Opinion: Mike Williams: PM works well under pressure

Jacinda Ardern delivers her victory speech to Labour Party supporters at the Auckland Town Hall after romping home in the 2020 election. Photo / File

The general election two weeks ago produced a stunning outcome from whatever side of the political fence you sit and will be picked over by commentators and academics for many years to come.

As a "campaign junkie" I found it fascinating.

The Labour Party defied the received wisdom about MMP by winning an outright majority and seemingly huge numbers of electors exercised their vote in what later analysis will likely show is a novel manner.

Election outcomes in my experience are the result of many factors which include a party's leadership and team, record, organisation, policy, and - most unpredictably – an element of luck.

The 2020 election was dominated by Covid19 and Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern's sure-footed handling and brilliant communication skills during the pandemic.

That, I believe, is the aspect of the landslide result that will be the focus of historians in years to come.

While there is no doubt that the Prime Minister rose to this challenge in a fashion that attracted admiration and cross-party support, this talent was an extension of her adroit handling of the Mosque massacres and the fatal eruption on White Island.

We know by now that she is great under pressure and rises to the most challenging of occasions.

The fact that she also led a disciplined and determined team contributed heavily to the support for her Labour Party.

Finance Minister Grant Robertson made a crucial contribution by turning around the long-established perception that National is a better economic manager than Labour, so when National tried to access that perception with their campaign advertising, it was no longer there.

He also played the good-cop, bad-cop role with the PM and ankle-tapped National's inept finance spokesman, Paul Goldsmith, by finding the sort of "hole in a budget" that former National Finance Minister Steven Joyce alleged was in Robertson's budget three years before.

Grant Robertson must have allowed himself at least a wry smile to see Joyce's 2017 strategy backfire against his own party so tellingly.

Mike Williams

Not one Labour MP or candidate stepped out of line during the very long campaign – a display of the discipline that was so clearly missing in the National Party which leaked till the very end of the campaign.

In every election there are the unsung heroes of the voluntary organisations that select and manage the candidates, raise the money for the campaign, organise the advertising and plan and execute the party's activity on the ground.

Labour was fortunate to be very well served by party president, Claire Szabo, acting secretary Rob Salmond and campaign manager Hayden Munro. Although the spotlight did not go on these three officials, they deployed a sophisticated data-driven campaign strategy that National simply could not match and contributed heavily to the historic win.

I lost track of the number of times I was touched for a contribution to Labour Party coffers and I was phoned twice, first to make sure I was still supporting the Labour Party and second to make certain I'd voted. That is good organisation in action.

The normally formidable National Party had a shocker of a year and capped it with the worst campaign I have ever witnessed.

Party leader Simon Bridges badly mishandled his response to the pandemic, saw National's poll support slump dramatically as a result and was rolled in favour of Todd Muller.

Muller was to last just 53 days in the job, leaving for mental health reasons and becoming the shortest-lived leader of any parliamentary party in New Zealand's history.

Judith Collins picked up the now thoroughly poisoned chalice of leadership only to see a slate of resignations from some of National's most experienced MPs.

The year of instability made Judith Collin's task extremely difficult, and her party seemed unprepared for the delayed election campaign.

The economic credibility on which National's campaign advertising relied was compromised by an off-and-on tax cut policy and by Paul Goldsmith's budget errors.

A caucus leak of an email critical of Judith Collins during the campaign underlined continuing disunity.

The usually tightly disciplined Collins somehow wandered off script on to an attack on the overweight third of the population and was badly let down by her own party organisation by a walkabout in Ponsonby which produced mainly negative images for the media.

Collin's repeated attacks on the Greens' policy of a wealth tax may well have alerted normally National-leaning voters to the desirability of a majority Labour government and sealed National's 2020 fate.

Though the final results are still to come at the time of writing, it looks like 2020 saw unprecedented levels of tactical voting where up to 200,000 National-leaning voters supported Labour to limit the influence of the Greens, and Maori split their votes to see the Maori Party back in Parliament.

This election will cast a very long shadow on both of the big parties.

Mike Williams grew up in Hawke's Bay. He is CEO of the NZ Howard League and a former Labour Party president.