Two key speeches were presented to the National Party Conference last weekend from people outside the political wing of the party. One was from Sir John Key, the other from Party President Peter Goodfellow. To me, they were of contrasting styles. One reflected on taking ownership of the many disasters that beset the party prior to the election, the other appeared to look elsewhere for blame.
Sir John was in no doubt that the party simply needed to look to itself to see where most of the blame lay. Sir John said “ If we blame the media or go and blame other people, we’re going to actually forget to look in the mirror and we have to take responsibility. If we don’t learn from it, we’ll just repeat those mistakes and we won’t move on.” He acknowledged that the COVID-19 pandemic gave the Government an “unprecedented” platform to communicate to the country.
“But we have to take responsibility for our own actions. We failed in a series of different ways, from leadership changes to leaking to disunity. All of those get punished very strongly by an electorate. If we want to be silly enough to continue to play the games we have played recently then they [media] are going to report them and we’ve only got ourselves to blame.” He told MP’s if they can’t quit leaking they should quit the party. How right he is.
Contrast this with Peter Goodfellow. He appeared to go looking for anyone else to blame except himself and the party. COVID-19, the media, the Government, anyone but the National Party. This evidently, and not surprisingly, did not go down well with the party faithful. He might have a point with the disgraceful way Ardern used COVID-19 to her advantage but as for the media and the Government, they simply reported and reacted to what they observed was happening in the Opposition ranks.
The Board, instead of looking elsewhere to apportion blame should ask themselves what part they played in the fiasco. Where were they with leadership and advice? It seems to me they were nothing more than passive observers. With the political party in the ever-increasing serious predicament it was finding itself, where was the required intervention from the Board offering the help that was so obviously needed? Non-existent.
Instead, they let Judith Collins take what she rightly described as a hospital pass. Perhaps this lack of management stems from an attitude at Board level that National has an inherent right to govern. An understanding of MMP would leave no doubt that is not the case. It will be interesting to see what comes out of the review. I personally don’t think a review is necessary. What went wrong is obvious and what needs to be done is also obvious.
A strategy that enacts a vision that combined resonates firstly with the party membership and secondly with the wider public is what is required. The party needs policies that are an alternative to Labour and give a real choice. This happened to a degree at the last election but due to the turmoil the party was in the phone was off the hook.
As Sir John said, the party only has itself to blame for the drubbing it got.
