Kate Hawkesby: National leader Simon Bridges need to be more decisive - and rule out Winston Peters

COMMENT: So National has pipped Labour at the post by announcing a national cancer agency and a $200 million cancer fund.

At National's annual conference yesterday Simon Bridges said that "as Prime Minister" he would not stand by and watch people die.

But will he ever be Prime Minister?

I guess he's hanging on for dear life. Praying the underdog thing might kick in.
Hoping New Zealand might miraculously repeat an election upset like we saw in Australia this year when a written-off Scott Morrison was returned. But we have a different system to them.

I guess Bridges is lucky in that there are no obvious replacements waiting in the wings.
Yes there might be competent ministers around him, but none of them scream Prime Minister right now.

Judith Collins, for all her popular polling, struggles to get past the internal issues she faces - being disliked in caucus being the main one.

But Bridges is just not delivering the knock out blows that an opposition needs to deliver.
He's not delivering the sort of opposition National's support base expects.

He needs to show strength. He needs to be the opposite of Jacinda's 'sit on the fence' leadership style of smiling a lot but in reality saying nothing. He needs to show some mettle.

Perhaps he needs to be more like the man he called a "buffoon".
Boris Johnson, to be fair, by many accounts is a buffoon, but he's at least picking a side and running with it. He's showing decisive leadership.

There are a couple of schools of thought floating around at the moment re National's path to 2020.

One, that they need coalition partners and that therefore Simon Bridges should be cosying up to and wooing Winston Peters.

The other, that he should see the wood for the trees, realise Winston's never dealing with him in a million years and rule him out. I am of the 'rule him out' camp.
Cut him off. Good riddance to bad rubbish.

NZ First have made it clear they're permanently aligned with the Labour Party. And why wouldn't they be? Look how many strings they can pull. They're the senior players in all but name.

Labour campaigned on a capital gain tax, why didn't they get it through? Because NZ First said no. The same can be said of the 95 per cent offset for farmers in the Emissions Trading Scheme.

NZ First call the shots. Add to that, the fact they hate National, they hate Simon Bridges.
So forget them. There is no deal. Let them fall below the 5 per cent.

And in ruling them out, Simon Bridges gets to look like a decisive and principled leader who shows strength, and takes action.

Will he though? That's the problem, probably not.

So did yesterday's cancer announcement earn him points in the decisive leadership stakes?
Time will tell.