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These days you live and die politically on social media. It’s not ideal, but it is how it works.
Yesterday Simon Bridges suffered death by more than a thousand cuts on Facebook after his message attacking the government went down about as well as a pork chop at a bar mitzvah.
On Facebook he posted this comment:
The decision for New Zealand to stay locked down in Level 4 shows the Government hasn’t done the groundwork required to have us ready.
The public has done a great job of self-isolating and social distancing. The entire country has made huge sacrifices to ensure the four week lockdown was effective.
Unfortunately the Government hasn’t done enough and isn’t ready by its own standards and rhetoric.
New Zealand is being held back because the Government has not used this time to ensure best practice of testing and tracing and the availability of PPE hasn’t been at the standard it should have been.
The rate of testing for the first half of lockdown was low, work has only just begun on surveillance testing to confirm whether community transmission is occurring. Tracing is the biggest challenge and experts have identified major shortcomings in the methods being used by the Government.
This is a real shame as businesses will suffer further damage and that will lead to poor health outcomes as a result of the huge stress this will cause for a lot of people.
Rapid and easily accessible testing for workers with symptoms will be essential to give small businesses the confidence needed to get back to work.
I’m sure many Kiwis feel frustration that we still can’t do many things Australians have done through the entire lockdown period, at great cost in terms of jobs and livelihoods, with similar health outcomes.
I now worry that the harm of staying in lockdown will be greater than if we were to come out. We will no doubt see a rise in mental health problems and stress related illnesses.
I also have real concerns about the delay in healthcare for some people, like cancer treatment, screening and thousands of operations across the country.
New Zealanders can be proud of the sacrifices they have made during this difficult time. The Government must now move as fast as it can to sort out the issues with tracing, testing and PPE so we can get our country moving again.
What he said was OK in principle, but the ham-fisted and tone-deaf way he said it and when he said it and why he said it wasn’t at all helpful and will have cost him a lot of votes.
An indicator of the destruction was the likes, or in this case all the other reactions added to his post on Facebook.
- 6700 – Angry
- 5100 – Haha
- 2600 – Likes
- 166 – Wow
- 121 – Love
- 83 – Sad
- Total reactions 14770
Most of those reactions were negative, but more importantly just 18.4% were positive. Sadly, that sounds pretty much like what the 2020 election result will be.
What is truly devastating, though, are the comments. Here is a small sample:
“Glad to see you have better crystal ball Simon but rest assured that every day every Kiwi has been grateful you aren’t our Prime Minister.”
“Stop it simon say nothing, I support and vote national but I think it’s time you did the andrew little and step aside”
“Oh Simon. You really need to learn how to read the room“
“I’m not happy either but man you need to really stop being a dick. I love and support National but you’re acting like a twat waffle lately. Stop that please. Thank you x“
“Been a National voter my whole life but just can’t bring myself to vote for you to be our Prime Minister. Tone-deaf posts like this really don’t help your cause.“
“My National vote is quickly turning because of your attitude Simon Bridges. You are acting like a child. The best thing you could have done was support the government as you said at the start. Your days are numbered as leader. Every time you open your mouth you are loosing voters“
On an on it goes. There are now more than 22,000 comments and not many of them are positive.
There are many, many things that National can hold the government to account for, but yesterday wasn’t the time to do it. That time will come, but unfortunately for Simon Bridges, it will come far too late.
To give you an indication of how out of touch he is with the public sentiment, last night he hatched a plan to have all of National’s caucus attend parliament next week in Wellington. They are trying to make a political point about the country not needing to be in level 3. They are also ignoring travel restrictions and the reality of the lack of flights at present.
Presumably, he thinks his MPs will all make the sort of mad Cannonball Run-style dashes to Wellington that he has been making.
Unfortunately for National, they are more Rosco P. Coltrane and Cletus than the glamour of the Cannonball Run:
Sadly National are just signalling that the Level 3 rules don’t apply to them, proving yet again that politicians think they are extra special.
This just continues the extremely poor performance of Simon Bridges during this crisis and only serves to prove to voters that he is unsuitable to lead the country.
Jacinda Ardern has followed H.L. Menckon’s advice to the letter:
The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed (and hence clamorous to be led to safety) by menacing it with an endless series of hobgoblins, all of them imaginary.
Grandstanding does not unwind what the government has done. To be frank, I don’t think there is anything that the opposition can do to win the next election, save be patient. The economy is in tatters, all to save about the equivalent of a year’s road toll. These are things that the opposition should be focussing on, not making silly gestures like a good old-fashioned pissing contest.
There are more than enough facts and figures with which to beat the government with. Unfortunately, Simon Bridges lacks the wit to bring them to the argument.
