On National’s Fraught Journey Back To The Centre
Monday, 16 January 2023.Article by : Gordon Campbell in Scoop https://www.scoop.co.nz/stories/HL2301/S00012/on-nationals-fraught-journey-back-to-the-centre.htm (My editing-- ACW)
Ever since Christopher Luxon became leader, National has adopted a “small target” strategy. This consists of offering nothing to distract the media from its focus on the government’s shortcomings and the public’s discontent with its performance.
In particular, the strategy involves releasing no policy alternatives whose own failings might then be picked apart, and become the story. It assumes the media will largely shrug and accept the stonewalling on policy and move on. Here’s how the comms experts define how the strategy should be used by corporates facing unwelcome media scrutiny:
… There's barely a story that doesn't pass. They all do. So I think it's really important- if you're able - to implement ‘small target’ to put off the press, so they go and chase another element of the story, they go and chase another organisation or the regulator or whatever it is. [If] you can satisfy [the media] that that's all you're going to say and it's going to be minimal, they will probably report that. That's boring, so they're gonna go chase a different aspect of [the story].
Works like a charm. So here we are in election year, over 12 months after National changed leaders and we still have no idea what – for example- Luxon’s alternative (if any) to Three Waters would look like, or even what is the ballpark size of his promised tax cut package. Nor do we have any inkling of how National would pay for said tax package, what infrastructure spending he would prioritise, what debt levels he would accept, and what services Luxon would cut to make it all affordable etc.etc. In a similar vein, the impact of what Luxon has said on superannuation lies decades in the future. His key social policy – “social investment” – is a holdover from the Bill English era, with no clues as to how Luxon would address the failings detected in it at the time.
Interestingly, Luxon’s basic message: ‘We’ll give you the details later at a time of our own choosing’ is one that the media has by and large, accepted. That’s one reason why National is ahead in the polls. As of now, it is a policy vacuum, in which anyone with a beef against the Ardern government is free to fill in the blanks as they see fit...
... At this point, National is gambling that it can delay showing its policy hand right up to the brink of the campaign proper. By then it won’t matter overly much if Jacinda Ardern does end up demolishing Luxon in the campaign’s television debates.
By then, and to many voters, that would only confirm the stereotype of Ardern as the Mean Lady, a woman who is unnaturally smart. Even against Judith Collins last time around, there was a sense that Ardern was holding her fire at times in recognition of the fact that television debates are mainly a battle for Likeability, not Capability. The classic example: during his presidential debates with Jimmy Carter in 1980, Ronald Reagan defused Carter’s superior grasp of policy (and reality) by turning to the camera, sighing theatrically and saying “There he goes again.” Local version, 2023: Ardern is a policy wonk, Luxon is a fount of faux bonhomie. Problem being: is there ev
Shout to the TOP
For National in 2023, the trickier strategic problem will be how to put daylight between itself and the far right policies of David Seymour and the ACT Party. When stripped of their recently acquired populist trappings, ACT’s socio-economic policies enjoy very little public support. Back when ACT was preaching its purist gospel on tax and welfare, it was clocking up barely 1-3% in the polls for the best part of a decade, despite the support it enjoyed from its corporate sponsors.
Once moderate voters realise there is a genuine risk that ACT may soon be at the Cabinet table (a) dictating the levels of spending on public services, and (b) setting the rules for welfare entitlements, this realisation could punch a significant hole in National’s facade of being a moderate, sensible party of compassionate conservatism.
In brief - how will National manage ACT? Which of its policies will it declare to be beyond the pale and when will it do so? And how much will National need to rely on the ACT Party to govern? All last year, Luxon and Seymour managed to co-exist pretty happily as the Butch and Sundance of the centre-right. That state of harmony can’t last forever. Last year, National didn’t dare to query ACT’s extremism for fear of losing further support to the upstart. This year, it will need to (a) distance itself from ACT and/or (b) lessen its dependence on it, if it wants to look like a sane and competent alternative government. At some point, it will need to clarify whether (and why) it thinks ACT’s recipe of warmed-over Thatcherism has passed its use-by date.
How might it do so? The following speculation is not being offered as political advice – in a Jessica Mutch sense - or with any pretence to insider knowledge that this is what will happen, or may be happening already. The following is nothing much more than a thought experiment. With that caveat in mind, let's now put on our Matthew Hooton hats for a minute – not for too long, because that stuff can be addictive – and consider how National might contrive to look centrist, without actually changing its policy spots.
Suggestion: Directly or indirectly, it could offer an electorate deal to Raf Manji and TOP in Gerry Brownlee’s old seat in Ilam, much as it did years ago to the ACT Party in Epsom. On current polling that would get three TOP MPs into Parliament. They would be considerably to the left of where National and ACT currently sit on the political spectrum. Bingo! National suddenly looks centrist, with potential partners on either wing.
This outcome would have the bonus effect of reducing any lingering need to rely on Winston Peters post-election. Plus, it would pull across some “soft left’ votes to boot. In some ways, TOP is the ideal package: Reliably conservative on the economy, but fetchingly liberal on social issues. In short, it is the ‘blue green’ combo that National has strived so hard before to grow in a barn but which, in the shape of TOP, has grown up all by itself, free range. Could TOP now be ripe for an investment in its future that might enable it to significantly expand its market reach? ACT is electoral poison, even though it may take a term in government to make that perfectly clear. TOP looks like a more palatable prospect, longer term.
Yes, National could take a chance, and hope that Manji/TOP can win Ilam all by themselves. Brownlee had a strong personal following but in 2017, Manji ran in Ilam as an independent and still clocked up 8,321 votes, second only to Brownlee's 16,577 and comfortably ahead of Labour’s tally of 7,662. Could Manji win outright in 2023 – without a nudge and a wink (or more) from National ? That would still only be a maybe.
Keep in mind that National need not explicitly reach an Epsom-style arrangement. The public do not like overt electorate deals. But here’s the thing: Personally I think of Ilam as being a pale blue seat that with gentrification is getting even bluer. The 2020 swing that went to Labour was an aberration that’s not going to be repeated. Yet for some reason, the Ilam seat didn’t attract big name candidates, with no disrespect intended to a final slate that consisted of James Christmas, Dale Stephens, Tracy Summerfield , Hamish Campbell and Vanessa Weenink. Campbell ended up getting the nod.
Personally, I was surprised that city councillor Sam MacDonald – Brownlee’s campaign manager at the last election – had chosen not to throw his hat in the ring. MacDonald’s explanation for why he was putting his Parliamentary ambitions “on hold for now” had something to do with broadening his local council experience and avoiding a council-by-election in his ward. However one reads that, the reality is that National’s (arguably) strongest local candidate for Ilam had pulled out of contention by mid 2022. Fascinating.
Hamish Campbell of course could surprise everyone and turn out to be a crackerjack candidate. Or not. And one can imagine that there would be no real need for a stern head office directive to centre-right voters in Ilam to vote for Manji. Such signals can be sent discreetly. Voters in Ilam, you might be surprised to be told at some point later this year, are very, very smart people who know all about the wisdom of tactical voting.
Footnote One: If elected in Ilam, Raf Manji of course, could – theoretically – then go with either Labour or National. Centre-left voters thinking of having a fling with TOP should keep the possibility in mind that Manji could be the next Peter Dunne. Yet chances are, we won’t know for sure until after the votes have been cast. In the past, that approach worked pretty well for Winston Peters.
Footnote Two: To repeat… The above speculation about TOP’s potential role in Ilam and within the next government is just that: A thought experiment, with no real world aspersions cast, or intended. Will Hamish Campbell win the day in Ilam for the blue team, or will he end up being another in the honour roll of National Party candidates – Paul Goldsmith (Epsom,2011) and Mark Thomas (Wellington Central, 1996) who ended up getting less than whole-hearted support from head office, for the greater good.er a likeable way for a woman to demonstrate the man is out of his depth.
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