18

Will National Call a Snap Election?

by Whaleoil on April 30, 2011

PM having kittensThe smartest political brain in the country is, well, out of the country, having gone appropriately gaga over the royal wedding. Apparently the polls said this was a good move, and the National party machine follows the polls so closely they even poll to see whether anyone knows what a principle is these days.

With the PM out of the country there has been some talk that National might call a snap election. These rumours are coming through the tip line and are currently being verified, but this would go contrary to the control freak approach to campaigning that National’s team have developed a well earned reputation for.

Doubt remains about whether anyone will make a decision before the PM gets back. Sources inside the beehive are saying that National does not have a game plan prepared for a snap election so there are a number of people having kittens at the moment.

Media will get a good steer on whether there will be a snap election by attending the next three regional conferences. If the campaign team present at the conference there is a good indication that they are not in the war room starting a campaign but meandering towards 26th November, unable to shrug off the straight jacket that is a rigid, inflexible plan.

As readers may expect the tip line is running hot, and verifying all this information is taking time.

Tagged:

Related posts

  • reid

    the National party machine fol­lows the polls so closely they even poll to see whether any­one knows what a prin­ci­ple is these days.

    I normally wait for people to tell me I’m out of bounds. It seems to work well. The important thing is to be popular, and free yourself of any internal guidance whatsoever, regardless of whether or not it sounds sensible.

    Only then can you discern the market and it’s the market share which dominates the battlefield.

  • jabba

    with what has been happening recently with the Labour Party being fkd, the Greens being freaking irrelevant, Anderton gone (or has he??), the Maori Party in disarray, the Mofo Party full of fuckwits but getting more media time than they deserve (apart from novelty value), Winny not ready and ACt on the up .. yes, there should be an early election. I don’t think there will be though!!

  • ratty

    Once again Phil Goff suffers from foot-in-mouth disease:
    In respect of Hone Harawira forcing a by- election in his Te Tai Tokerau electorate Goff is quoted in the NZ Herald as saying:”he would view it as a “publicity stunt” and said it would be irresponsible and costly.”
    - Indeed Phil and National might just agree with you on this. The obvious solution is to bring forward the general election to negate this additional by-election’s ~$500k cost. How could Phil now argue against this logical saving of taxpayers money?

  • Doug

    Hone must be joking The Mana party is not even a registered Political party, how long will it take to register a Party.
    http://www.elections.org.nz/elections/registers/registered-political-parties.html

  • thor42

    I think that an early election would be a good move.
    The Nats *can’t* rely on the All Blacks generating a feelgood factor by winning the World Cup, so I think they should go to the polls as soon as possible.

    • reid

      The Nats *can’t* rely on the All Blacks gen­er­at­ing a feel­good fac­tor by win­ning the World Cup, so I think they should go to the polls as soon as possible.

      Yeah but they made that calculation a long time ago thor. They are counting on the feel-good factor, win or lose.

      I have never understood why Key gave away his thinking on this. There was nothing to gain and everything to lose in doing so and yet he did.

      Key has his strategy cut out for him this election, and given McCulley, English and Brownlee are his strategists, I hold little hope their solution will prove after it’s all over, to have been the best possible, given the known facts at the time.

  • http://falfn.com/CrusaderRabbit/ The Gantt Guy

    “The smartest polit­i­cal brain in the coun­try”

    If that smiling, waving buffoon is the smartest political brain in the country, it goes a long way to explaining why the country is fucked.

    Brash for PM!

  • kehua

    You pissed Gantt?

    • http://falfn.com/CrusaderRabbit/ The Gantt Guy

      Pissed off perhaps. Why d’you ask? I think my comment was coherent, and consistent with other commentary I’ve made on the Quisling Key.

  • harris

    Either way it won’t deter Don Brash. You will recall that he led National to a massive 14 percent jump in the public opinion polls in a mere ONE month in 2004. The jump was so big – the biggest in NZ polling history – that Colmar Brunton took the unprecedented step of double checking its figures to confirm it.

    This massive swing was solely attributed to Don Brash and a now infamous speech that he gave. It was just a little more than 3 months into his leadership of the National Party. Many on the centre Right subsequently wished that the speech had instead been timed for one month before the 2005 Election.

    A cumbersome National and Labour might scramble to get a campaign together in time, a nimble and soon-to-be-reborn ACT with Brash and his machinery already in place will have no such trouble. The clinical and swift execution of his leadership coup last week did not occur by chance or by accident.

    By calling an early Election, John Key might well win the war against Hone’s byelection but lose Bill English’s battle against incoming Finance Minister Don Brash.

  • cadwallader

    I have continually maintained that the General Election ought to have been in May. That is, before the depths of winter and well ahead of the All Blacks possible (inevitable?) choke at the WRC. I think John would be well advised to do so. NOW! Fuck ACT and the dumb Hone, National could deliver itself an outcome whereby it could govern alone, this culminates in the end of Winston, the end of Hone, the end of the Greens and of course the end of Goof. (Add to the flushing: Dunne, ACT, Anderton and the picture is beautiful.)

    To quote Jim Morrison: “The future’s uncertain but the end is always near!” (Roadhouse Blues, 1969.)

    Sadly, I despair that Key won’t have the stamina to pull an early poll. What was Muldoon drinking that chilly July night in ’84 when he jumped the gun? Meths? If so, pour it down Johnny’s throat.

  • grasshopper

    I can see the next 6-7 months should be a real bunfight/circus or whatever you want to call it, we are seeing all the old clowns reappearing Brash, Banks etc we need some intelligent people who have actually done something or produced something in their lives to stand for Government, we seem to attract a high percentage of misfits to this thing we call Government. Professional politicans and economic ideologists, we need people who actually understand balance sheets, cashflows and profit and loss statements, Accounting 101 I think they call it.

    • http://falfn.com/CrusaderRabbit/ The Gantt Guy

      Grasshopper, did you forget to take your methodone this morning? Don Brash during his time at the RBNZ was recognised as one of the world’s leading central bankers. He and Banks have been directors of NZ’s most successful superannuation fund. Banks’ rags-to-riches story at least matches Key’s and probably outstrips it. Economics 101? Are you kidding?

  • abjv

    Early election because of Hone? I don’t think so. It would give hone publicity – “look, the threat of me going to the polls bought the government down”.

    Much better to:
    1) not stand anyone, and run an ‘anyone but hone’ line making that anyone the Labour candidate (can they get hone to lose?). Use the excuse ‘it is a sideshow and we don’t want to be any part of it’. Also use their media contacts and run the continued line that hone lies to them (look at the lies to TV3 over the last two days). Try to starve him of airtime and news coverage.

    2) Run the line “look, here is the “new” Maori party wasting $500K of taxpayers money, that could have been much better spent on stuff for the community hone purports to represent”. Make him look like just another one ‘in it for me’ – there’s also the Paris trip and who knows what else. hone has a load of support north, but I wouldn’t say it was rock solid if the Maori party doesn’t stand and everyone else swings in behind Labour.

    3) Back Phil Goff’s ‘I won’t deal with these people’. Its not just mone, its el munto and the rest of Hone’s pack.

    Why make it look like hone and his band of professional commies bought down the Govt?

  • cadwallader

    abjv: All fair observations but ignoring Hone and his despicable comrades, this is the time for the General Election. if it were called now it could be done and dusted by the winter solstice. Is Labour ready? No! Is the Green Party ready? No! Is Winston ready? Who cares.

    I cannot see a downside to an early election.

    • abjv

      Remember Muldoon’s snap election? Journo – “it doesn’t give you much time to prepare”. Muldoon – “It doesn’t give my opponents much time either”.

      Labour has all candidates selected, their list is out. National….? Let down by the strategy department again. The time to have their candidates and list sorted was by the end of last year.

      They couldn’t go with a May election once Canterbury II had happened. That would have politicised it, not to mention the intense difficulty in getting sensible rolls for the Chrsitchurch electorates, with a significant number of electors displaced.

      They can go for something like 25 June at this stage.

      How about this as the plan? The Budget comes out with a few distasteful things in it; things that John Key said “we will NOT do that in a first term”. National runs with the line “we aren’t going to break a promise, but we HAVE to do this, so we’re going to go to the polls both to start that second term, and to get a mandate to do the things we have juswt announced”.

      Budget night May 19. Add 6 weeks, take it to the following Saturday = July 2. It is either that, or carry on to the end of November.

  • paulus12

    Early Election – WHAT BULLSHIT – media at it again, trying to MAKE news.

  • Pingback: That’s fairly interesting « The Dim-Post