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| New Zealand opposition leader Simon Bridges faces leadership challenge | |
| (about 4 hours later) | |
| The 42-year-old is under pressure in the polls and could be challenged as early as Friday by businessman-turned-MP Todd Muller | |
| New Zealand’s opposition National party is facing a leadership crisis as a relatively unknown former businessman-turned-MP reportedly prepares to wrest the top job from Simon Bridges just four months out from the country’s election. | |
| Todd Muller, an MP since 2014, is reportedly planning to challenge Bridges at a caucus meeting on Friday if the leader does not win a vote of confidence, supporters told the Guardian on Wednesday. | |
| But detractors of a coup said that despite Bridges’ dismal polling figures – 30.6% for his party, and 4.5% for him – he had the numbers to win a confidence vote. | |
| In the balance are the election-year fortunes of a party that dominated parliament for nine years until 2017, but has struggled to mount a challenger who can match the popularity of Jacinda Ardern, the prime minister and Labour leader, whose approval numbers soared to record levels during coronavirus pandemic. | |
| Ardern’s party polled at 56.5% in Monday’s Newshub Reid research poll, which meant that Labour could govern alone after September’s election in a country where coalition governments are normal. The prime minister had shot to 59.5% in the preferred leader stakes, making her the most popular prime minister in a century. | |
| Muller has not publicly declared his challenge, although supporters confirmed his plans to the Guardian. A long-time leader in the agricultural sector – with roles at the dairy giant, Fonterra, and at Zespri, the kiwifruit growers’ cooperative – he hails from a dyed-in-the-wool National party-supporting family. He served as an executive assistant to Jim Bolger while he was prime minister in the 1990s. | |
| Supporters and political opponents, attempting to paint him as a foil to Bridges, said Muller’s skills lay in reaching across divides to include other points of view; he had served as student union president for the left-leaning Waikato University despite being known as a conservative, friends said, and years later negotiated with the left-leaning Green Party on climate legislation, the Zero Carbon Act, that drew cross-party support and enshrined emissions targets in law. | |
| Muller possessed “dignity and integrity” and was motivated by public service, according to those who had worked with him. Friends said that the social conservative – a Catholic who opposed recent abortion law reform and a law that would allow voluntary euthanasia if the public supports it in a vote – was “unafraid” of contrary views to his own. | |
| The Bay of Plenty MP, who lives in the North Island city of Tauranga with his wife and three children, may suffer from having a low profile nationally, opponents of the challenge said. | |
| However, his supporters say his profile would be boosted if, as sources suggest, he chooses the more liberal Nikki Kaye as his running mate. | |
| Kaye is much better known than Muller in mainstream New Zealand, partly from her early political battles with Ardern. In 2011 and 2014, the pair went head-to-head for the same electorate seat of Central Auckland, which Kaye won and retains (Ardern now holds a different electorate seat). | |
| The pair captured headlines for their youth – they were both born in 1980 – – and popularity. Kaye went on to become an education minister in the previous National government, and was treated successfully for breast cancer in 2016. | |
| Bridges made missteps in communications and tone during New Zealand’s Covid-19 lockdown – including by criticising the government in a Facebook post that drew more than 25,000 comments, most of them negative – but he has seen off leadership speculation before. | |
| There is also recent precedent for a coup so close to an election; in 2017, Ardern became the leader of her party less than eight weeks before winning power. . But in that case the leadership was willingly relinquished by a predecessor who was floundering in the polls, and Ardern had experienced a higher media profile during her nine years as a lawmaker than Muller had. | |
| Other National MPs were frustrated at the timing of a leadership squabble while New Zealanders dealt with the impact of Covid-19. | |
| “The champion that kiwis need right now is her majesty’s loyal opposition,” said one, Chris Penk. “That means we’re loyal to our country and our leader.” | |
| A new poll is expected on Thursday night and some within National said its outcome could decide Bridges’ fate on Friday. He has acknowledged that he is facing a challenge to his leadership but told Radio New Zealand that he would prevail in a vote. | |
| “The biggest issue in New Zealand right now is our economic future,” he said. “But at the moment there’s a focus on leadership in National. A couple of my colleagues want to challenge myself and Paula Bennett for the leadership and deputy leadership. | |
| “We need to resolve this quickly so we can get back to focusing on what matters.” | “We need to resolve this quickly so we can get back to focusing on what matters.” |