The vultures are gathering. When you are the leader of a party whose basic membership qualification is that they have to believe they are born to rule failure is not tolerated.
The media is reporting that there will be a vote of no confidence held in Simon Bridges’ leadership at next Tuesday’s National caucus meeting. The threat of so many MPs losing their jobs is too much to allow.
Yesterday Jim Bolger publicly endorsed Todd Muller for leader. John Key previously confirmed that Chris Luxon was his pick. All we need is for Bill English and Jenny Shipley to come out publicly and choose a successor and Bridges’ humiliation will be complete.
How dysfunctional National has become is confirmed by this Henry Cooke Stuff article which shows how bad things have become. From the article:
One National MP who spoke to Stuff on the condition of anonymity said that Bridges’ low ratings in the preferred prime ministerial poll made it difficult to see him running a winning election campaign.
“It’s hard to see how he can fight an election campaign when only four-and-a-half per cent of people want him to be prime minister,” the MP said.
Another said the problem was that the public was actively hostile to Bridges’ being the person bringing National’s message to them.
“The problem is the phone isn’t being picked up,” this MP said.
Several saw Bridges’ comment concerning the Prime Minister dying her hair on Newshub on Tuesday night — a joke that he didn’t dye his hair himself — as a particularly egregious example of poor leadership.
But others see the transaction cost of possibly bloody leadership contest as far too high.
Another National MP, who spoke on the condition of anonymity, said the last thing the party needed was a public battle about itself while the country was focused on coronavirus.
“The more you focus on internal ructions the more the country thinks you’re not talking about them,” the MP said.
“That’s just not going to help us.”
The leading contenders are Todd Muller, Judith Collins and Mark Mitchell. I am not sure who for but David Bennett is one of the MPs doing the numbers. The idiot replied to an email to give away the game. Note to all MPs. Never ever email anything that you do not want to see on the leading page of any news blog.
Bennett is now in a marginal seat and has sunk to particular depths by running a petition against a planned Kainga Ora development on the basis that poor people would be living there the development is medium density.
And the factions are interesting. I spent quite a bit of time analysing Labour’s ABC faction back in the day. Nowadays there is an ABBA faction, the Anyone But Bridges Alliance. I wonder if they will be Bridges Waterloo?
All eyes will be on Thursday’s Colmar Brunton result. If it is better then the Reid Research poll Bridges can spin it either as an improvement or the Reid Research poll being an aberration even though it appears to match what is happening in private polling.
If it is not then unless the dominant view is to just get the campaign over and change leaders after the election then Bridges is toast.
Update: Newshub has claimed that there are two MPs that are challenging the leadership, Todd Muller and Nikki Kaye.
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