John Armstrong: Key man just won't go away

It is one of the oldest tricks in the book - one which brings back memories the National Party would prefer were long dead and buried.

When Jim Bolger was struggling as leader in the late 1980s and Winston Peters was National's rising star, the latter made it his habit to turn up late to party conferences.

His arrival on the conference floor was guaranteed to create a commotion among delegates, thus providing the required visual fodder for the evening's television news bulletins. It was also a pointed reminder to the party hierarchy of who was popular and who was not.

So when John Key conspicuously turned up late at Don Brash's Orewa address on Tuesday night, there were bound to be some raised eyebrows.

Those suspicious of the leadership intentions of the ambitious Helensville MP will have regarded his tardiness as a blatant attempt to upstage Brash.

Key, who blamed the failings of his car's satellite navigation system for his being delayed, was probably unaware he was literally following in Peters' footsteps.

Whatever, the leadership of the National Party is a story that refuses to die. Although MPs dismiss speculation of a change some time in the next 12 months as a media beat-up, there is no question there is plenty else going on behind the scenes.

Accusations are coming from within the party that Key has been "positioning" himself for the leadership too overtly. There are whispers that some Key supporters in the party in Auckland have been feeding the media speculation and, as a consequence, Key has been told by caucus colleagues in no uncertain terms to pull his head in.

However, the whispers may be deliberate warning shots to Key not to make a move on Brash. The word is being put around Parliament that the caucus will not tolerate undermining of Brash through a "campaign of destabilisation" - a phrase becoming common currency.

What is clear amid all the murk is that National's three-day caucus in Taupo next week will need some kind of discussion about how to stop all this distracting National from its primary focus - attacking Labour.

Not helping things was Rodney Hide. The Act leader is a close friend of Brash, but he did his National counterpart no favours this week by suggesting Brash was being destabilised by some of his MPs.

Hide, of course, was resorting to another old trick - a small party struggling for attention knows it can get publicity by exploiting the internal troubles of its larger would-be coalition partner.

Hide's claims in his state-of-the-nation speech only succeeded in giving the story fresh momentum after Brash had once again tried to put the matter to rest at Orewa two days earlier with an emphatic statement that he would be staying on to fight the next election.

Hide was right about one thing: the speculation over Brash's leadership risks becoming a self-fulfilling prophecy.

That will not happen in the short-term. There is no immediate threat to Brash. He will be judged on the basis of his performance through the year, the polls and, ultimately, whether his colleagues fear keeping him will see the party end up in Opposition for another three years, making it an intolerable 12-year stretch in total.

The leadership speculation has prevented Brash getting the year off to a flying start. But it has not necessarily been helpful to Key either. His caucus colleagues may already feel they are being manipulated towards a decision to dump Brash when they do not want to.

Senior MPs whose interest is in blocking Key - Bill English and Gerry Brownlee are the obvious ones - will play on that resentment.

Additionally, by flagging the economy as National's No 1 priority, Brash's Orewa address has placed huge pressure on Key as finance spokesman. He has to deliver the goods in his portfolio on a level befitting the reputation others have bestowed upon him.

He has to come up with fresh ideas that can be developed into workable and attractive policy.

But not immediately.

National is staring down the barrel of three more long years in Opposition. It has to pace itself. There is no point dishing up fresh policies that will be nabbed by Labour if that party can possibly get away with doing so.

Although Labour rubbished Brash's dissertation on the economy for offering "nothing new", that was water off a duck's back as far as National was concerned.

The easy option would have seen Brash pick another highly contentious topic as the focus of this year's Orewa speech. However, the party chose not to be populist - one reason why Brash's warning that immigration policy is attracting the wrong type of migrant was toned down and kept vague.

National's strategy this year is to make the transition to Government-in-waiting - and that entails being seen to be seriously analysing the problems facing the country rather than just being reactive.

It means being more than a one-trick pony relying on tax cuts, especially if the economic slowdown bites into the Budget surplus severely enough for Labour to persuade voters that substantial tax cuts are not feasible.

If National wants to be taken seriously, it has to be seen seriously debating less than enthralling issues such as worker productivity.

To kick things off, Key is planning a series of "stocktaking" speeches on elements of economic policy with the intention of addressing the "hard questions" needed to lift the economy on to a new level where the country is not so vulnerable to cyclical movements in international commodity prices.

The stakes are high for Key. The Prime Minister's talk of "economic transformation" has Labour competing in the same territory - but with all the resources of the public service at its disposal to generate solutions.

But the stakes are even higher for Brash. He is taking a big risk by going so hard on the economy.

National's private nightmare is that the downturn is only brief and Labour's handling of it further enhances its credibility as a competent economic manager.

Overriding everything is Brash's doom-and-gloom warning that the country is "almost certainly" headed for recession.

Fine for Brash if that eventuates. But what if it doesn't?

The buck will stop with Brash - not his finance spokesman. Key, in the meantime, would do well not to rely so much on his Navman to get him to wherever he is going .