Heather du Plessis-Allan has given her verdict on the hapless leadership of Simon Bridges and it isn’t good for him.
The pressure on Simon Bridges just went through the roof with the leak of the latest UMR poll today.
If you haven’t caught up on the figures here they are:
Labour 55, National 29, NZF 6, Greens 5, Act 3.
The PM’s popularity is near record-breaking at 67%. That is incredibly high.
Bridges is on 7%.
That gap is big. But that’s not Simon Bridges’ biggest problem. His biggest problem would be Judith Collins reappearing right next to him on 7%.
Yup, she’s been there before, but remember, she dropped away. She wasn’t even popping up in polling at the start of this year.
But she’s back and there’ll be one reason for it: voters are telling National that he’s got to go.
And this time, it’s different. Collins has achieved that rating with virtually no media attention whatsoever over the last few weeks. Political rules would say she shouldn’t even be featuring in this poll. That fact that she’s here is a very clear sign that she has gained credibility as the only alternative that voters can see.
That’s a problem. It’s almost like voters are waiting for National to pull the pin.
It must be stated than none of the other pretenders to the role even featured in the rankings. No Paula Bennett, her pet attack-dog Mark Mitchell, nor Todd Muller or Nikki Kaye. Being Leader of the Opposition should gift you 25 points in the Preferred PM stakes. Don Brash leapt up when he became leader, as did John Key. It simply isn’t good enough that Simon Bridges has lower rankings than Phil Goff, David Shearer, David Cunliffe and Andrew Little ever had.
Now of course, we have to put this in context.
These are crisis polls, they don’t represent voters in normal times. They represent scared voters.
And around the world we’re seeing this, people flocking to support the incumbent government because they are the ones ‘saving people’ from Covid 19.
And the polls also represent the wall to wall coverage Labour is getting. for National it’s a case of out of sight out of mind.
So it’d be silly to assume Labour stays on 55% long term and National on 29% long term.
No, National will likely sink further and Labour will shrink as well. No MMP election, ever, has given a party an outright majority. The minor parties will grow under a scenario such as this.
And it’s accepted as a very strong possibly that when the economic troubles really start hitting, voters are likely to turn to the party traditionally considered to be the one better trusted to run the economy.
That would be National.
But National would be kidding itself if it thinks that it will return to pre-covid highs of 46% that put them within reach of government while bridges is still in charge.
That 46% was a legacy vote, handed to him by bill English, Bridges didn’t have to earn that. I don’t think he’ll be able to attract voters back to those levels. Not with the smell of a looming defeat handing over him.
And Bill English had that handed to him by John Key. Now both are gone and there is Simon Bridges trying to look like he’s the big man. Unfortunately he isn’t going to grow into the role. He’s murdered it instead.
National’s got a choice to make. Sleep walk to defeat like they did in 2002 when it was obvious their leader was too unpopular to win… or take a chance.
Time to take a chance. Get some cut through on the clear and demonstrable failings in the economy and fight like hell. As Yoda once said, ‘Do. Or do not. There is no try.’