Economist Brian Easton says an opposition caucus is a seething mass of factions, schemings, plottings and plans for coups

This is a re-post of an article originally published on pundit.co.nz. It is here with permission.

Politics is largely reported as theatre: tragedy and comedy, thriller and farce. Andrea Vance captures it all very successfully in Blue Blood. But it is the politics of personality, not of policy – of the impact of government on the people’s wellbeing. Even so, we can see from the book why being in Opposition is not a very good preparation for being in government. I would like to explore the issue by showing how Labour’s Opposition experience has impacted on its performance in government but we do not have such a thorough account of its travails. So I am going to use National’s current experience and leave the reader to identify the parallels with Labour.

But first, something about the personality story. Vance presents a caucus cast of very ordinary New Zealanders, aside from ambition and self-confidence. That is not her judgement but how other members of the caucus described their fellows to her. One is left with the feeling it is a bit of a miracle that we have any good politicians. There are a few but there are at least as many who are dysfunctional, while the vast majority are so ordinary they do not even appear in Vance’s account. The impression is that National is not very good at selecting its candidates for parliament, nor is the electorate very good at identifying the duds. (I used to think that National was better at selecting than Labour; I am less sure now.)

What do the mediocre do in Opposition? Many are, presumably good electorate MPs – I hope, although perhaps less than in the past, with MMP and the professionalisation of politics. In parliament, such things are barely noticed and rarely rewarded. The focus ought to be, one might think, on pursuing the wellbeing of the whole population. Sometimes MPs do, but more generally, ambition and self-confidence are unleashed in a jockeying for position with – in the case of those in Opposition – the prospect of a place in Cabinet when they get into ‘power’. No that is wrong: when they get into ‘office’; I come back to that distinction.

The result is that caucus is a seething mass of factions, schemings, plottings and plans for coups. It is no accident that in six years National went through six leaders and six deputy-leaders (in each case three have left parliament). But the turmoil is not only confined to choosing the leader. There are only 20 Cabinet positions (plus a few extra jobs). The claim is that the jockeying is over questions of principle but the book shows that factions were far more fluid. (Labour in opposition experienced similar turmoil, and it has happened in ACT and NZ First too and currently happening in the Greens.)

There is a sense of what else is there for an Opposition to do, once the bars are closed? (Well yes, let’s ignore some other personal predilections.) Prepare for power, you say? There are but a handful in opposition (from all the parties) who are good at criticising the Government but their criticisms are not very sophisticated: ‘if I were the minister I would do it better’.

The personalisation arises the petty personality politicking which so much caucus infighting is about. But it means that Oppositions fail in their two constitutional roles. First, except in the very occasional case, they fail to hold the government to account. Typically the problem is not a failing minister – yes, there are some dreadful ministers, just as the Opposition offers some dreadful spokespersons – but in a structural issues which the government – and probably the previous government – had failed to address. In failing to appreciate there are these structural problems, the Opposition also fails in its second major role, to prepare itself for governing.

I have been especially struck by this in regard to the Covid pandemic. It is not my area of competence, so like everyone else, I have been struggling to understand what has been going on right through from the biology to the bureaucracy. Generally, I have not been impressed by the critics. Ignorant I may be, but it was not hard to know more than they did.

In particular, I think about why the bureaucracy took so much time to do things. Instead, the critics focus on the politicians as if they was the problem. This does not exonerate the cabinet ministers involved. For instance, I have been greatly puzzled by the poor performance in the treatment of immigration. It is easy for Labour supporters to argue this has been a consequence of immigration policy and administration being a part of the empire called the Ministry of Business, Industry and Employment, which National Minister Steven Joyce created in 2012. However that does not explain why five years into government Labour has failed to create a Ministry of Labour, which would cover the interdependent areas of employment, the labour market, skills upgrading and the workplace as well as immigration and which are only loosely connected to the other parts of MoBIE’s byzantine responsibilities.

What that tells me is that in opposition Labour was so busy infighting that it had not thought much about its labour market policy. Recall Winston Peter’s ‘baubles of office’, so attractive when you are in opposition. Somehow the power of the office for the public wellbeing gets lost.

There are many other policy areas which show as little preparation and where, as a result, the ministers were easily captured by the bureaucracy. That is why some of the current government’s policies are so out of touch with reality. Sure, there is a problem with the three waters, but the government’s policy response is essentially Joycean megalomania (which is costing Labour dearly).

My expectation is that the same will happen when National takes office. There may be a few who know what they want to do. But almost all their criticisms amount to saying that National will be better administrators, not that they have a better vision or will do things differently (except on the margin). Their object appears to be to command the baubles of office.

Ah, you say, things will be better under Christopher Luxon. The factions and the ambition are still there – as is the ordinariness of most of caucus. On the other hand, the prospect of office at the end of 2023 may result in more caucus discipline that Vance describes.

Perhaps John Key is right, and that Luxon is Key’s stabilising successor (although he has far less preparation for the job). However, Luxon has no one of the policy competence and experience of Bill English, who Vance presents as not being too ambitious for the top job (shades of Michael Cullen). Vance finishes by predicting who will be the next National’s next leader; surely she is not suggesting seven leaders in seven years?

*Brian Easton, an independent scholar, is an economist, social statistician, public policy analyst and historian. He was the Listener economic columnist from 1978 to 2014. This is a re-post of an article originally published on pundit.co.nz. It is here with permission.