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Can politics get any more exciting?
After two polls, one rogue, one not so bad we are now into the election campaign proper.
National has had a tumultuous few weeks but is now settling down.
Judith Collins has brought clear air to National’s sails and it is starting to show.
This week will see the last show downs in the house and Jacinda Ardern isn’t looking happy.
In the parliament Ardern’s mantra of kindness is replaced with baleful stares and barbed words. Her body language shows fear not strength.
Ardern is feeling pressure, and not all of that is from the opposition.
There is disquiet on the back bench at her willingness to knife Iain Lees-Galloway and there is talk of a knifing of another minister.
One wonders what Ardern is trying to distract from by chucking ministers under the bus.
As we lurch towards the election the wheels are starting to come off the economy, breaches in quarantine and strange infections of people leaving New Zealand all stand to undermine the sloganeering of the government.
And what exactly are their election policies going to be at this election? So far it is the sound of silence.
From today onwards we are going to see the biff and wallop of a true election campaign where for once the result is vitally important for our economy.
Are we going to elect a government built on borrow and hope, or are we going to elect one who will right the ship.
Labour used to mock John Key’s borrowing in the wake of the GFC and the Christchurch earthquakes.
Labour’s debt monster is much greater than that.
This election is more important than any in the past twenty years.
Game on.
A tale of two polls
This past week we have seen two public polls.
On Monday we saw the Newshub poll delivered by an ecstatic Tova O’Brien, showing clearly she’s a lock for the Red Team.
No one except Newshub claimed this poll was in any way accurate.
It showed Labour soaring to 60.9% with a massive 35 point lead over National.
We know it was a rogue poll because not even Labour claimed the result was accurate.
They didn’t even email their lists on the bludge after the poll dropped.
National’s internal polls were leaked that showed a very different picture and a much closer race.
On Thursday night 1News released their Colmar Brunton poll that showed a result similar to National’s own polling.
I don’t know about you guys but I never bet against David Farrar’s polling.
Newshub spent the week doing shabby hit job after shabby hit job as they lock in behind the red team.
Objective news it was not.
What many people don’t know is the Newshub poll used push-polling questions.
Those are questions along the lines of “Jacinda Ardern has been described as the saviour of the nation, what do you think?”
Following the 1News poll, however, was an email from Labour putting out the begging bowl.
That tells you that they view that poll far more seriously than Newshub’s dodgy polling.
Newshub have claimed that their poll is the most accurate, but if you buy that then you have to buy the following scenario.
Consider this, if their poll is real, then 3 out of every 5 people you know are voting Labour, or 4 out of every 6 are voting left.
Now, think about your friends, family, neighbours, customers and acquaintances and ask yourself if that is really true?
Or did they just screw up the poll.
Occam’s Razor says they screwed up the poll and that it is a rogue.
In any event, Newshub has put a stake in the ground and bet the house they are right.
The next poll from them will be interesting because if the last poll was right and sharp correction shows in the next one then what on earth are they going to claim?
They will have boxed themselves into a corner that can only have one possible outcome, that Judith Collins has made a big difference.
We should see two more polls each from 1News and Newshub. Let’s see who is more consistent.
A policy free election from the Labour party
Are we going to a policy free election from the Labour party.
All signs point to this.
Their slogan is “Let’s Keep Moving”
Which suggests they’ve actually achieved something, which we all know they haven’t.
The last election they had major headline policies like Kiwibuild and light rail.
Both have never materialised. Kiwibuild was a complete disaster.
Instead of 10,000 houses per annum we got around 300 over three years.
Even the reset was broken.
Phil Twyford banked his political reputation on Kiwibuild, and he was found wanting.
Yet Jacinda Ardern keeps this fool highly placed. He’s ranked number four.
Which just goes to show how shallow Labour’s talent pool is.
If Jacinda Ardern goes they have nothing.
The other big promise of light rail to the airport was a similar failure, but probably even bigger as not even 1 millimetre of track was actually built.
They proposed a route down the middle of one of the most congested roads in Auckland and promised a trip from the airport to the CBD in under 40 minutes.
No one in their party thought to say they were dreamin’
What was eventually proposed was light rail to Mangere Town Centre and then busses to the airport.
And they couldn’t even deliver that.
It seems Labour is going to rely on fear of the Chinese Plague, their record in supposedly combatting it and the fear of a return.
That’s not a plan, that’s a hope.
Jacinda Ardern shamelessly used a broken and frightened media to hog the limelight for weeks on end in purely political theatre.
She claims that she saved us, that we went hard and early, even though the facts don’t even remotely support that.
But here’s the thing…nothing they did has actually done anything except wreck the economy.
Now she is going to try and win an election on her performance during the Chinese Virus lockdown and everything since.
Apparently, they are the ones who can fix everything.
They couldn’t make Kiwibuild work, what makes them think they can fix the economy?
They don’t have to make anything work, of course. They just have to convince people that they can.
By smiling, by being kind (no hugs anymore) and getting their fan club to abuse anyone who disagrees.
Great plan.
National’s task is to disrupt that, by telling the truth.
That’s going to be hard.
But there is hope. There are now several suspicious cases of travelers who left NZ and arrived at their destination only to test positive for the Chinese plague.
There are few options for them catching and developing symptoms, but the most likely is that, contrary to government claims that they conquered the virus, it is in fact in the wild in New Zealand and isn’t anywhere near as virulent as we’ve been led to believe.
That means their strategy failed, the testing regime is a failure and if we get a flare-up it means that the quarantine was a failure too.
Anecdotal evidence already says that it was a failure.
I know of people who leave quarantine daily because, get this, they’re vegan and so allowed to stroll to the shops to feed themselves.
It’s that lax.
So Labour looks like their election platform is going to be the sound of silence.
It’s the economy stupid
The economy is going to sink Labour, eventually.
The government brought in the wage subsidy, then extended it until September 1.
That was ostensibly, not to save jobs, even though their messaging told us that it was.
It was to postpone the economic collapse.
But unless they extend it again that collapse is coming.
Again there is only anecdotal evidence.
For instance, I know that repo agents are busy hooking high end cars at a rate that should be alarming.
Anyone in the motor vehicle industry will tell you that finance is hard to arrange for customers, that new car sales have tanked and staff redundancies are mounting.
Traffic flows in Auckland suggest the same. You can now drive, most days, across the city in under 40minutes instead of the usual hour long trips.
Normal choke points flow at 100km/h rather than the usual 30km/h
Driving around the suburbs shows countless empty shops and there are more For Lease signs up that Labour’s election hoardings.
And this week people on salary are going to start getting their redundancy notices that will see them out of jobs immediately after the wage subsidy ends.
The week after will see those on fortnightly wage cycles get the same treatment, and the week after that the weekly wage earners.
The unemployment rate is going to surge.
But Labour is hoping that it won’t get noticed until after the election.
But here is the thing.
All those soft votes for Jacinda Ardern from frightened urban women are predicated on them being able to still be able to meet with others like them at cafes, attend their pilates or hot yoga classes, pay for the leases on their household cars, the jetskis, boats and beach houses and continue to fund their million dollar mortgage.
When they or their husbands are no longer working then they will find out that all those toys will eat them up.
They think they’ve been saved because right now they are insulated from the carnage about to befall the economy.
When that carnage touches them, then they will get angry, and that is when it will turn badly against Labour.
That’s when people will realise that if they couldn’t build houses for Kiwibuild then they sure as hell can’t manage an economy heading south at a hundred miles an hours.
It will be at that point that people realise that Jacinda Ardern being described as the light-bringer is in fact not a positive, and she is actually the devil in disguise with no solutions and actually a one-trick pony.
Eloquent? Really?
Jacinda Ardern has been rated the most eloquent leader in the world.
I can hear you now.
Surely you jest?
Sadly I do not.
It’s true that a woman who says bin instead of been, somethink instead of something, Idaly instead of Italy, jepradize instead of jeopardise, mispronounces any word with a T in it as a D, like abilidy instead of ability and and is one of the laziest speakers I’ve ever heard. Has been awarded the most eloquent leader in the world.
When a couple of people sitting in their office choose to make this astonishing claim by virtue of viewing a few media clips, you know it’s no more than a piece of irrelevant drivel.
Especially when this same crowd also put the first porridge wog, Nicola Sturgeon, on the list.
That alone should tell people something. She is such a cold miserable sourpuss and half of what she states is similarly inaudible to Ardern due to her accent.
They’ve managed to confuse eloquence with inarticulate.
Jacinda Ardern has many qualities, but eloquence is not one of them.
Anyone who has read transcripts of her inane, poorly enunciated word soup will know that.
Is it too much to ask that our leaders sort out their elocution?
It might sound picky, but I think that if someone can’t even use correct words when speaking then it shows a messy mind.
It was drummed into me as a child, to use proper words.
I can’t imagine how one could confuse something with somethink, or brought with bought, yet our prime minister stuffs these up constantly.
Watching, as I did, the daily Chinese Virus briefings became cringe inducing and annoying.
If this is eloquence then clearly the authors of the report had an inferior education to mine.
Summary
The election race has finally gotten interesting.
The polls are showing that it will be hard for National but if any one can give it a good crack it will be Judith Collins.
They certainly have a better chance now with her leading.
On that, her net approval ratings are really good. In the 1News Colmar Brunton poll her net approval ratings were +27%
Previously Todd Muller had a net positive of +10% and Simon Bridges previously had a dreadful -40% net approval.
National’s pollster Curia also always does net approval scores.
National’s caucus never knew what those net approval ratings were for Bridges. He never shared them with the caucus because they were so bad.
Perhaps if they had been shared he may not have lasted as long as he did.
It was those scores that Jami-lee Ross kept highlighting that turned Bridges off him.
He was rinsed because he kept telling the truth about how bad Bridges was as a leader.
The caucus need wonder no longer, they now know the truth.
And caucus is also finding out that Judith the leader is not what they imagined she would be.
What they imagined was based in whispers and smears from weak hollow men afraid of her skills, intellect and strength.
Now they are seeing a leader who isn’t vindictive, is compassionate and backs her team.
They know she will fight her corner, and won’t quiver in fear in expressing her opinion.
No longer are we left wondering what a politician means. Judith says what she means, and more importantly she means what she says.
I really implore you to read her book. It gives you the back story behind the media and political narratives.
We have three signed copies available for members to win this month.
And this month is our first birthday here at The BFD.
We celebrate this achievement together with you all, without our members we couldn’t speak to truth to power and deliver strong conservative voices in a sea of woke wetness.
Thank you all.
I’m Cam Slater and this was Insight: Politics
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