Back in March, Beehive strategists talked of a new brand strategy for the Prime Minister.
Jacinda Ardern would move on from being the inspirational St Jacinda of Covid to more of a good old, sleeves-rolled-up, practical Kiwi. We'd see less Grey Lynn social justice warrior and more former Morrinsvillefish 'n' chips worker.
The market research I have seen this year on various political projects — including Wayne Brown's successful Auckland mayoral campaign — suggests the Beehive was seeing something similar in its focus groups and polling.
Voters had clearly become cynical about bold visions and grand plans, were tired and in some cases angry after two years of Covid, and just wanted politicians who would get stuff done.
Seven months later, the Beehive has not been able to execute its strategy — although that is not all its fault.
Ardern was invited to give the commencement address at Harvard University, something no one would turn down. She had her Oval Office meeting with President Joe Biden and has met assorted other world leaders, including because of Russia's invasion of Ukraine.
The Prime Minister was right to help exporters recover from Covid with various trade missions. And, of course, she had to attend the Queen's funeral and give the usual prime ministerial address at the opening of the UN General Assembly.
Jacinda Ardern had her Oval Office meeting with President Joe Biden and has met assorted other world leaders.
Tribal Labour supporters have loved seeing their hero on the world stage, and tracking polls and focus groups don't indicate much active opposition to what the Prime Minister has chosen to do. But it has crowded out voters from being able to see the new get-down-to-work Ardern that was planned — and, unsurprisingly, Labour has continued its gentle yet unrelenting decline in the polls.
For some months, most analysts have been factoring in a change of Government by this time next year. This week's consumers price index (CPI) data seemed to surprise only the bank economists and Government, and confirms that inflation has become endemic.
Interest rates will go higher than expected and stay elevated for longer, including as tens of thousands of households come off fixed mortgage rates in the months before the election.
The only "good" news is that house prices are falling, and will presumably fall faster now mortgage rates are going higher.
Yet all is not lost for Ardern if she finds a way to execute the strategic concept being talked about in March.
National is following a small-target strategy, assuming that if it keeps its head down over the next year it will win office by default. It calculates, correctly, that the current inflationary and fiscal environment means Finance Minister Grant Robertson can't opt for the big-spending election bribes that he designed to pull rabbits out of the hat for Helen Clark in the 2000s.
The word won't be used, but he dare not offer anything other than a classic austerity Budget in 2023 lest he add further fuel to the cost-of-living crisis.
Consequently, Ardern stood firm this week that current fiscal stimuli like the temporary reduction in petrol taxes will come to an end as planned. There will be no repeat of this year's inflationary and administratively embarrassing cost-of-living payments. Even previously expected pre-election tax cuts targeted at the middle class through threshold changes are presumably off Robertson's agenda.
Robertson will try to play fiscal conservative in the mould of Bill English, Michael Cullen and Bill Birch — in contrast to a National Party he will portray as offering fiscally reckless tax cuts targeted at those earning over $180,000 a year and who need them least.
The Finance Minister already mocks National's so-called Bermuda Triangle, accusing it of offering more spending, lower taxes and lower borrowing all at the same time.
National's Nicola Willis responds by saying tax cuts will be funded by re-prioritisation of wasteful spending on the Wellington bureaucracy, of which there is undoubtedly much.
But unless she identifies it specifically and adds it all up, Robertson will feel perfectly entitled to accuse her of planning to cut health and education services for you to fund tax cuts for the rich.
If Willis rules out such spending cuts, which she undoubtedly will, she will be trapped back in Robertson's Bermuda Triangle.
It seems implausible that any Government could be re-elected in the midst of an economic downturn, now likely to be even worse than in 2008. But Ardern does have remaining brand equity for kindness and as something of a protector.
The worse the economy gets before the election, the more Labour can claim that, just as the Prime Minister protected you through Covid, Ardern will now see you and your family safely through the recession.
At the same time, she would drop or at least downplay her talk of nuclear-free moments and transformational change. She would roll her sleeves up and focus on issues that might seem more mundane to the Wellington elite but matter much more to the voters she needs to win back from Christopher Luxon, himself suffering from declining popularity.
As Luxon's vote continues to drift to Act, Labour will have even more alleged evidence of a vast right-wing conspiracy to slash the services that matter most to you.
There is still no sign of the sleeves-rolled-up Ardern. Shovelling some snow when she heads to Antarctica is not quite what the median voter has in mind.
Yet time is still on her side. Ardern has the option of plodding through the rest of the year to return in the summer, sack a few ministers, present a fresh and more down-to-earth team, drop her more unpopular visions and outline the practical non-fiscal steps she plans to take for voters as the recession bites.
Meanwhile, National seems set to offer not much more than a reheated version of the brighter future John Key promised 15 years ago.
Professional politicians don't like having to drop the ideas they fantasised about in Young Labour or the Young Nats. And long-term prime ministers hate having to go back to worrying about bus-driver shortages as opposed to the world-historic moves they think they are taking on the global stage.
After an extraordinary five years in which she has become a genuine world celebrity, Ardern faces the challenge of coming back to earth, where the real voters live. Whether or not she can manage it will determine not only her party's fate but whether she joins the hallowed three-time-winner club alongside Key, Clark, Jim Bolger and Robert Muldoon or becomes the first prime minister to fail after two since David Lange.
- Matthew Hooton is currently interim head of policy and communications for incoming Auckland mayor Wayne Brown's office. These views are his own.
