National’s ‘years of shame’

In the middle of the 2010s, National was on top of the world, with a popular leader, three election wins under its belt, and another looking close to certain. Then things fell apart. Henry Cooke looks over National’s turbulent time in Opposition.

It started, as all oppositions do, with losing the election. National had lost the 2017 election, but many in the party didn’t quite realise this. The party had performed remarkably well, despite John Key’s shock exit in the middle of the term and the sudden rise of Jacinda Ardern, but it had not won – it could not command a majority of Parliament, and Ardern could.

Veteran National MP Nick Smith, who knew plenty about MMP, claimed National had won. Others like long-time MP and speaker David Carter figured they had dodged a bullet not going with NZ First. Attorney General Chris Finlayson told Stuff he initially thought the Labour-NZ First Government would ‘‘fall apart’’.

It would not, but National eventually would. At 2020 it would almost halve its vote from 2017, and this week the party would expel from the leadership the only person who had wanted it last year, Judith Collins, without anyone pencilled in to replace her.

English exits stage left

Some in the party point to the National Party leadership race in 2018 as the start of some of the troubles.

Unlike former leadership changes, which were either straight coups or stagemanaged successions, this was a truly open race. Bill English didn’t hand the leadership to anyone, he just left. This led to a public race for the leader that exposed some of the differences within the party that the long golden summer of John Key had managed to keep under the surface.

‘‘It was the first time we had had sort of a multi-choice contest. I think in hindsight there were these cliques that supported one side or another – and those divisions never healed. They probably exist to this day,’’ Carter told Stuff at the time.

Simon Bridges would win the leadership. He appointed his main rival Amy Adams, from the party’s more liberal wing, into finance, and kept English’s deputy Paula Bennett on for continuity.

Factions fester

Bridges had a reasonable start to the job. There was plenty to trip the Government up on as it got going, with inexperienced ministers and the big promises of opposition meeting the cool reality of power. He even managed to ruin a Budget for the Government. National stayed competitive in the polls.

‘‘In hindsight we performed particularly well under Simon Bridges’ leadership,’’ Carter told Stuff.

Yet many senior people from the Government years started to either resign or announce they would at the election, a sign that perhaps a one-term Labour-led Government was not on the cards.

‘‘They were good times – with realism. You had a first-term Government with a leader that was popular – while you always hope you can turf them out as quickly as possible, it’s very hard,’’ Carter said.

Finlayson said he himself thought the Government would fall apart and immediately made plans to leave politics when it became obvious that wasn’t the case. ‘‘A lot of them thought it would be a one-term wonder, so they would get their time as prime minister,’’ Finlayson said.

Meanwhile, the factions that the 2018 leadership race had brought out into the open seemed to harden.

Part of the problem was a series of tough social votes that National MPs allowed its MPs to vote freely on – abortion and euthanasia.

The point of conscience votes is to allow your party not to be wrecked by instability on an issue like abortion, where opposing views can be fiercely held by two people who agree on most other things. But euthanasia became an entrenched issue within the caucus, with a Maggie Barry-led conservative wing fighting very hard against a Chris Bishop-led liberal wing.

‘‘Over time the ethical issues got exhausting for colleagues,’’ a current National MP who spoke on condition of anonymity said.

‘‘You ended up with some pretty nasty speeches on the floor between colleagues.’’

Carter agrees. ‘‘There was a lot of pressure from each side on those who looked like they might be swayable. That was a division that we hadn’t seen earlier.’’

Another division not so obvious in the media was by intake year. It’s a long tradition that MPs who arrived in Parliament in the same election have some form of bond, with people running off to ‘‘2014 drinks’’ with all the MPs that came into power with them. But with 55 MPs after some big election wins, some of these groupings were rather large, particularly the class of 2017 who came to be seen as a rather powerful bloc.

The ‘years of shame’

One issue united the caucus however – revulsion at the actions of Jami-Lee Ross.

Ross, formerly a close ally of Bridges, went nuclear on him after he was not allowed to hold onto several jobs at once. Over an extraordinary 72 hours he accused Bridges of corruption, leaked private and secret audio recording of Bridges insulting his colleagues, and ended up getting the exact result he hadn’t wanted: Bridges consolidating his power.

‘‘My recollection of that, once the story was known, there was no-one on Jami-Lee Ross’ side. He had to go and he went. It was dealt with fairly decisively actually,’’ Carter said.

But for Finlayson the problem with Ross pointed to a wider issue with the party – how on earth had a character like that even managed to get selected in a safe seat?

‘‘It absolutely beggars belief that someone like him ever got into Parliament. That calls immediately into question the board and the president,’’ Finlayson said.

He pointed to other selections that would come to be problematic for the National Party – like Andrew Falloon who resigned in disgrace over allegations of unwanted sexts in 2020, and Jake Bezzant who was accused of using explicit photos of an ex-partner to impersonate her.

‘‘These issues cast a stain on the National Party,’’ Finlayson said.

‘‘When someone writes the history of the National Party in this period it will be the years of shame.’’

Part of the issue as Finlayson saw it was that the intakes of 2008, 2011, and 2014, were all made up of MPs who had never seen political adversity, or as he describes them ‘‘amateurs and lightweights’’.

‘‘I think a lot of the 2008, 2011 and 2014 intake looked at Key and thought ‘that was easy – we can do that’?’’

‘‘They only knew the good times. They would arrive in Wellington on Tuesday, go to caucus, might ask a question in the house, do a speech in a debate, have a big party on Wednesday night, then fly home on Thursday and say ‘We are serving you.’’’

‘‘They only knew the reliability of Key, the stability of English. So when it came their turn to run the party, well you can see what happened.’’

Covid-19 takes down two leaders

Still, without Covid-19 you can easily see National winning the election under Simon Bridges, or at least making a decent shake of it.

Instead, the Covid-19 lockdown and its success shot Labour’s polling into the stratosphere, while the negative tone that Bridges struck saw National sink from the 40s to the 20s.

This rattled his huge caucus, many of whom would lose their jobs if the polling went below 35 per cent support, let alone 30. As Bridges’ approval ratings reached new lows that worry turned into action, and Bay of Plenty MP and long-time ‘‘future prime minister’’ Todd Muller ousted Bridges in a caucus coup, helped along by two Wellington liberals – Chris Bishop and Nicola Willis.

‘‘It’s just pure ambition,’’ the unnamed current MP says of the coup. ‘‘We all have it. The coup was just pure ambition of at least five colleagues. I don’t think it was in the interest of the party.’’

At first things went well, with a bounce in the polls and a clearly stated less negative approach. But the pressure over a scandal involving Southland MP Hamish Walker, who had leaked Covid-19 patient details to the media, exposed Muller in the eyes of many of his colleagues as indecisive and weak. He would soon resign, citing a mental health breakdown.

Judith Collins, who clearly had wanted the job for years, took the hospital pass on, with the election just around the corner. No-one expected her to win the election, but maybe she could save the party from too great a loss.

A terrible election result

Soon the long-held fears of many in National’s old guard about Collins would play out. She could be an effective minister but was also utterly unpredictable and occasionally chaotic.

Collins’ campaign wasn’t helped by errors out of her control, like a botched proposed budget that shot holes in National’s economic credibility. She was widely seen to have performed well in the debates.

‘‘She did well to grab the ball and she really did give it her best,’’ the MP said.

But the final weeks of the campaign saw things get weird. Collins would spend whole press conferences fighting with journalists about obesity. She prayed in front of the news cameras and then said she hadn’t done it on purpose when it backfired. And on election night it was as bad as the polls had said. National lost nationally, with just 26 per cent of the vote to Labour’s 50 per cent, and every electorate other than Epsom gave Labour more party votes than anyone else.

After the election Collins moved to consolidate her power in the shrunken caucus.

‘‘It was all about her survival. She drove Nick Smith out to get [her ally] Harete Hipango in. It was all about numbers. Keeping the numbers high so she could remain in the job,’’ Carter said.

‘‘When you start firing people like Todd Muller because he spoke to the media – what politician hasn’t spoken to the media off the record throughout their career? It’s never a sackable offence.

‘‘I’d describe it as leadership by fear. She made people too scared to oppose her.’’

But this week, Collins went too far, and the caucus had enough, voting her down in National’s first vote of no confidence in modern history. Now the future of the party is once again in the hands of its caucus.