“Thorny path to National victory”. So ran the headline to Claire Trevett’s article in the Weekend Herald. It was worth reading just to prove it wasn’t worth reading if that makes sense. The article failed to impress. The left-wing journalists are so predictable. Like their political heroes, they lack the mental capacity to look beyond what to them appears to be the obvious. To analyse a situation in some depth seems not to be within their level of competence.
According to Claire National is irrelevant. There is precious little interest among the wider public who pushed it into irrelevancy only a month ago. Labour and Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern are enjoying their honeymoon. National’s leader Judith Collins could literally howl at the moon and nobody would take any notice. Claire thinks many MP’s doubt she will be the one to lead them into the 2023 election. It is Claire’s view that MP’s are too busy sulking to be proactive on the leadership and the options are limited.
Well Claire, for starters I wouldn’t say National are irrelevant. Parliament isn’t sitting and when it does it will be for such a short time that the Opposition will have little opportunity to get into its stride. As for Jacinda enjoying a honeymoon one could say that has been the story of her first term in office as very little was achieved. In my view the three years she had to be transformative were spent howling at the moon. To describe MP’s as sulking is a typically silly comment from a leftie journalist.
Claire then goes on to musing over who the next leader could or should be. This is presumably what she thinks the sulking MP’s should be doing. Do they give Mark Mitchell a go? Do they give Simon Bridges a second go, or is it too soon? I can only presume these silly comments are to try and highlight what she thinks is a dearth of talent within the crumbling remains of a broken party.
Do they take a punt on Shane Reti? Or do they leap straight to the next step, and plump for Christopher Luxon, anointed heir of John Key? Does this woman really expect to be taken seriously? She’s now descended into mischief-making. Reti will never be the leader, but will certainly be a very able deputy. As for Luxon, he hasn’t even sat in the house yet. Having said that, in terms of intellect, they leave the Labour Party for dead.
Claire, like most on the left, have a very simplistic view on life. She will no doubt compare Ardern to Key in popularity and assume her tenure will be as long. There is a similarity in popularity but the difference is in the ability when it comes to the day to day running of the country. Their inability to achieve is because they have no equivalent of an English or a Joyce in their ranks. If you compare, as I have done in a previous post, the backgrounds of the Labour sixty-plus caucus, to National’s approximately half, it’s like chalk and cheese.
National has every chance of being an effective Opposition. The most likely person to achieve this is the current leader, Judith Collins. Rather than sulking, it is most likely the National caucus has woken up to the fact this is the case. It will be very interesting to see how the National caucus performs next year.
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