Speculation that the Prime Minister’s leadership of the Labour Party may be at risk because of this week’s adverse poll
results is as exaggerated as it is premature and facile.
While her popularity has plummeted from the artificially stellar heights of a couple of years ago and is probably set to
fall further to what would be a more realistic assessment, she remains the country’s most popular politician and
preferred Prime Minister by a comfortable margin. Nor is there any obvious and credible replacement for her emerging yet
within Labour’s ranks. None of the names that get idly mentioned from time to time as possible replacements, should the
need arise, has any real public appeal, nor looks capable of leading Labour to an election victory.
Nevertheless, the Prime Minister’s leadership is not without fault, as the sharp and steady decline in her opinion poll
ratings shows. She is becoming an increasingly polarising figure as the gap between her “aspirational” approach to
politics, as demonstrated in her recent testy interview with Jack Tame on QandA demonstrated, and the practical
achievements of her government grows ever wider.
That should hardly be a surprise though. The Prime Minister made outlandishly extravagant political promises in the
lead-up to the 2017 election, which any government would have struggled to get close to fulfilling in even the most
normal of circumstances, let alone in the most severe pandemic the world has known in modern times.
Indeed, it is increasingly overlooked that until the outbreak of Covid19 in New Zealand the polls were showing the
government was on track to be the first one-term government since the third Labour government of the early 1970s. It was
only the outbreak of the pandemic and the government’s response to it that saved her government from being held to
account at the last election for over-promising and under-delivering.
In those circumstances, it was inevitable that the government’s and the Prime Minister’s ratings would start to take a
massive hit once the country began to move on from the artificial environment and restrictions of the pandemic, and
return to something approaching normality. The remarkable aspect is not that it has happened, but that it has taken so
long to occur. In part, this is due to residual support for the Prime Minister from the heady early days of the Covid19
response, but it is more strongly and immediately due to the woeful performance of the National Party, even now still
stumbling to get back on an even and reliable political keel.
A repeat of the 2020 election landslide next year now seems completely out of the question for Labour. Even the party’s
pollster is acknowledging that getting Labour’s support back into the back mid-40 per cent range is going to be
difficult, and that the party’s best chance of remaining in government lies with a combination with the Greens and
possibly Te Pati Māori getting enough seats to be able to put together a government after next year’s election. It is a
grim situation for Labour with a third or more of its current list and electorate MPs now facing defeat next year.
While it is natural and predictable that those increasingly endangered MPs might be looking around for a way of
bolstering their chances of re-election, replacing the leader cannot be a serious option for them to consider. The
recent experience alone of the National Party in hurriedly changing its leader just before an election shows that would
an extremely unwise option to entertain. The Prime Minister’s popularity may currently be falling faster than her
party’s, and no matter unflattering Labour may find the comparison, it is worth remembering that Sir Robert Muldoon, who
was considerably more unpopular than Jacinda Ardern, won against the odds re-elections in 1978 and 1981, albeit under
the First-Past-the-Post system.
There is also the example of 1990 when Prime Minister Geoffrey Palmer was forced aside by Mike Moore just eight weeks
before the election, on the grounds he could save more Labour seats in what was looming as a massive defeat. In the
event, Labour probably did slightly worse under Moore than it would have done under Palmer.
While the Prime Minister achieved a dramatic turnaround in Labour’s fortunes after taking over as party leader a few
weeks before the 2017 election, she did so as Opposition leader, not Prime Minister. Indeed, the last leader to take
over as Prime Minister during a term and win the next election was Peter Fraser in the 1940s, in the middle of the
Second World War.
The political situation is difficult for Labour right now, and may well be becoming terminal, although it is still too
early to make that prediction with any degree of certainty. What is clear, however, in these circumstances is that they
are a test of the Prime Minister’s leadership in just the same way the advent of the pandemic and the aftermath of the
Mosque shootings were in earlier years. The Prime Minister has given no hint that she is about to walk away from all
this, just because the challenge has got a lot tougher, and nor should she.
Many things have been said and written about the Prime Minister since she came to office. Some of it has been
excessively sycophantic, some of it has been widely inaccurate; and some has been accurate and justified. Whatever else
may have been said or written about her, she has never been accused of lacking determination.
As Labour faces its biggest mountain she well knows that she remains the party’s best chance of conquering it, and that
to give up now would be to consign her party to certain defeat. She does not appear to be that selfish.
So, those who gleefully speculate upon her imminent departure seem set to be disappointed. The Prime Minister will go
when the electorate tells her to, and not before.
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