Somewhat handily, New Zealand introduced the current MMP electoral system in 1996, the same year that rugby turned professional, enabling a relatively simple exercise to discover whether the All Blacks of the modern era have been most at home in a right wing or left wing political environment.
It turns out that the All Blacks have a winning record of 84 per cent under National-dominant governments, and an 80 per cent win rate under Labour and its coalition partners.
If the question were ever to be asked about whether the All Blacks had a preferred Prime Minister, the answer would be John Key, who served between 2008 and December 2016.
Jim Bolger had a similar record – with the All Blacks winning 20 of 22 tests during his time in office between 1996 and 1997 – but Key’s longevity, having been Prime Minister during a period in which 110 tests were played, is the more impressive statistic.
With Key as Prime Minister, the All Blacks were undefeated in 90 per cent of their tests and he recently told the Herald: “The All Blacks used to think I was a good luck charm because I never saw them lose live when I was at a game as Prime Minister and it really did get to the point where Steve Tew [former NZR chief executive] would ring me up and say you had better be at the game.”
The next most successful political leader in rugby terms was Helen Clark, with the former Labour Prime Minister being in power between 1999 and 2008 which saw the national team win 83 per cent of their tests.
The Prime Minister whose time in office produced the worst success rate for the All Blacks was Bill English – the former National leader who took over from Key in December 2016 before he was usurped by Jacinda Ardern’s Labour-NZ First alliance in October 2017.
In English’s brief tenure as Prime Minister, the All Blacks won just 72 per cent of their tests – a marginally worse record than his successor enjoyed when she was in office between October 2017 and January 2022.
Interestingly, Ardern witnessed the most drawn tests – three – on her watch, and while the All Blacks only won 74 per cent of their tests while she was Prime Minister, their unbeaten ratio was 79 per cent.
Looking specifically at World Cups, again, Key is the Prime Minister with the best record as the All Blacks’ two titles in the professional age – 2011 and 2015 - both came when he was in office.
Clark was Prime Minister in 2003 when the All Blacks were shocked by Australia in the semifinal, and in 2007 when the All Blacks had their worst World Cup campaign and were knocked out in the quarter-final.
But she has a treasured place in World Cup history as she played a critical role in ensuring the 2011 tournament came to New Zealand.
The Labour government of the time underwrote the tournament to give World Rugby the confidence that it would produce the financial returns it needed, and Clark flew to Dublin in November 2005 where she gave an impassioned speech as part of the pitch, and also charmed many of the voting officials.
Key, who came to power in 2008 and was the Prime Minister in 2011 when the tournament was played, acknowledges that he was the beneficiary of Clark’s political acumen and diplomacy.
His personal brand benefited from being in power at a time when New Zealand so successfully hosted a major, global sports event and then two weeks after the All Blacks won, National boosted their majority in Parliament by winning 47 per cent of the party vote at the general election.
“Ultimately the office of Prime Minister can have a lot of sway and quite a lot of magic about it,” he says.
“The equivalence of that, I suppose, is that they often roll out the royal family if the Brits are trying to host an Olympic Game or a World Cup or whatever it might be.
“It is a tried and true formula. And even though Helen wasn’t passionate about rugby per se, she would have understood the importance to New Zealand of getting the cup.
“Sometimes you have the real benefit of what your predecessors have done. Sometimes you inherit things that make your time in office more difficult because it is a continuum.
“Believe it or not Helen and I do quite a bit of stuff together now. It is like anything, in the heat of the competition you are probably not the best of friends but there is a role I think for former Prime Ministers of all political persuasions to come together for the national good and I think if we were looking to host another World Cup and it was the right thing to do, and if she and I got together to support the Prime Minister of the day and if that was beneficial, then we would do it.”
As a final aside, while National are the party that seem to get the best out of the All Blacks at World Cups, Labour were in power during the past two tours of New Zealand by the British and Irish Lions.
The series in 2005 the All Blacks swept 3-0, while in 2017 it was drawn.
