So I was surprised by his column this morning which is an unqualified assault on Jacinda Ardern’s announcement that she will not release Labour’s tax policy until after the 2017 election.

This morning’s column headline left little doubt of what was to come:

“HOW JACINDA’S CUNNING PLAN FELL APART”

And the subhead removed any doubt of what was to come:

“‘Let’s not do that’ becomes Labour’s motto as tax nips the party’s ankles.”

Armstrong begins:

“Like the sands through the hourglass – it has taken just four short weeks for Jacinda Ardern’s ‘campaign of our lives’ to become more akin to The Days of our Lives.

“Labour’s Wonder Woman has found herself cast in a long running soap opera – but not as a super hero.”

Read it here:

 http://nzh.tw/11922858

Well, in short, I think Armstrong is absolutely right. Given the relevance of taxation policy, directly or indirectly, to the lives of every man, woman and child in this country, it is simply outrageous to say, “Not telling! Not even a hint! You’ll just have to trust us till after the election. Long after!”

Well of course you could read their current policy. And that would be fine if the Leader of the Opposition could guarantee that it won’t change between now and the 2020 election. But she can’t/won’t do that either.

So here’s what this boils down to.

Jacinda wants you to make her Prime Minister of New Zealand this year. I’m assuming that she has some opinion in her head of our current tax system, whether it benefits or disadvantages most New Zealanders. For the answer to that question she refers us to Labour’s current tax policy which she says will not change without a mandate from New Zealanders at the next election in 2020. She’s saying, ‘Give me almost three years in office as Prime Minister before I even disclose my ideal tax regime. In the meantime here’s a taste.

Seems to me that’s a helluva lot to ask.

In the 30-odd years that Judy and I have been providing media advice and training to prime ministers, prostitutes and pretty well every profession in-between, our teaching mantra has remained the same: “Be straightforward, tell the truth, admit your mistakes”. It’s a practical rather than a necessarily moral slogan. Being straightforward with the media, telling the truth and admitting your mistakes is quite simply the only strategy that works. Everything else will get you into trouble or more trouble than you’re already in.

Our experience of our elected representatives – left, right and centre – has led us to the conclusion that most are reasonably honest and that the lying politician is a much rarer creature than the general population appears to think. Persuading MPs, Cabinet Ministers and the men and women who held the top job to be straightforward and tell the truth has not been a difficult or even a necessary task.

But will the buggers admit their mistakes? No way. To avoid the usual accusations of left-wing bias on my part, I’ll cite two examples from my side of the house. Helen Clark and the painting which she signed but didn’t paint; Helen Clark and the police car speeding her to Eden Park to watch the rugby.

Neither of these were hanging offences and reasonable explanations (or excuses if you prefer) could have been offered for both: PMs put their moniker on all sorts of things with charitable intent; the New Zealand Prime Minister arriving late for an international footie match isn’t a good look. And anyway, these cops are brilliant and safe drivers.

But Helen, who had been brought up in a family where lying was just about a capital offence, was unwilling to own responsibility for either of these relatively minor transgressions. She was reluctant to admit that she’d made a mistake or even that she’d failed to prevent others making mistakes on her behalf.

The outcome in terms of public and press reaction was extremely negative in both cases. Simple concessions, perhaps with a touch of humour, could have avoided all the fuss: “Well, I sign a lot of things for charity; but maybe I didn’t make it clear that I hadn’t actually painted the picture. I couldn’t paint like that to save my life; Yes, not a good look, I’ll admit, and not a good example to other drivers. Guilty as charged, I’m afraid.”

The problem with denial when you’ve done something wrong is that far from making the issue go away, it amplifies and protracts it. Admitting your mistakes tends to have the opposite effect. Your opponents may have a field day of self congratulation, but it will at least be brief.   

This is the advice that John Key’s advisors should have been giving him ever since the publication of Nicky Hager’s book. Had he been given that advice he would not have found himself in the position he found himself in on television last night: being called severely to account by both right-leaning Mike Hosking on TV1 and liberal/left leaning John Campbell on TV3. The Prime Minister sounded increasingly like Sergeant Schultz, his repeated “I know NOTHING” denials  less and less credible or convincing as the interviews proceeded. He looked irritated and out of sorts, frustrated by the inability of these idiots to see his point of view that, though he was Minister for the SIS, he could not be held responsible for the actions of people in his department that impinged on the impartiality of the Service. It had nothing to do with him.

This morning’s papers would have brought him no relief. No-one had a good word to say about John Key. John Armstrong, the Herald’s traditionally considered political correspondent, opined that Key “would do himself and National a power of good if he dropped the feeble charade  which sees him in denial of the dirty tricks operation that was run out of his office.”

Armstrong was no less condemning of the Prime Minister’s performance during question time in Parliament which he dubbed “breathtakingly silly”:

“It involved either not answering the questions raining down on him from the Opposition or flinging red herring after red herring at his inquisitors in a vain attempt to divert debate away from what had been going on in his office. It was a display unworthy of the Prime Minister.”

“An apology for the whole episode,” Armstrong suggested, “would, in contrast, make up for the absence of heads rolling. It would show Key took ministerial responsibility seriously.”

Amen to that!

But it’s too late now. Key’s credibility is shot. His defence of the indefensible began with the preposterous distinction he attempted to draw between when he was speaking as the PM and when he was speaking as the Leader of the National Party.

Inspector General of Security Intelligence  Cheryl Gwyn’s report, which upholds many of Hager’s claims of “dirty politics” during the Key administration, has drawn the Prime Minister into ever more fanciful and unconvincing denials. Calm, quiet, trust-me, no-worries John has gone. He looks and sounds uncomfortable. He looks and sounds like a man in trouble. He looks and sounds desperate and dishonest. Perhaps for the first time in his term as Prime Minister, John Key is sweating it.

And as if that weren’t enough there’s this fellow on the other side of the room who has a reputation as a straight shooter and an honest broker.

And it was all going so well.

I’m wary of predictions. I’ve got a few wrong. But I think we’re at the start of a political sea change. I think National and its motley bedfellows are going to lose the 2017 election to a revitalised Labour/Green coalition.

I may be proven wrong of course. But, if I am,  I’ll take my own advice and admit it.

Hawkes Bay Tribune

I have only met John Key once. He was either standing for parliament or recently elected. I can’t remember. A prominent television newsreader, whom we were helping to add ‘interviewer’ to his range of skills, had invited him along as a guest. It was usual for trainee interviewers to rope in politicians as interview subjects. The would-be interviewers could practise their interrogation skills and the politicians could practise fending them off.

We knew little or nothing about Key at the time, so the impressions we had of him were first impressions which, they say, are the most lasting. Key was easy, engaging, pleasant, a man seemingly comfortable in his own skin and a good listener. If he was indeed going places, he displayed neither arrogance nor self-importance. You would have said, as the country has been saying for two years now, that he was ‘a nice bloke’. We may have given him a couple of tips on how to improve his on-camera performance, but not enough to constitute disloyalty to our #1 client.

I was reminded of this occasion by John Armstrong’s column in the Weekend Herald,  ‘Politician of the year: John Key’, sub-headed ‘Get used to it, Labour, he’s the man the country wants in charge’.

The column was as much a critique of Labour and its leader Phil Goff as it was  a paean of praise for the Prime Minister.

The left dismisses the most popular Prime Minister in New Zealand’s recent political history as Smile and Wave John Key, Do Nothing John Key and Lucky John Key. The left’s fatal error has been to constantly underrate Key in terms of ability and the fact that though he is of centre-right disposition, he is firmly at the moderate end of that broad spectrum. Key does not fit the left’s mould, which assumes or even dictates that someone as wealthy as him must be an acolyte of the old New Right. In short, Key’s critics on the left still don’t get it. Maybe the Mana byelection will remove a few scales from a few eyes. It should. That result was a gruesome preview of the slaughter that may well be inflicted on Labour at the end of next year.

Armstrong went on to list Key’s achievements and Goff’s failings.

But has Key been as good a Prime Minister and Goff as bad a Leader of the Opposition as Armstrong – whom I regard as our most astute political writer –  suggests?

Goff, it must be remembered, faces the same problem as every other Leader of the Opposition – he has to work much harder to get coverage than the PM or even a middle-ranked Cabinet Minister. Governments act, oppositions react. And generally the reaction is carping and negative. Put slightly differently, governments do, oppositions just talk.

The advantage of being in power is never more evident than during times of national crisis. Though it may seem cynical to say so, disasters, handled well, are a boon to politicians in power, while their opposition counterparts are largely sidelined. Who wants to talk to Phil Goff about the Canterbury earthquake or the Pike River mining disaster? He can do nothing  about either beyond expressing his concern and sympathy for the victims and their families.  Key, it must be said, handled the two events superbly, both in terms of being there and offering his personal and his government’s support. Goff, through no fault of his own, was conspicuous by his absence from the media coverage. If anyone doubts the role which a disaster can play in shaping a political leader’s fortunes, they need look no further than Jim Anderton and Bob Parker.  

And then there is the corrosive influence of the polls themselves. Though the pollsters like to tell us there is no evidences that polls can amount to self-fulfilling prophesies, the idea that being on 6.8% as ‘preferred Prime Minister’ (Goff’s latest rating) while your opponent is on 54.1% (Key’s latest rating) has no effect on voter perceptions or voting patterns, simply defies logic or common sense.

Among the actual effects:

•  Constant speculation that the leader will soon be dumped;
• The leader having to constantly respond to and deny that speculation;
• Internal party dissatisfaction with the leader’s performance, resulting in plots and rumours of plots;
• Voters’ unwillingness to be associated with ‘a loser’;
• Loss of self-confidence on the leader’s part;
• Acts of desperation by the leader;
• Limitless opportunities for the Government to mock the leader and predict his/her imminent downfall.

Which is precisely what John Key has just done. Responding to the latest TV3 poll, Key said that it was a great way to go into Christmas:

‘It shows that the public are supporting the direction we’re taking the country in,’ he said. Goff was facing ‘a real challenge’ and he wouldn’t be surprised if the Labour caucus dumped him in the New Year.

But did the poll really show that ‘the public are supporting the direction [National] is taking the county in’?

John Armstrong seemed to think so, but I very much doubt it. I very much doubt that if you asked a hundred people in the street what direction the government was taking the country in, you’d get a sensible or informed answer from more than 5% of them. The rest would effectively be ‘don’t knows’. Not because they’re stupid, but because a) most people don’t think in terms of ‘general directions’ and b) it would be extremely difficult to identify a ‘general direction’ in which this particular government is taking us.

As Armstrong himself observed:

[Key’s]  priority has been to build trust with voters so that in a second parliamentary term he can carry them with him as National tackles big-ticket items like welfare reform, the recommendations of the savings working group and possible part-privatisation of some state-owned enterprises…  The combination of Key’s positioning of National as a moderate centre-right party and the trust-building combines with a unique ability to strike a rapport with almost anyone at an individual or national level.

Not much evidence of ‘a direction we’re taking the country in’ there. Not yet anyway. That’s for later.

My own view is much simpler. Like most first impressions, the country’s first impressions of Key have proved lasting. And they precisely mirror how we saw him on that training course all those years ago:  easy, engaging, pleasant, a man seemingly comfortable in his own skin and a good listener, displaying neither arrogance nor self-importance. ‘A nice  bloke.’

Armstrong is probably right to criticise Labour for dismissing Key as a ‘smile and wave’ politician. I’ve been guilty of that myself. But he is both a popular and a populist prime minister. What the polls reflect is the Prime Minister’s personal popularity, his willingness to give the punters what they want, and his absolute determination not to do anything to scare the horses. Whether that can be described as ‘a direction we’re taking the country in’ seems debatable.

In an earlier post I described John Key as a ‘photo-op PM’, but that suggests premeditation and artifice. Key requires neither. He merely has to be himself.

Goff might well be able to articulate a much clearer idea of the direction in which he wants to take the country. It might even be a better direction. But to do that he needs to command the attention of the electorate. He is hindered in that ambition by being the Leader of the Opposition, by being Phil Goff and, perhaps most importantly,  by not being John Key.