Should she survive the next two weeks as National leader, Judith Collins will on July 14 mark one year in the job.
By anyone’s reckoning, including surely her own, it has been a year from hell.
Some years in hell make the hardest steel harder. Some just see everything go up in smoke.
Collins’ annus horribilis began with her winning the leadership by default, through a desperate call-up from colleagues stunned by the resignation of Todd Muller.
Soon followed an historic electoral embarrassment in October, producing a small and imperfectly formed caucus that has delivered a string of own-goals, mis-hits and misfits.
Combined, their efforts have at latest count taken National from its 25.6 percent of the vote at the election to just 29 percent. By Collins’ own public assessment, under 30 percent is still the zone of electoral death.
Naturally, no one seems happy about that. Collins’ answer of late, with two ugly purges of MPs considered uncompliant, is akin to that old cartoon of the Roman slave ship, with a soldier wielding a whip yelling to the crew: “Floggings will continue until morale improves.”
The strategy might well be that of a leader who prizes unity and focus above all, or it could be that of a leader seeking pre-venge – doing it to them before they can do it to her. She can’t purge them all, and at some point, something has to give.
The conventional wisdom is that a leader like Collins, defeated, divisive and struggling for public love, is a seat-warmer who can be left in place until around the half-way point in the electoral cycle, perhaps April 2022, when someone – anyone – else might be ready to take over.
A high level report card
But they elected her, and she’s survived nearly a year.
Anniversaries beg the question: Just what has been achieved in year one of the 14th leader of the National Party?
Very little, in the Key Performance Indicators of gaining public support, party and caucus cohesion and an alternative vision or new thinking.
Not much, in the KPIs of reaching out to voter groups that National burned in its descent into Hades, or for claiming ministerial or political scalps from the other side.
But a bit, for the KPI of staying standing, for plugging away in Labour’s large shadow and under the discombobulating political pace and hot-button pushing from Act.
Challenging the Government
Collins has been right in highlighting Labour’s delusions of adequacy, at times, over border policy, lockdown and testing responses, vaccination rollouts and the execution of some of its biggest pre-Covid spend-ups in areas like mental health and public housing. But neither she nor her Covid response spokesperson seem to be able to articulate what they would do differently.
She has bitten her lip, raised her eyebrow and tried to make the Opposition Leader’s weekly media interviews work, but with modest impact and at risk of appearing simultaneously cross and happy at the country’s slow vaccination rates and stop-start travel bubble.
Her routine of chiding and mocking the Government and then, to questions on her own party’s disarray, taking refuge in ‘what happens in caucus stays in caucus’ to avoid offering a personal view on the personal views of the National Party leader, would go down well at a party branch’s afternoon tea. In mass media, it can come across as a bit cute, too in-house and faintly absurd.
She has taken Act leader David Seymour’s lead and hit Jacinda Ardern and the Justice Minister Kris Faafoi repeatedly on their gobbledegook in trying to explain the latest provisions of anti hate speech legislation. She’s tried to ride the Māori separatism tiger, only to set aside that campaign once the 1 News Colmar-Brunton poll saw her approval rating drop to net -19 (disapproval over approval).
The hate speech issue was fertile populist territory for a while, until Collins over-reached on Twitter, asking coyly if calling someone a ‘Karen’ might be considered to be inciting hate.
Ardern turned that back on her in Parliament on Wednesday by saying that no, calling someone ‘Karen’ would not be caught by the new law. Ardern apologised to Collins that it would therefore not offer the National leader protection from that term being used against her.
Leading her own side
Leaders advance supporters and Collins has given MPs a chance. As always, some have taken the opportunity (Nicola Willis on housing, Chris Bishop on cricket), others have disappeared slowly into Homer Simpson’s hedge (the shadow treasurer Andrew Bayly, agriculture spokesperson David Bennett) and some are yet to emerge from the Chrisalis (new MP and leader-in-waiting Chris Luxon).
Too few have presented as authoritative or credible alternatives, perhaps reflecting the leadership under which they serve.
Does Collins attract negative commentary or does it go looking for her? Her election campaign (the Ponsonby walkabout, fat-shaming voters, claiming to be raised in a state-house on a farm, ‘praying’ for electoral salvation) was critiqued by necessity.
But in this week alone, the current purge of Nick Smith and her predecessor Muller has been deftly skewered by none other than her former press secretary Janet Wilson and in comments in an interview by former Cabinet colleague Chris Finlayson QC that the party is currently self-destructing. The Stuff press gallery journalist Thomas Coughlan wrote that as bad as Ardern’s week might have been over the hate speech troubles, Collins’ week was worse.
“‘The problem for National,” Coughlan says, “is that anything Ardern does, it can do worse. The caucus has no confidence in itself, and appears only to have confidence in its leader in the most strict and formal sense (and maybe not even that).”
Will she make it?
Collins had the honour of speaking at the Press Gallery’s 150th dinner in April, after former PM John Key speaking as chair of the dinner sponsor ANZ and before the incumbent Ardern. That is a tough gig. Key was in after dinner mood, relaxed and roasting various media figures. Ardern was both personal and high-minded about politics and the Fourth Estate.
Collins started well, quipping that if Leader of the Opposition was the worst job in politics, how come everyone wanted it? There was one of her awkward, off-the cuff jokes about being sat at “the Catholics’ table” of former PMs Jim Bolger and Bill English, which crashed and burned. But she went on too long, was too flat and didn’t really read what was a highly judgmental room. Somehow she didn’t seem like she belonged in that company of speakers. Some of her MPs in the room weren’t impressed.
Her caucus and party want the public to like the National Party leader, to see her or him as a contender, a serious person with clear ideas, appeal and vitality. They want her to make them proud.
Right now, Collins’ personal and party polling is low, the caucus unity, performance and confidence is shaky, and any tangible reform of the party, governance, candidate selections or its policy positions remains hidden from view, despite the vigorous rejection at the ballot box.
For Collins, it is one year down. How many, if any, to go?
