There are a few topics this week that I considered weighing in on: bi-lingual road signs, drug prescriptions, and accusations of homophobia. There is a common thread that runs through these stories.
These stories are all manufactured through election campaign posturing by Labour, National, and the Media.
The first rather obvious point is that National has lost control over the narrative. The deeper problem there is the ease with which they did so and the long struggle they faced to put things back on track to the issues they wanted to hammer home. For someone so interested in politics I rarely watch our MPs get interviewed, but I did watch a few clips that the Media captured this week and was bewildered.
You can easily spot the fractures in the National caucus that the Media is attempting to exploit: there is a clear divide in the answers given by European and Maori MPs to the question of bi-lingual road signs. This rather boring issue that not many people outside of political circles would care about has become a flashpoint in the co-governance debate. The extent to which New Zealand is and ought to be a racial nation simmers beneath the surface and it is very clear that National don't want to touch this due to its controversial nature and the implications. And yet they did.
Two other beat ups were manufactured from National's promise to continue (or go back to) charging for drug prescriptions including contraceptives and another from a speech O'Connor made in which he stressed that mothers and fathers in particular should be responsible for raising their children. The Media knows the internal struggle between the liberal and conservative factions in the party, one that has reached the point where its allegedly conservative MPs are openly muzzled and tiptoeing around all social issues. Luxon apologised on behalf of O'Connor clarifying that when talking about "mothers and father" he wasn't intending to be homophobic and exclusive, that they are a very inclusive party and that Simon loves the gays very much and even helps them adopt kids from overseas all the time.
However, on the issue of contraceptive prescriptions they held their ground, and Willis even came out to rescue Luxon from a tight spot—clearly indicating this particular issue is backed up by internal unity. A strange issue to make into a campaign cornerstone, and not really where you want the narrative to be at this close to an election.
You get the feeling there is a sense of dread within their campaign. Their lack of hatred for the Media hampers their ability to shift the narrative. They hope that their socially conservative voters will simply vote "against" Labour rather than "for" something by deserting in favour of the New Conservatives. At some point National are either going to have to purge their remaining right-wing MPs and hope that a big faction in the party will be happy with no representation or the party will have to fracture along its internal fault-lines.
In another world, the absolute carnage delivered against the Media by leaders like Floridia governor Ron DeSantis and Auckland mayor Wayne Brown gives us a glimpse into what a dedication to controlling the narrative looks like.
That brings us to a very real possibility: New Zealand's largest opposition party has no narrative of its own.