Simon’s Dream: The enduring appeal of National in the Twenty-Twenties

When John Key walked up to the podium of the Beehive theatrette on a balmy December afternoon in 2016, few would have guessed that his resignation was imminent. Until that fateful day the conventional wisdom had been that Key, the country’s most popular leader in living memory, would lead his centre-right National Party to a rare fourth term. The 2017 general election was less than 12 months away. Despite “nine long years” in government, opinion polls indicated that National still enjoyed the support of nearly half the voters. Almost everyone attributed this to ‘Brand Key’. It was inconceivable that National could win an election with anyone but the man who had dominated New Zealand politics for the past decade. His successor, Finance Minister Bill English, was treated more as a place-holder than an up-and-coming leader. In large part this was because English had played the role of leader before – and failed miserably. With the shadow of 2002 looming over him, the new Prime Minister had much to prove. But the pundits were mistaken in attributing National’s success to Key. As the great Russian writer Leo Tolstoy conveys in his epic novel War and Peace, a leader is seldom in control of events. History is better understood as a rich mosaic of countless individual aspirations, choices and random acts. Just as Napoleon didn’t really control the invasion of Russia, Key and English wouldn’t get to decide what happened next.

Three years’ later, that sensational Monday press conference has faded from memory. So too has Key. While most New Zealanders would still recognise him in the street, it is doubtful they would give him a second thought. National supporters might look back wistfully on the early 2010s. But they long ago dispelled the notion that the party’s fate rested with one individual. In that regard, the National Party of 2020 is ‘Tolstoyan’ (a term memorably used by U.S. President Richard Nixon to describe his own philosophic outlook). Despite losing the 2017 election, National remained the largest party by a wide margin. With 44.5 percent of the party vote to Labour’s 36.9 percent, English could boast of having led his party to an impressive result. In an unprecedented outcome, the party with the most seats was denied the Treasury benches by a coalition that did not have a plurality, let alone a majority. With only 55 seats the minority government of Labour and New Zealand First has relied on a confidence and supply agreement with the Greens. While such an arrangement is not unusual, the circumstances are extraordinary. This simple historical fact has given National hope where conventional wisdom says there shouldn’t be any.

No one understands this better than Simon Bridges and National strategists. While Bridges’ personal support languishes behind that of Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern, National continues to poll higher than Labour. It is clear that a significant number of New Zealanders would vote for party over leader. Almost three years to the day of Key’s resignation, a 1 News/Colmar Brunton poll forecast a National victory. If an election had been held in December 2019, according to this poll, Simon Bridges would be the country’s 41st Prime Minister. The poll can’t be dismissed as an outlier. It was the second consecutive poll to indicate the same result. Not only that, but numerous other polls have suggested a tight race. At best we can say the odds are even. Of course, there is still a long way to go until election day and, as the 2017 campaign proved, a lot can happen quickly. But none of this changes the fact that National’s appeal, unlike that of Labour, transcends the leader. The John Key personality cult turned out to be a myth, an illusion, that obscured the complexities of our political culture and made a convenient narrative for the left as it reeled from defeat.

The same won’t be said of ‘Jacindamania’. Whereas Key inherited a party that was comfortably out-polling Labour in 2006, Ardern was the ‘last resort’ for a caucus staring political oblivion in the face. We easily forget that Labour won only a quarter of the vote in 2014. Until the day Ardern became leader, there was a strong likelihood the party would collapse. Her conviviality, youth and ‘relentless positivity’ turned out to be exactly what had been missing from Labour’s leadership. Speaking to young progressive types and other voters with a social conscience, Ardern was able to realign the centre-left vote in Labour’s favour. Consequently, the Green and NZ First vote fell. National also lost its ‘soft’ support. But nearly two hundred thousand more New Zealanders chose to vote blue for a myriad of reasons. Most had voted National before. Some were voting National for the first time. There is no evidence, yet, that National stands to do worse than its 2017 result. If anything it is Labour that appears to be in trouble. 

So why is National still popular? Ask a journalist or commentator and they will most likely tell you that it is because the new government hasn’t delivered. Labour’s promise to fix the housing crisis and end child poverty turned out to be empty. Not to mention the incompetence of certain ministers, bad communication and disunity between the governing parties. They say “Oppositions don’t win elections, Governments lose them.” This explanation would be more convincing if Labour had won a numerical victory in 2017. There would be ground to lose to National. In fact, the numbers suggest that nothing much has changed since election night.  A more plausible explanation is that National’s appeal runs deep in the New Zealand psyche. To understand this, we have to forget about policy details, sensational headlines and the day-to-day vagaries of social media. In practice, there isn’t much difference between the way Labour and National behave in office. One is slightly more generous when it comes to the redistribution of wealth, the other has a reputation (deserved or not) for being meticulously scrupulous with public finances. Where ideology is concerned, Labour and National have both converged on the liberal centre. That is to say, the two major parties share a moderately liberal outlook on issues of public importance. Both have embraced globalisation, diversity, environmentalism, the redress of Treaty breaches, and poverty alleviation. 

Some will disagree with this characterisation, pointing to National’s more reactionary attitudes on crime and welfare. Indeed, that is where any substantive policy difference now lies. But such attitudes belie a more complex set of ideas and values that explain support for National. They have precious little to do with policies. They have everything to do with a particular conception of New Zealand, originating in the pioneer myth, shaped by the post-war experience and curated by politicians of both left and right. The New Zealand I refer to was best described by our longest-serving prime minister, the great Liberal reformer Richard Seddon. He envisioned a classless society, free of want and squalor, in which a spirit of “self-respecting independence” had been maintained. After two world wars and a depression, most New Zealanders had good reason to believe that Seddon’s dream was realised in the mid-20th century. Throughout the 1950s and ‘60s, the country enjoyed tremendous growth and prosperity. In part owing to the policies of the First Labour Government, and in part to the country’s privileged position as ‘Britain’s farm’, full employment was reached. The gap between rich and poor narrowed considerably. 

Opponents of ‘big government’ were marginalised in society. Even the party of businessmen and farmers embraced the goal of full employment. Social security became a birthright. To principled centre-right liberals like John Marshall and Ralph Hanan, the ends justified the means. Conservatives such as Sidney Holland and Keith Holyoake might have been reluctant but now they were on the side of the angels. Indeed, a 1954 National pamphlet boasted that New Zealand was a “land of plenty, from which fear and insecurity have been banished.” Notwithstanding its staunch opposition to ‘socialism’, National maintained this approach into the 1980s. Between 1975 and 1984, Robert Muldoon aggressively sought to preserve Seddon’s dream. Although his interventionist style was opposed by the liberal wing of National, Muldoon believed “genuine humanitarianism” and “intelligent pragmatism” were the hallmarks of a true liberal. He idealised New Zealand in a way no other prime minister had before.  In his view, the country was as close to Utopia as one could get.

So perhaps it should be unsurprising if the party of John Key, Bill English and Simon Bridges can be identified with a vaguely utopian belief that New Zealand is still a land of plenty where rugged individuals can prosper - with just a bit of help from the government. According to this cherished belief, there isn’t much wrong with New Zealand. When Bridges declared that a capital gains tax would be “an assault on the Kiwi way of life”, journalists scoffed. It sounded like absurd hyperbole. But the phrase reveals a lot about how Bridges and National see the world. It is a vastly different place to the one most Labour and Green voters have in mind. To National supporters, few things are more repugnant than denying the archetypal New Zealander the fruits of his or her labour. But even more insulting is the imposition that those who ‘got ahead’ by hard work and enterprise should feel guilty about others left behind. To suggest that homelessness is a societal problem is to implicate everyone who has in some way profited from the housing market. To say that child poverty exists because we don’t pay enough tax is to accuse people of being selfish. 

Yet there are no reasonable grounds for assuming that a National voter cares any less about impoverished children than a Labour voter. According to the 2017 New Zealand Election Study, 86% of National voters agreed with the proposition that “the government should provide decent living standards for children”. A majority (67%) also believed that the government had a responsibility to provide decent housing to those who could not afford it. Perhaps that is why it has become fashionable in right-wing circles to dismiss talk of kindness as mere ‘virtue signalling’. Ardern might have spoken with more empathy than English but they both professed a moral conviction that it was their duty to help the poor. Most voters agreed. The crucial difference is that English did it without offending the sensibilities of New Zealanders who believe that wealth is acquired only through hard work and sacrifice. The corollary of this is that the poor are seen as feckless and lazy. 

The enduring appeal of National can’t be explained by Labour’s failure to deliver or brilliance on the part of Simon Bridges. Rather, it is due to the million or so voters who find some emotional coherence in what the party represents on an individual level. It would be a mistake to dismiss these voters as reactionary bigots or selfish boomers. While such people undoubtedly exist, few lack a moral compass and concern for others. Just about everyone is offended by the sight of human suffering. But the simple truth is that most New Zealanders are comfortable and few understand material hardship. They have difficulty accepting that strangers doing it tough can’t just go to Work and Income for help. Homelessness and child poverty, while troubling, only exist in the news media. For them, New Zealand is still a land of plenty. Any statement to the contrary is a personal attack.

Labour has nothing apparent to offer the large number of voters who are content with life but fear losing what they have. Well-intentioned policies such as free school lunches and abolishing punitive benefit sanctions make the progressive left feel good. But these measures reinforce a common belief that the poor already get enough help from the government without the need for higher taxes. When leftists say “tax the rich to feed the kids” and demand justice for beneficiaries, it is as if they are speaking a different language to everyone else. Ardern’s decision to permanently rule out a capital gains tax confirmed that National, not Labour, is closer to the mythic New Zealand ideal. Whatever his shortcomings as a leader, Bridges’ sense of history is clear. He knows that National can win in spite of any one individual.

Labour must now make a difficult choice: whether to rely on NZ First and the Greens or go head to head with National in a contest for the political centre. This choice will define New Zealand politics for the next decade. To get it wrong would be Simon’s dream.

This is the first in a series of articles by Josh Van Veen