

National has had a lot of issues in the last nine years (child poverty, water issues, immigration, housing, labor laws, sucking up to multinationals, infestation by lobbyists, dodgy MP's, dodgy (but popular) PM, Bill English's face, scandals ahoy etc etc et-f**king-cetra) which are going to come back to haunt it as Labour rapidly dismantles Nationals free market house of cards, rolls back all the laws it passed and moves to start addressing (as it has already done with its 100 days plan) all the issues that national created or ignored while on its watch.

And there is no reason to be embarrassed about this as its better to fess up now than be like Labour in the wake of Helen Clark (2008 to 2017) where it spun its wheels for well over eight years while trying to figure out what it was doing, where it was going who was going to drive.

Thus there are good reasons why Nationals 46% is not sufficient to justify claiming all is well for the party: let us count them shall we.

First, National is out of office after losing the 2017 election to Labour, NZ First and the Greens; meaning that after nine years with their hands on the levers of power National is now in the political wilderness and no longer the organ grinder but now the dancing monkey. No more ministerial perks, no more fawning civil servants and no more having the power to make or change the laws as you wish. 46% looks good on paper when your'e saying you are the most popular party but it has not translated into power, which is the whole reason for playing the game.

46% was not enough to form a government in the age of MMP and National, still clinging to a FPP mentality (where getting a sheer majority of the vote was all that mattered rather than concentrating on cultivating the political alliances needed to build a stable coalition government) killed stone cold dead its coalition chances with its failed hit on Winston Peters (via leaking his Superannuation over payments to the media) in the run-up to September and thus rendering that 4 and 6 all but useless when it came time to do the coalition math*.

Second, 46% is really only useful when its election season where such numbers can be used to translate into seats via the ballot box. Outside of elections, political polling does not effect change in government unless it’s catastrophically bad polling (think Thersa May and Brexit) and with Nationals 46% being beaten by the coalitions 50% such conditions do not apply here.

Worse still is that with Bill English dropping sharply in the preferred PM stakes (down 9 to 28% to Jacinda’s rise to 37%) the one poll number that could offset being out of office is clearly against them. No one is clamoring for Bill to lead the nation and at this time and I would bet a round of drinks that Jacinda’s baby would poll higher than him as preferred PM. 

Political polling is the barometer of the public's mood but you can’t point to it and claim just because its sunny today it’s going to be sunny forever.

Which brings us to our third, and by no means least, point: 46% today does not mean 46% tomorrow. In the early 2000s National was polling in the low 20s (which coincidentally was the last time Bill English was leader of the party) and the separation between its current polling and the abysmal 22% it was scraping by on in 2002 shows exactly how much swing potential there is between the hard core of the party and those who happen to vote National this election but might just as easily vote for Labour next**.

So National (and you) can point to that 46% all you like but at the end of the day it’s not in government, has almost zero chance of seducing NZ First (its only possible coalition partner now) away from Labour, its agenda is off the political menu and its going to have to fight against the greater public image and message of the current government: none of this bodes well for Bill & Co.

If the path of NZ electoral politics retains any of its past consistency then National is likely to face three terms in opposition and spend much of that time, like Labour previously did, politically stunted (due to the political castration that occurred during the Key and Clark years respectively) and still dreaming of its halcyon days in office when it should be using the time to be an effective opposition and preparing for the next election***.

As PM, Bill English commanded a certain degree of respect from the public and media. As leader of the opposition Bill is just another voice in the mass of voices shouting for attention. Sure he gets a few perks but almost everything he (and his party) does is in response to what the government is doing; its the mental equivalent of shifting from an active, or offensive, posture to a reactive, or defensive, posture, the mindsets are different and must to change for a party to survive.

And the key to accepting that change is to listen to the hard truth that National lost the 2017 election, is out of government and that its 46% in the polls does not mean a thing when your in the political wilderness for the next three years.

So that's it for Part I: next up we scrape away the pancake makeup and take a warts and all look at the National party to assess its political health. bend over and cough!


*-political math 101: 46% for National < 50% for the Coalition government
**-Or the Greens, NZ First and even [shudder] ACT.
***-Which we will get to later in this series of posts