National’s leadership crisis – and that’s what it is — is all about Winston Peters.
That is despite last night’s One News Verian poll appearing to show New Zealand First static on 10 per cent, five per cent less than in the leaked Talbot Mills poll.
But according to the National Party’s own pollster, David Farrar, there is a flood of support leaving National for New Zealand First.
Again, according to Farrar, if National cannot win that support back and thus increase its support, it stands to lose all its list MPs.
Farrar argues that the National Party needs to get 35 per cent of the vote to avoid that.
Last night’s poll had the party at 30 per cent.
That would mean no list MPs.
And that would mean the departure of Gerry Brownlee, Nicola Willis, Paul Goldsmith and even possibly Chris Bishop if he loses his highly marginal Hutt South seat.
It would also mean an increased number of New Zealand First Ministers in any future centre-right coalition Government.
This explains the apparent increased urgency that commentators and lobbyists on the right have been applying to National’s political problems.
Inevitably, most come up with the replacement of Christopher Luxon as leader as the solution.
But what is worrying some on the right is that National’s problem is more deep-seated than that.
The Government is losing the economic debate.
Last night’s poll reported that economic optimism was down by 14% to 26%, while pessimism was up by 21% to 52%.
New Zealand First has been quick to try to capitalise on this.
They have already proposed breaking up the gentailer electricity companies in a bid to restrain power prices, and yesterday Winston Peters announced that they would campaign on breaking up Foodstuffs into two separate supermarket companies.
In Farrar’s January poll for the Taxpayers’ Union, NZ First was on 11.9 per cent; last night they were on 10.
“This is a very high level of support for NZ First generally, but especially for them in Government,” he said back in January.
So not much has changed.
And then he added ominously: “So is this the high-water mark for NZ First? I would not assume that.
The election year has just started, and Peters is often a good performer in elections.
A 15% result is certainly quite plausible.
” That sort of forecast is likely to strike fear into the kind of people who fund National and lobby groups like the New Zealand Initiative and the Taxpayers’ Union.
POLITIK believes it is that people close to those funders and groups who have been pushing the “Luxon must go” campaign.
They want somebody who can pull back support from Peters.
But that may be a case of wishful thinking rather than reality.
POLITIK could find no evidence last night that there was any move against Luxon.
If anything, it was the opposite, with senior Ministers and backbench MPs expressing their frustration with the speculation and the leaks. T
The same small group of MPs who were thought to be behind the leadership speculation last November are under suspicion again.
That includes South Island Minister James Meager and Tauranga MP Sam Uffindell. Both deny any involvement.
The difficulty National faces is that because it is polling so low, it will lose MPs.
Farrar has analysed this and says that even if National were to increase its vote to 38 per cent, they would be likely to get only one list MP, “presumably Nicola Willis.”
He points out that National has not polled 38 per cent since November 2004.
So, a Government elected with less than 38 per cent support would be a Government without Nicola Willis, Paul Goldsmith and “possibly even Chris Bishop if he doesn’t hold his marginal Hutt South seat.”
“That would be a disaster for National, even if in Government,” he said.
What must worry National even more is that the profile of New Zealand First support has changed.
Farrar has analysed that and says that in the Taxpayers’ Union – Curia polls that he conducts, NZ First is getting support equally from men and women and that it is no longer the party of the over 65s.
Instead, they get 13 per cent of under 40s, 15 per cent of 40-59s and 12 per cent of over 60s.
Their biggest chunk of support, 52 per cent, has come from people who voted National at the last election.
(Only 31 per cent of their supporters voted for NZ First).
In other words, NZ First is getting ordinary middle-of-the-road National voters.
So, National faces an existential crisis.
It is losing its own supporters to New Zealand First, which has a much more centrist economic philosophy at a time when economic optimism is plunging.
That suggests their plight is about more than the personality (or lack of) of the Prime Minister.
The former advisor to Prime Minister Jenny Shipley and author of a book on political communications, Claire Robinson, in her weekly blog last Friday, said that Luxon was an apprentice Prime Minister learning on the job in public view, with no margin for error.
“But that doesn’t mean he should be dumped,” she said.
“Our political history is littered with the wreckage of mid-term leadership changes.
“Mike Moore was parachuted in to replace Geoffrey Palmer as Prime Minister and ‘save the furniture’ in 1990. He didn’t.
“Jenny Shipley engineered a caucus coup against PM, Jim Bolger, in 1997 while he was at an overseas conference.
“National still lost the following election.
“Changing unpopular leaders mid-term turns out to be more damaging than the problem it’s meant to solve.”
She says National has to give Luxon what he never had: proper Prime Ministerial support.
“Not communications training, not leadership coaching — Prime Ministerial development.
“If he can’t carry the vision, someone in Cabinet or caucus has to help him build one, because a party without a compelling story of where it’s taking the country is just a management consultancy with a large budget.”
If something like that doesn’t happen, then stand by for Prime Minister Chris Hipkins — or Prime Minister Winston Peters.
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