Key Feeling The Heat

John Armstrong has a good piece in the Weekend Herald on the recent quietness that has decended over National in the past week. With the party grabbing few, if any, headlines  and Key not asking a single question in the House, Armstrong concludes that National has gone into a state of “suspended animation”.

Of course, this has only increased Labour’s drive to put pressure on Key, and it appears to be paying off, with Key chosing to release National’s $50 victim compensation scheme in Auckland rather than Wellington. On this, Armstrong says:

“Labour was not alone in seeing the decision to release the policy in Auckland as a sign of Key’s gun shyness in the face of the Wellington political media following his widely publicised slip-up over National’s Treaty policy and the fuzziness which surrounded National’s stance on the sale of shares in Auckland Airport to foreign interests.”

It certainly seems as though the pressure finally being applied by the media has taken Key by surprise, and his strategy now is to avoid them altogether. Of course, National has been under the somewhat arrogant illusion that they could simply coast along during the election and gain the Treasury benches without letting the public know what eaxctly it intended to do once there. However, recent weeks have delivered a wake-up call to the party, and they appear to have lost the political agenda altogether. As Armstrong says:

“The Labour fightback has seen National lose control of the political agenda which it was setting at the start of the year.

Labour is largely dictating things, partly by using the advantage of Government incumbency and partly through a steady stream of fresh, politically seductive policy initiatives, many of which have the secondary purpose of trying to force Key to say whether they would survive under a National-led Government.”

And since National has moved toward the left and flip-flopped on a number of Labour initiatives, Labour’s strategy has been to continue releasing attractive policies that National can’t commit to and thus make it increasingly difficult for Key to keep National centrist. On this Armstrong states:

“Labour, meanwhile, is playing an extremely clever game. Key may have moved National to the centre to take votes off Labour. Labour is now trying to crowd him out by putting up centrist policies and challenging him to back them.

If he does, National’s brand distinction fades and its flexibility to spend money is further constrained. If he doesn’t, he is painted as extreme and out of touch with middle NZ.

Likewise, Cullen’s admission his tax cuts will be smaller than National’s may have been a similar ploy.

If Cullen can make his cuts as large as possible, that puts the onus on National to deliver even bigger ones.

If National doesn’t do so, it again loses vital brand distinction.

If National is a lot more generous, it becomes easier for Cullen to brand his opponents as fiscally irresponsible.”

This is a very clever strategy indeed, and one suspects that in the coming weeks and months things will certainly become a lot more difficult for Key than they have been in the past. Far from coasting along to victory, National will be forced to prove to New Zealand what it is they have to offer and actually work to win the public’s vote. It appears this has come as quite a shock to many within the party’s “inner circle”.