John Armstrong: Party's showing in polls makes coup a risky move

A failed coup is by definition a botched coup. So it is not surprising that those in the National Party caucus who would like to bring John Key down a peg or three are citing his aborted attempt to topple Don Brash as evidence he still lacks the political wherewithal to hold the leader's job.

The panning of Key is a less than subtle gambit to deter him from mounting another challenge this side of the next election. That the attempt by Key's backers to muster the numbers has been brought to light is a further tactic to make him hesitate before trying again.

Key has disavowed any knowledge of a coup - aborted, pending or otherwise. However, there is little dispute elsewhere that following endless, baseless rumours that Brash would face a challenge this year, there has finally been a fire to go with all the smoke.

Late last month, as the party reeled over Brash's affair with Diane Foreman, a coterie of MPs behind Key took soundings among caucus colleagues in anticipation of a move against the leader. They failed to get the necessary numbers. The coup was called off.

A different take on what happened has mounting dissatisfaction with Brash prompting some pumped-up talk about changing leaders from figures within both the Key and the Bill English camps. This talk was stamped upon pretty smartly by senior MPs before it got out of hand.

There are suggestions - harder to substantiate - that Key will try again, possibly next month or early next year.

The earlier timing seems fanciful. There is no question that Key wants Brash's job. But things have moved on. Brash has not copped a public backlash for his philandering. It would be a big call to move against a leader who, though prone to blunders of some magnitude, has seen support for National during his watch surge to a whopping 49 per cent in one major poll.

Key should tread warily. Another failed tilt at Brash might well see him dumped as National's finance spokesman and off the front-bench. Key is being urged to think "finance minister" - not "prime minister".

He is also being reminded that National's current polling sets a very high benchmark. Failure to sustain that level would be catastrophic for a novice leader.

Key knows that. He has avoided positioning himself as a leader-in-waiting in the overt fashion displayed by Winston Peters and Jenny Shipley with regard to Jim Bolger.

They indulged in the kind of coded statements and big-picture "vision" speeches through which a would-be challenger shows his or her hand.

Their game-plan was to make a successful challenge a self-fulfilling prophecy by undermining the leader and then forcing the caucus to expunge the weakness they had a hand in creating.

But destabilisation campaigns only work when the leader is hugely unpopular or the party is lagging seriously in the polls.

Neither scenario currently applies to Brash. The perpetrators of any destabilisation campaign against Brash instead risk it backfiring on them if it is seen to hurt National. Witness Brian Connell's fate.

However, without a destabilisation campaign, there is no pressure on Brash or anyone else to force the issue and get the caucus to settle things one way or the other. That leaves Key biding his time until another Brash clanger makes circumstances more propitious.

The trouble is that time is running out. At some stage next year, the caucus will have to ditch any thoughts of changing leaders so the incumbent can go into election year without having to watch his back.

Some MPs think that point has been reached already. Others - notably the English camp - will do their utmost to block Key in the interim.

Key's problem is that the caucus is beset by personal rivalries and competing factions. There seems to be an unspoken agreement that it is better that everyone endures the second-best option of a Brash leadership than anyone get the upper hand.

This is not necessarily the best option for the wider party. It is not only the prospect of a repeat of last year's campaign trail blunders that gives cause for worry about whether Brash can win the next election for National. The bigger handicap is Labour's labelling him as a policy extremist.

Labour's scaremongering worked. Swing voters in the provinces sent Labour a message by dumping that party's electorate MPs. But the crucial party vote went Labour's way.

Brash has done nothing since to reassure those voters, instead publicly resisting efforts to pull him towards the centre. His contacts with the Exclusive Brethren have only compounded the problem.

Key carries none of this baggage - which is why Labour has been desperate to highlight any meetings between him and the Brethren. Labour would clearly prefer that National stuck with Brash. If he goes, the sooner, the better. All the more time for Key's inexperience to be revealed.

The same "inexperience" argument is being wielded against Key by his own colleagues. The somewhat less than influential MPs lobbying on his behalf - Lockwood Smith, John Carter and new backbencher Craig Foss - are seen as one reason why he did not get the numbers.

However, Key has made few mistakes during his four-year parliamentary career. He is a quick learner who is ruthless in his self-analysis.

His real crime in the eyes of colleagues is to allow his ambition to run too far ahead of his immense talents.

He might get away with that if National was in a poll slump and Brash was a sitting duck.

Then Key could rationalise securing the leadership on a narrow majority as being in the best interests of the party - just as Brash did when he toppled English.

In the current circumstances, ousting Brash by a narrow margin would be seen as acting in the best interests of John Key.

Key really needs to secure overwhelming backing within the caucus to have a mandate for a change and to give his leadership real authority.

But he faces too much internal resistance to get sufficient critical mass.

However, prising the leadership off Brash by a narrow majority would also rekindle bitterness and division within the National caucus, something it put behind it not that long ago.

For all their reservations about Brash, any prospect of reliving that past is a powerful reason why National MPs may stick with the status quo, unsatisfactory though that may be.