"Simon Bridges is dead, long live Simon Bridges" may be a good summation of the effect of the polls released this week as National MPs return to Parliament after a week away.
The party's MPs will meet for their usual caucus on Tuesday morning, wondering which – if any – of the polls released on Monday are accurate.
The 1News Colmar Brunton poll had National soaring above Labour again at 44 per cent, as its voters returned "home" after rewarding Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern's handling of the mosque attacks in the last poll.
The Newshub Reid Research poll had National dumped down at 37 per cent in the week after the Budget.
One was grounds for rolling Bridges, the other is enough to buy him more time.
The polls are so different they do little beyond raising scepticism about polls.
There are as yet no signs the murmurings about Bridges' leadership are about to become a reality.
The conflicting polls do not provide any excuse for it, though those baying for it will try to claim they do.
Advertisement
Advertise with NZME.This will be another big week for him as he tries to skewer the Government over what it knew, and when, about Treasury's depiction of National securing Budget details ahead of time as a "hack".
Once that is done, Bridges will need to return to his knitting.
When National was in Government, its MPs called former Labour leader Andrew Little "Angry Andy" because of his railing against the Government.
Of late, Bridges – presumably through desperation – has sounded the same. Voters rarely respond well to constant negativity.
Bridges may have recognised this. His deputy Paula Bennett has taken over the role of commenting on the Budget "hack" that wasn't a hack.
As a general rule, National Party supporters like stability and common sense. They like things to be settled, predictable and a bit boring.
The economy and tax policy remain National's biggest weapons, and the Colmar Brunton poll shows confidence in the state of the economy is eroding.
There was little to criticise in the Budget without sounding churlish. It put large amounts of money into areas people cared about.
Advertisement
Advertise with NZME.But National could have driven home the large increases in overall spending for at least the next two years, and the higher debt drawdown, even as the Government warned of global turbulence breaking on New Zealand shores.
At various points, National did raise all these things, but they were drowned out by their own noise over the Budget "hack".
So, for the time being, Bridges remains buffered by National's solid polling (unless Newshub's poll is correct), the lack of a clear successor guaranteed to lift that polling further, and a wariness of instability.
The question of when National should move comes second to the question of whether National should move.
Then there is the who.
It needs to be somebody MPs can be sure will fare better than Bridges. That may seem like a low bar, but Bridges cannot stand accused of not throwing his all into the job.
Options range from Judith Collins and Paula Bennett to Mark Mitchell and finance spokeswoman Amy Adams.
Only Collins has anything approximating support in the polls already – and her ratings are about as low as Bridges' own. Those would almost inevitably lift if she got the job.
The question is by how much. Many people will have already made up their minds about her.
National needs to narrow the field down to one or two contenders before anything happens.
At this stage, leadership changes should be dealt with like a sticking plaster and ripped off quickly to shorten the pain.
They cannot afford to have a drawn out, multi-challenger contest such as they had last time.
That was after Bill English resigned, and five challengers went for the job - until Mark Mitchell pulled out at the last minute.
Most past leadership changes in National have been done by way of a quick handover – one challenger gets the support and the incumbent is either encouraged to resign or it goes to a head-to-head vote.
It is quick and often merciless, and that is its virtue.
A long leadership contest simply adds to the perception that a political party is totally absorbed with itself, rather than the future of New Zealand.
