Covid 19 coronavirus: Claire Trevett - Is Simon Bridges' goose cooked? Don't count him out just yet

National Party leader Simon Bridges earlier this week. Photo / Mark Mitchell

COMMENT:

It is perhaps an irony that while National Party leader Simon Bridges gets slapped down whenever he raises his head, there has been intense interest in the utterances of his forebears.

Former PM Sir John Key has featured prominently in the media for a joint interview with National's Botany candidate Christopher Luxon on Skykiwi, a Chinese language media outlet. Then came revelations from a golfing podcast Key did.

These two unlikely interviews got a lot of coverage, as have think pieces written by former Finance Minister Steven Joyce, and comments made by Sir Bill English.

Bridges too got a lot of coverage this week – not for the things he had said, but for the reactions of others to what he had said.

The reaction to comments he made on a Facebook post about the move to alert level three highlighted just how much of a handicap the lockdown is for him.

The lockdown has greatly restricted Bridges' usual media opportunities at the same time it has ensured wall-to-wall coverage of Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern.

The coincidence of this with an election year is very unfortunate indeed. In election years, media have obligations strive for equal coverage of the leaders of the two parties.

Yet for the past five weeks, Ardern has been everywhere and Bridges almost nowhere.

National is not the only one suffering from non-stop Ardern solo show.

Labour's own government partners, the Greens and NZ First, are in the same boat.

They are all but invisible. They have not been seen in weeks, beyond an occasional interview by NZ First leader Winston Peters.

Like National, they too are hamstrung from indulging in "politics" by the crisis, and by the tyranny of social distancing.

By rights, Shane Jones should be wandering around the country like Tinkerbell waving a wand and sprinkling roading and infrastructure sparkles about.

Instead, the only infrastructure he was photographed with was a planter box he was building in Kerikeri.

Parliament returns – in limited numbers – on Tuesday, and that day cannot come soon enough for them.

Nor has Ardern wasted her opportunities.

As well as the daily press conferences – livestreamed on most media and Labour's Facebook page - Ardern has done a constant stream of Facebook Live videos.

She has started up her own interview programme, interviewing the likes of Nigel Latta and scientists.

Next week she will put up her interview with Suzy Cato, who is hosting the new televised education channel, run by TVNZ and the Ministry of Education.

Politics is something of a game of pendulums. Sometimes the pendulum swings in your favour, sometimes against.

At the moment, that pendulum is stratospherically high on Ardern's side of the swing.

The question is whether the pendulum is rusted there for the foreseeable future, or will start to descend.

As long as the "clear and present danger" mentality lasts, Bridges will be whistling into the wind.

But once that has passed, people start to ask "what now?"

Illustration / Guy Body

As case numbers plummet, people perceive Covid-19 itself as a much lower risk.

The news of large-scale job losses and companies collapsing has begun.

The discussion has shifted accordingly, and it is shifting into territory on which National is on a much firmer footing: the economy, jobs, livelihoods.

The voices people listen to will also change – from the scientists and public health experts, to economists and, yes, politicians other than Ardern.

The interest in Key, Joyce and English is understandable – those three led New Zealand through hard times and they are by and large trusted when it comes to talking about the economy. It is natural they will have some influence.

The question is why Bridges – who leads the very same party – cannot get the same traction.

The conundrum for National is whether to change its leader in the hopes a new one would fare better. And it is a conundrum.

National has been to this same precipice before, after the Jami-Lee Ross catastrophe.

A bracing caucus meeting saw Bridges given expectations, and potential contenders put back in their boxes. National rallied again. Leaders are only unstable when the whisperers are circling.

This time round, MPs cannot all meet to sack him because of the lockdown – but nor can they meet to back him.

It somehow needs to put that speculation to bed again - or roll Bridges.

Bridges will have some leeway until the next public poll – which may not be until after the Budget.

The biggest factor in Bridges' favour is the view that a change of leadership in the middle of a major crisis would be potentially catastrophic.

Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern hasn't wasted her opportunities. Photo / Mark Mitchell

National is going through the process of re-jigging its economic plan to suit the Covid crisis and intends to start rolling that out in the near future.

The last thing National needs is for people to finally look to them for ideas only to find National is too busy changing its leader to answer them.

Then again, nor does it need for that time to come only to find the views of Bridges are so entrenched that people do not listen to him anyway. A leader who cannot 'sell' the party's policies is a liability.

In his Facebook post, Bridges was attempting to highlight the struggle of small businesses.

He claimed to have thousands of emails from those small businesses pleading for help.

It is fair to say that after an earlier comment I wrote about Bridges' "misfire" I too got a handful of emails from small business owners saying Bridges was right.

Bridges may well simply have been a Cassandra, who got no thanks for her prophesies when delivering them but was later proved right. Alas it was too late for Cassandra.

Ardern and Robertson's biggest challenge from here on will be coming up with a convincing and believable plan for the economy and business. The Budget is their big opportunity.

It is also National's big opportunity – and it cannot afford to waste it by being embroiled in an internal stoush.

Labour's perceived weakness is its lack of business experience.

Some Labour MPs issued a reminder of that this week.

First was Labour MP Deborah Russell questioning whether small businesses that could not last the lockdown period should have been better prepared for a shock.

Then came Employment Minister Willie Jackson, who said a week longer would not make any difference to small businesses – he did later reprimand himself.

Ardern and Robertson were both quick and direct in quashing both comments.

But on Morning Report, Robertson was also dismissive of Bridges' advocacy for small business, by saying Bridges was politicising the issue and pointing to the wage subsidies as a solution.

That missed the very point those small business owners were making: that it was the lack of cashflow and the cost of other overheads that was crippling them, not simply the cost of staff.

People will move from crisis mentality and thinking about the next day, to thinking about the next weeks and months. For some, there will be desperation and anger. "Be kind" has a limited shelf life when people cannot pay the bills.

Ardern will always get credit for those early days. But people do not vote out of gratitude when they are desperate.

Bridges' biggest mistake was trying to force that pivot in the public mindset a tad too early. But don't count him out just yet.

• Covid19.govt.nz: The Government's official Covid-19 advisory website