Former British Prime Minister Sir John Major once gave a talk in which he said the reason the job of prime minister is difficult and often unpopular is because ministers send difficult and unpopular decisions up the line. Junior ministers pass them up to their senior cabinet minister colleague, then the cabinet minister sends it up the line to the prime minister. Then the poor prime minister has to make a difficult and unpopular decision – pleasing nobody – and receives criticism in parliament and the media as a result.
This is how things often work: nobody wants to look like a you-know-what.
A good example would be the fuss last year about the ‘investor 2’ and ‘investor plus’ visas: there was no reason why Kris Faafoi couldn’t have dealt with this himself, but instead – perhaps worried about seeming like a “dastardly rotter” on the side of the capitalist exploiters (according to the Wellington socialist set) – he sent the issue to the PM to handle. She subsequently had to cop abuse from Duncan Garner on TV.
Recently however, things have started going the wrong way. Our prime minister is obsessed with popularity (and avoiding unpopularity – we can only speculate why that is). Instead of leading, she blames those below her in the pecking order, as was glaringly demonstrated by her reshuffle.
Not only does she look like somebody reacting to what opponents say, looking weak and not in control of her own Government, but she hasn’t actually solved any problem. Removing a couple of weak, hapless fools and replacing them with another couple of weak, hapless fools – who will just pass the unpopular stuff up to the ninth floor – seems utterly pointless.
Breaks at least three of Machiavelli’s cardinal rules.
And what happens when Grant starts doing it – when the chickens come home to roost with the economy and he lets her make the inevitable, unpopular decisions (i.e. drops her right in it)? Will there be another reshuffle in the spring? Replace more non-entities out of their depth with yet more non-entities out of their depth, and so on? Will we get to the stage where the two turkeys not actually in parliament as yet are in cabinet by this time next year (everyone else having been sacked)?
So many questions, yet no answers. So many ticking timebombs that each will cause a 1% drop in the opinion polls.
The seeds of this rotten crop were sown years ago by Helen Clark: the cull of all the talented people in the Labour party once Mike Moore was dumped, and their replacement with innocuous loyalists and demented ideologues. The end result being the dregs of an archaic and unnecessary “labour movement” entering parliament and being let loose.
How Jacinda must wistfully recall all those student common-room debates and chardonnay sessions at the vineyard. Life was all so easy: the childlike socialist viewpoint always prevailed and the simplistic solution always worked (hint: it tends to when you aren’t actually intellectual).
I have long, long predicted that three or four months of Labour’s support being at ‘change-of-government’ levels, the game being up, will see Ardern quit – like Lange in ’89. She isn’t exactly cut out for unpopularity, or even adult decision making.
