Why Nats’ economic ‘brand’ won’t be enough

OPINION: There has always been a touch of the magic pudding about the National Party’s strategy leading into the September election: keep focusing on the economy and voters will suddenly remember National’s strong economic brand and flood back to the party. If only it were that simple.

To be fair, new leader Todd Muller is yet to really set out some genuine policies for how National will help rebuild the post-Covid-19 economy better than Labour will. But he is up against it. A Horizon Research Survey published by Stuff a fortnight ago showed that not only do most Kiwis trust Labour on the health response to Covid-19, but also the economic response.

Against an exceedingly popular leader such as Jacinda Ardern, Muller’s major political task is to get people talking about him and what he stands for. To do that he has to find some problematic issues – such as the testing regime at the border – or some big bang policies to change the conversation.

Ironically, this was the very strength of the man that Muller replaced. Simon Bridges was very good at identifying issues that resonated with the public with which to whack the Government: gangs, fuel taxes, welfare cheats and so on. The fact that the National vote was kept so high before Covid-19 was testament to the skill shown by Bridges. In the end, however, he had a tendency to overreach and appear personal and nasty, particularly towards the prime minister.

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Muller, on the other hand, is more of a straight shooter and currently seems uncomfortable with some brutal realities of day-to-day retail politics. And he wants to keep the focus on the National Party team and what he thinks it can achieve. Both sides think that, thanks to Covid, this will be a policy-heavy election: the public will have an appetite for knowing what major plans each side actually has.

In particular, National thinks that debt is going to be a key issue that looms large in the public’s mind as the Covid response rolls on and billions and billions are spent. People understand that it’s a load of money and that the Government has to borrow it.

It was often said that Tony Blair was Margaret Thatcher’s greatest achievement. In a smaller way, and in a local context, Grant Robertson was perhaps Bill English’s. Under English, the public came to see surpluses and debt as measuring sticks for economic management more generally. That became so ingrained that Robertson was compelled to come up with Labour’s Budget Responsibility Rules (now effectively cast aside thanks to Covid) in order to counteract the view that Labour couldn’t manage the nation’s finances.

And up until Covid swept the world, Labour had basically kept to that. Spending was higher, but if budget surpluses are a marker of economic rectitude, they were prudent. It helped that Robertson genuinely believes that the Government should run surpluses wherever possible in ordinary times.

So National feels it has some fertile ground to return to there. But there comes the rub: all parties agree that debt had to be racked up over this period in order to save jobs and stave off the worst effects of the pandemic, through job subsidies, business support packages and so on. It will be much more difficult to distil the nuances of good versus bad debt into a soundbite for the news, or convince people that $200 billion in debt is somehow much worse than $170b, for example.

So to help overcome this, Muller this week hewed back to tax and started probing the prime minister on whether or not Labour would take any new taxes to the election (piggybacking on the Greens’ proposal for a complicated wealth tax). The prime minister refused to answer. That’s because there is a reasonable chance that Labour will take a new tax, rate hike or tax bracket change to the election.

It is, after all, a party that believes in progressive taxation, and it fits in well with the prime minister’s “sacrifice” narrative that has built up around Covid. If there is ever a good time to bring a new tax to an election, now is probably as good as any.

Tax is one of the few political levers National can pull to any great effect. And the argument that struggling Kiwis don’t need tax hikes in the midst of a crisis could still prove potent.

National will also be expected to hark back to the John Key years of economic growth and strong economic management. But Labour, which has its congress on Sunday and will be launching its new slogan, is going to be at pains to remind people that this isn’t Key’s National, and that many of the leading figures have gone or are going.

Labour thinks it is in a strong space here. The announced departure of Paula Bennett on Monday was a reminder of one of the big achievements of the Key-English government: attracting more working-class, aspirational voters over to its side, particularly in the battleground of West Auckland.

Instead, under Muller, National’s senior leadership does have a rather more patrician and squatocracy sort of tinge. That doesn’t mean that it can’t win over Westies or aspirational Kiwis or anyone else, but that it could be more difficult for voters to relate to.

Parliament is now in recess for two weeks. That means two weeks of Muller travelling up and down the country introducing himself to voters, and perhaps even a reasonable policy announcement.

Labour is in the ascendant, and with David Clark gone it is clearing the desk to run on its record. How and even if Muller can jimmy himself and National into that conversation with New Zealanders remains to be seen. A strong economic brand is good to have, but only if you can get voters to listen.