Editorial: Rumour mill into overtime

The political year has barely begun and already we have had a flurry of speculation about a change of leadership of the National Party. Don Brash appears to have survived it but he will not be spared further talk at times when nothing much else is happening.

Leadership destabilisation is too easy. It takes only one or two malcontents in the caucus to drop the word in the right place at Parliament and the press have to act on it. As long as a party leader looks vulnerable nobody can be certain that nothing is afoot. The gallery will have chosen an heir apparent and that starry-eyed individual will be unable to deny, of course, that he would like to be leader one day. (Like tomorrow.)

Every rumoured challenge is a little more corrosive than the last until it becomes self-fulfilling. Eventually the leader is driven to try to end the talk by putting his position to a caucus vote and that is futile. Anything less than a near-unanimous endorsement will only reveal the caucus to be divided and even a unanimous vote will not silence the whispers for very long. The only certain way for the leader to cement his position is to put his party ahead in the polls and unless Dr Brash can do that we are going to be treated to regular news of a possible "coup".

The subject is particularly tedious in Dr Brash's case because he is that rare political party leader who would probably give up gracefully at the first sign of a genuine mood for change. He has not made his career in Parliament, his contribution to the country's improvement is already immense, he does not play political games. Interviewers find him artless, the public senses that he is disarmingly open and not much concerned that an unguarded word might be used against him. His own honest assessment of his prospects immediately after the election have contributed to the speculation since.

The National Party, he observed, had not often given leaders who lose elections a second chance. But that is because National has not lost many elections in living memory. For 50 years from 1949 National lost only four elections and two of those (1972 and 1984) were at the end of long spells in power. After the other two (1957 and 1987), the leaders, Sir Keith Holyoake and Jim Bolger respectively, survived to win the following election. It is only since it lost power in 1999 that National has denied its leader a second chance. Jenny Shipley was replaced after the 1999 election and Bill English after 2002. The party's fortunes in this period hardly argue for a revolving door habit.

Labour has been much more patient. Helen Clark lost the 1996 election and survived to win in 1999, Mike Moore was allowed another shot in 1993 after the loss in 1990. Going back, Sir Wallace Rowling lost three elections before he was replaced, Norman Kirk lost two and survived as did, much earlier, Sir Walter Nash. That was an era when Labour was out of power far more often than it was in, but it is doubtful that a more ruthless attitude to leadership would have improved its record.

Dr Brash has lifted National from the depths of the 2002 defeat to a percentage point or two from victory. It is well poised to win the next election, as well poised in fact as Labour was in 1996 when Helen Clark led Labour into contention but had to wait a further three years for the momentum to carry her into power. Dr Brash has to see that he does not lose the momentum he has generated in the two years since he took over the party. And the party has to resist the idea that a young and untried politician can work miracles for it. National needs to spend the next year or two consolidating its credibility as a party ready to govern. A leadership change makes no sense for the foreseeable future. Spare us more specious rumour.