"Most Popular Prime Minister"

Can Simon Bridges Tear Down the Careful Crafting?

Damien Grant, Columnist
Stuff


The National Party leader has dismissed any questions over his leadership saying none of his MPs have raised it with him, and it's a distraction when the country should be focusing on how to rebuild the economy.

The beatification of our Prime Minister belies a darker truth; her Government is in trouble and faces the risk of annihilation come September. The challenge for the Opposition is to present a coherent economic plan to get this country back to work.

The scale of the economic collapse has been masked by the $10 billion Grant Robertson has gifted to - among others - big city lawyers, Australian-owned retail chains and, in the interests of disclosure, some of my businesses.  Thanks to Robertson, the prospect of my wife getting that larger pool has increased and the prospects of me retiring before 70 have decreased, as that $10b paid out in the wage-subsidy scheme is going to have to be paid for by someone - and I am picking it is going to be people like me.

This was a massive waste of cash as most of the employers who took it, including me, didn’t need the subsidy and were going to retain their staff anyway. Most firms that were going to fail before they got $7000 per employee are still going to fail.

I’ve already administered one company where the director took the $70,000 wage subsidy and spent all but $3000 on various bills in the space of an afternoon. His company then fell into receivership and his staff were left out in the cold; one of many such stories that I expect will emerge.


I’d guess 5 per cent of firms who took this cash will survive because of it and the wall of redundancies and unemployment has merely been pushed down the road a month or two. In the US, where the labour laws are more flexible, unemployment is already at Great Depression levels; over 20 per cent. We can expect to match this well before the election.

With as many as half a million unemployed and many of the rest on reduced wages, unable to travel, coming out of a bitter economic winter and possibly ongoing outbreaks of Covid-19, making the case that this Government should be returned to office is going to be a tough sell.  What the electorate needs to know is how a Bridges-Goldsmith administration plans to revive the economic corpse they will inherit.

We can ignore those calling for Bridges to be replaced. He has more mettle than Andrew Little and won’t be falling on his sword for the greater good. Critically, those hankering to replace him lack the chutzpah to wield the knife.  It seems some frustrated prime ministers-in-waiting in the National Party think that a desperate caucus should elect them leader by acclamation without their having to go through the messy business of deposing Bridges. 

This isn’t how power is won. If you are not prepared to knife Caesar in Pompey’s Theatre then for the love of the party zip it and fall in line; you’re not helping. Nick Smith circulating letters to all caucus members knowing it would end up in the media and MPs leaking internal polls to Wellington bloggers is disloyalty and they should face the same discipline meted out to Jami-Lee Ross. 

Bridges has many faults, including a stilted communication style that clearly grates RNZ interviewers, but a timid heart isn’t one of them. What National needs going into September is a leader prepared to tear down the country's most popular prime minister in a generation.

Bridges is well qualified for this role. 2019 now exists in a pre-pandemic universe but during those simpler Bohemian times the opposition leader was dominating the news cycle with regular ‘discussion documents’. These were little more than talking points to troll the media into outrage and giving Bridges an opportunity to attack the Government.

He was effective in pulling at the threads of the coalition’s failings and exposing their lack of competence. It was working. He was rising in the polls and a National-ACT government was looking not only possible but probable. He’d dumped Winston, contained Collins and thrown enough winks at Seymour you’d have thought he wanted to partner with him on next season's Dancing with the Stars.

But attacking the competence of Jacinda Ardern’s pandemic response, Robertson’s lolly scramble and Clark’s quarantine busting antics isn’t going to be enough. National needs an economic plan. A real one; not some pithy discussion document that asks more questions than provides answers.

The stakes are higher than any election since 1984 because a second-term Ardern Government will have a mandate and an appetite for the largest expansion of the state since Robert Muldoon’s Think Big schemes and endless tinkering beggared the country.

The Budget comes out in two weeks. Bridges needs to do more than critique it. He needs to tell us what he’d do differently because if he fails we’ll end up with another three years of an Ardern premiership and worse, the prospect of a Luxon one after that.