What a populist National Party would look like

OPINION: National MP Amy Adams was surely genuine this week when she announced she would retire at next year's election because her heart was no longer in the job.

You wonder, however, why her heart has shifted and whether the prospect of a new and better life outside the grind of politics was really the deciding factor.

She might, for instance, have moved to pre-empt a demotion because of her less than stellar performance as opposition finance spokeswoman.

And, let's be honest, if National looked a sure winner next year instead of an also-ran, she might well have stuck it out for another bid at power and cabinet.

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Maybe the real reason was even deeper and has something to do with the slow death of conservatism, as it is expressed in New Zealand by the National Party. Looking back on her 12 years in parliament, Adams said she was most proud of her contribution to improving the way family violence was handled. Not exactly a ringing endorsement of National Party conservatism.

Around the world old school conservative parties are in trouble. In the United States, Donald Trump has rewritten the Republican rule book and in Britain, Nigel Farage's Brexit Party is more popular than the Tories. These outliers have replaced traditional conservatism with a populist agenda.

Forms of this populism have taken over in Italy, Hungary and Poland and are rising in the Netherlands, Germany, Austria, and France. The belief something fundamentally important has been lost in the brave new global world lies behind them.

In New Zealand, National still covers the traditional conservative ground, although you wonder what a more populist National Party would look like.

Populism is difficult to define. It means different things in different countries. It is generally an appeal to gut reactions about race, national culture, class, immigration and globalism. Some glibly call it the rage of white men who see their entitlements and privilege threatened but, speaking from experience, most white men are not that entitled and not very privileged either.

The politics of populism is also usually nostalgic, building on a myth the old order was working fine until power shifted to people with some crazy ideas.

Winston Peters may have fitted the bill as a populist leader some years ago, with his attacks on Asian immigrants and sickly liberals, but he, as a partner to Jacinda Ardern's Labour party, looks a chastened old man.

If National turned populist, it would probably attack the state's renewed focus on redress for Māori and Māori culture. Don Brash nearly won an election with this strategy. It would disparage political correctness and have a crack at what it would call the sneering and out-of-touch political class.

Another fertile target would be the indisputably left wing media and academia and it would throw doubt on the new gun legislation as an infringement of the rights of people who have done nothing wrong. Israel Folau would be a poster boy for free speech and farmers and physical workers actually producing things would be championed. Foreign ownership of New Zealand assets would be another ripe target.

Immigrants would be accused of making New Zealand housing too expensive and threats would be made to direct immigrants away from Auckland and Wellington. A populist National would also throw in something about New Zealand values and attributes and back women who wanted to stay home to rear children.

There must be elements of the current National line-up that see merit in taking the populist direction but Amy Adams probably wasn't one of them.

She represents the traditional conservatism of Jim Bolger and Jenny Shipley. Definitions are elusive but this conservatism is a mix of frugal economic management, individual responsibility rather than individual rights and a general skepticism about grand ideas and ambitious projects.

It is pro-farmer, pro-business and anti-organised labour combined with conservatism's less optimistic view of human beings, suspicion of ideology and limited expectations of what change can achieve.

This recipe appears to be failing in expanding its base support.

Conservative parties have often claimed to represent "the silent majority", a term used by Richard Nixon to suggest the critics of American involvement in the Vietnam War and his other policies were a noisy minority.

The silent majority doesn't write letters to the newspaper, it doesn't get involved in campaigns and probably doesn't join political parties. It reserves its voice for the ballot box, if it votes at all. But it is conservative and National has to work out how it can again be its voice. Growing inequality makes that difficult because National is not traditionally the party for Kiwi battlers.

National must be wondering, like the Republicans and Tories, if social trends towards a more diverse and urban society have left it behind. It will have to decide whether it attacks Jacinda Ardern's commanding position on the high moral ground.

Amy Adams will no doubt be glad she doesn't have to worry anymore about ensuring conservatism survives.

Source: Stuff.co.nz

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