Centre-right better get its act together

Comment by JON JOHANSSON*

Only a few weeks after Richard Prebble floated the idea of a "grand" coalition of forces that could win the next election, with National and Act forming a minority government supported by New Zealand First, the latest tranche of polls revealed just how distant the centre-right parties are from his rather fanciful idea.

For starters, Act has polled below the electoral threshold in all three polls released in the past two weeks. So as things stand Act would not form part of this proposed coalition, grand or otherwise.

Notwithstanding Rodney Hide's endless hectoring of the Minister of Maori Affairs, Act has only seen its level of support shrink, polling behind United Future in the latest NBR poll.

Act's abysmal average of 3.9 per cent support across the polls is, however, explainable when one considers National's recent, albeit belated, repositioning to its right.

After National's calamitous election-night debacle, a school of thought emerged to argue that National must tack to its right to shore up its core supporters. This strategy was, after all, a mirror-image of what Helen Clark did once she replaced Mike Moore as leader.

Clark tacked Labour to the left, thereby consolidating her party's traditional support base in response to the Rogernomics-led fracturing of Labour and the challenge of the Alliance from Labour's left. Then, once the political tides were more favourable, Clark began her inexorable move back to the centre, from where the Prime Minister now enjoys her unparalleled vista.

Under Bill English, however, National has signalled its rightwards shift only in the past few months, although it remains an intriguing question as to whether English has led National's repositioning efforts or, because of the fragile nature of his leadership, he has been forced to follow his caucus' move to the right, recalling that old line from the French Revolution, "There is the mob. I am their leader. I must follow them".

Putting this conundrum to one side, National's welfare discussion document, English's strong line on one citizenship, and National's more aggressive stance on defence and foreign policy have certainly marked a clear shift to its right. Under these circumstances it is not surprising that Act is deprived of electoral oxygen, for there is now an unbearable crunch on the right side of the political spectrum.

National's repositioning has, conversely, created space to its centre, which partly explains why Winston Peters and NZ First are attracting solid poll support. One can predict that for as long as National's performance is rated at anaemic levels, averaging only 25 per cent support across the three polls, Peters (as well as the Government) will continue to prosper.

This dynamic on the centre-right certainly leaves Prebble's "grand" coalition theory in tatters. It also imposes a series of difficult choices for National. Most political commentators have argued that the centre-right parties need to work better together, show more unity and be seen to be doing so, to position them as an alternative governing coalition in the eyes of the voters.

This theory requires respective centre-right parties to have regard to each other's strategies and, importantly, to accept the fragmentation on the right and, therefore, accommodate the needs of each other.

The problem with this idea is that it plays into Clark's hand and her ambition for a Scandinavian-styled party system that produces a strong social democratic party on the centre-left competing against a fragmented centre-right. There is, however, a more Darwinian strategy that National might employ as it searches for both relevancy and redemption.

That strategy would see National return to its pragmatic roots, thereby rejecting its ideological extremism of the early 1990s by asking whether its political future lies in either absorbing Act or by simply squeezing it out of the electoral frame altogether. For Act is surely vulnerable.

A merging of National and Act (the National Liberals anyone?) would not only position this new vehicle as a party capable of challenging Labour, but would allow National to deal with Peters in future coalition negotiations from a far greater position of electoral strength than will otherwise occur.

For one of the problems of the "grand" coalition theory is that English has repeatedly shown that he has trouble reconciling competing values (what to do about Iraq being one obvious example).

While an intellectual strength, it is regrettably a political weakness, and one that suggests he would struggle to maintain a cohesive government with such disparate policies and personalities as those whom Peters and Prebble represent.

One also suspects that neither leader respects English or National, for both Peters and Prebble have marketed themselves at various times as the effective leader of the opposition.

Importantly, National and Act joining forces would allow the entire neo-liberal nomenclature to be submerged inside internal party debates, allowing National to invent the new language it must develop to successfully compete against Clark in 2008. National would also benefit by absorbing some of Act's quality MPs into its fold. Their depth of talent would increase significantly with MPs like Stephen Franks and Deborah Coddington.

By securing its right flank, under the new flag of a liberal and broad-based anti-Labour party, National could reinvent itself as the pragmatic broad-church party that has been its only historically successful model.

Importantly, it would also give National the space it needs to challenge Labour in the centre when the political tides turn, the only ground where it can hope to regain the treasury benches.

Is there either the will or ruthlessness required to see such a strategy through? One very much doubts it, but the 2002 election result and the polling trends since reveal that centre-right politics is in a state of crisis.

One last question is posed, therefore: what would Sir Robert Muldoon have done faced with the dire situation now facing National?

* Jon Johansson lectures in political leadership and New Zealand politics at Victoria University.