Good riddance, Simon

He was never a leader. He seemed barely even a full-grown man --  with a few brief years as a provincial prosecutor behind him before being catapulted into Parliament by beating Winston Peters (his one signal life achievement), then catapulted again into party leader when the room looked around and found everyone else even more ill-suited to the job than he was.

What does it say about the caucus that it looked around and saw this half-formed soft-shelled thing as its saviour? Perhaps that he best represented its own lack of any coherent direction? 

Never a sign emerged, in any of Simon's fifteen months in charge it, of any political principle whatsoever, of any direction in which he might want to "lead" his party, or his country -- of any driving passion to fix any the place's many pressing problems, or to protect the individual rights that his party's constitution had once referred to as its aim. If there was any semblance of anything at all it was only that it was dripping wet.

His first few months ended up defining him -- a "getting to know me" trip around the country left the whole country knowing only that he had nothing to say, and that someone leaked his expenses for travelling around the country to not say it. What everyone most get to know from that little leak was that Simon could get really, really upset really quickly, and he didn't care who knew it.

Simon's tantrum and the fallout therefrom dominated nearly twelve of his fifteen months as leader -- twelve months in which he bizarrely cast suspicion across almost his entire party caucus -- whereupon he entered the spotlight for a different reason: for his decision to break the country's Level 4 lockdown to drive to Wellington because, he said, his internet at home wasn't up to snuff.

It was all over as leader once his deputy began insisting he retained the support of the National caucus. it was, perhaps, all over as politician once he realised there was no particular reason for him to be there, because there was no particular thing he need to be there to do: his only achievement in all the years he'd sat there being to make Jami-Lee Ross famous, and to make penalties for animal cruelty higher than penalties for cruelty to people.

And he never did build a bridge in Northland.

So farewell Simon from parliament. It's now evident that there was no reason for you to be there in the first place.

A blue-green brand of blandness leading the blind and mostly clueless [updated]

In nine years of John-Key government it was impossible to discern a direction beyond "steady as she goes" coupled with lots of blatant backtracking. Blind to the damage it was doing (middle-class welfare explosion, a stuffed second city, rocketing housing prices) it was a government simply maintaining reforms it had previously disparaged (RMA, Working for Families, Interest-Free Student Loans) while offering none of its own in response.

Status-quo merchants in blue, presiding over nine years of steadily increasing taxation, regulation and control.

The bland blundering looks to continue with the caucus's choice of the oleaginous Simon Bridges to be their great next-generational hope.

One listened in vain to discern any direction at all in the bland swill the new hope poured out around the media this morning in his first few interviews -- any hint at all of either a backbone, or a principle around which to grow one: but bereft of backbone he blathered instead about "holding the government to account, "presenting an "ambitious and strong alternative government," one with "a clear and positive plan for the 2020s." Oh, and something about "modernising" the Blue Team he now leads. (Which, as one wag swiftly observed, is pretty bleak considering his his positions on same-sex marriage, euthanasia and marijuana.)

Interviewers (mostly) failed to suppress a yawn.

The only hint of what any of that might mean -- from a man who only last week described himself as one of Nick Smith's “blue-greens”-- was his suggestion "National will have a strong focus on environmental policies." Sufficiently "strong," apparently, to countenance coalition with the Greens.

So if there is any direction in which this party is to "modernise" it appears to be the same old direction ambled towards by the dripping wet and (hopefully) soon-to-be-retiring Nick Smith.

The oleaginous in thrall to the odious; espoused by a bland man leading a bunch of blind blue know-nothings.

So not a sound basis on which we could expect any surprises, or for his "team" to hold anything to account at all, really, let alone a leader in whom the media continue to be enraptured.

It looks like a tedious few years ahead in NZ politics.
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