As the market appears to have been indicating yesterday, John Key's teapot strategy, which I outlined on iPredict Election 2011 on Thursday, has worked.
According to polling carried out for Fairfax and reported on Stuff this morning, voters overwhelmingly believe that the tea party conversation should remain confidential and they back Mr Key over the media.
Political commentators are now being forced to shift their positions as they realise Mr Key was right and they were wrong.
I think I was the first to do a 180-degree u-turn.
When Mr Key stormed out of his press conference on Wednesday, I thought he had made a major mistake.
By the time it came to writing my NBR column on Thursday morning, published in the print edition yesterday, I had thought more about it and obtained some additional information. The column was called "Key survives his storm in a teacup" and that also informed my iPredict Election 2011 comments.
Hooton then refers to NZ Herald political report John Armstrong, who is in the midst of a significant metamorphisis; read on:
John Armstrong in the Herald is going a similar process.
On Thursday, he was saying Mr Key was going from one tactical blunder to the next and was losing control. On Friday, he suggested Mr Key may have completely lost the plot.
This morning, its all different: the week just gone was "the best and the worst" for Mr Key. John now clearly sees that "public opinion has clearly swung in behind him in his quest to defend [Mr Key's] right to privacy".
We've read Armstrong's piece of this morning, and it's bizarre and most un-Armstrong-like. On one hand he lauds John Key for his stand against the media; on the other he criticises him for refusing to answer questions, which is precisely why public support has swung behind him. Obviously, Armstrong is probably a column away from a full mea cupla!
Hooton continues:
The genius of Mr Key's strategy is why another senior political figure is also pleading for the election debate to return to other issues.
Poor old Phil Goff has at least as good overnight polling data from top multinational polling company UMR Research as Mr Key has from local Wellington firm Curia and Fairfax has from Research International.
Mr Goff will be getting very similar data as Mr Key and knows that the teapot scandal has actually helped National and hurt Labour - because National is on the right side of public opinion and Labour has sadly been crowded out.
He is pleading this morning for the media to focus on other issues and says he won't be raising the teapot issues in this week's leaders' debates.
And there's time for one more mea culpa as Hooton concludes; and it's a conclusion with which we wholeheartedly agree:
If you ever wondered why John Key is Prime Minister and John Armstrong, Vernon Small, me and Phil Goff never will be, this week's events mean you don't have to wonder again. He was right and we (at least initially) were all wrong.
Quite so Matthew Hooton. Because John Key isn't tainted with the baggage of decades in the cloistered environment of Parliament, he's re-writing the play-book. He can't be pigeon-holed at the moment, and that is causing the media and his seasoned political opponents no end of angst.
20 comments:
The 'genius' of Key's strategy? There was no 'strategy'. He stuffed up big time, and we are still to see the outcome of events. This slavish sycophancy for Mr Key is apprioachinh the 'Dunkirk as victory' level. Still, if that's what one wants to think, it is a free world.
Let's see what happens.
Whether the conversation was private or not is a matter of law, not of public opinion.
When the courts rule it was not, and I'm confident they eventually will (although not necessarily before the election), public opinion will change on the issue, because most New Zealanders support the rule of law.
Attacking the media might be a clever short-term strategy for Key and win the election for him, but it will have permanently destroyed his extended media honeymoon. From here on in, they'll treat him like they treat Winston who, incidentally, Key might have just helped back into Parliament - an outcome neither you or I relish.
I don't think that will be the case Toad; after all, Winston's hardly had a good relationship with the media over the years, yet they are the ones trying to get him back into the limelight.
As for your last words; it's not going to happen. The Herald Digipoll is the only one showing him that close, and even that points to 4.9% of party votes being wasted.
@ Robert; I disagree. Key took the moral high ground early, and has not wavered from that. It is the media who have stuffed up; they have been made to look petty and self-serving (or even moreso than usual!) by beating it up when it is clearly a non-event.
Toad
Keep up the disinformation, as boring as it is
Most NZers do not support any changes of the law regarding the illegal recording of private conversations at all, you have just made that up.
The polls also disagree with you.
Why do you think that when you ring a company they give you a warning that your call will be recorded for "training" purposes? That is the only way they can get around the law.
Get over yourself and get out and repair some bill boards that green party supporters have damaged. A bit of penance is good for the soul.
If it's not possible for a conversation in a public place to be private, we'll all be the losers.
We have remarkably free access to politicians. If they know that anything they say in a public place could be recorded and published politics will become even more stage managed that it already is.
Was Gordon brown recorded calling a woman a bigot the same as key being recorded?
@Robert. This episode was never going to dent Key's levels of support. It may very well have hardened everyone's opinions of him, but that all good from National's POV.
There will surely come a time when JK goes from being the Nats' biggest asset, to their biggest liability, but it won't be any time soon.
It was laughable a couple of days ago when Duncan Garner claimed there was "wide spread interest" in knowing what was said it that glass world cafe in Newmarket. Wide spread among journalists perhaps , none among the voting public who don't chow down with pollies.
As I said when this storm in a teacup broke, good on John Key for not caving into the the hacks in this country masquerading as journalists. Bunch of useless, self serving idiots.
@ Paul Rooney 9:17 AM
I wasn't talking about a change in the law - I was talking about the interpretation of the current law. Several commentators with more media law expertise than me and I suspect you consider that the conversation was not "private" in a legal sense.
And for the record, I have actually removed the offending stickers from a couple of National billboards in my electorate, as I don't condone that sort of activity.
@ Paul Rooney 9:17 AM
I wasn't talking about a change in the law - I was talking about the interpretation of the current law....
Fair point.
But you do have a right to converse without your comments being recorded without your knowledge. Even if it is at a hand shake nodding heads event like like week.
The Courts will not rule in your favour that the conversation was private. Bar owners would be able to record bathroom conversations, business owners will be able to record employee converstaions in "public " areas of their business's .
Can you imagine the recording equipment in bars frequented by politicians in Wellington, the Green Parrot would have archives of late night ramblings of the vertically challenged
Quite so Paul; if only the waals of the Green Parrot could talk; imagine the stories they might tell about late night mixed grills and a certain politician.
So Gordon brown being recorded was the same as key being recorded. Release the tape then.
Gordon Brown was wearing a Sky News microphone which he forgot about, a completely different situation.
Wrong James. Very wrong. Almost so wrong as to be an untruth.
"There will surely come a time when JK goes from being the Nats' biggest asset, to their biggest liability" .. sorry James S. I disagree. I would suggest that Key will leave well before this happens. Unlike other PM's, he will know when to leave on his own terms .. and that could be in about 2 1/2 years
real issues people: $18,600,000,000 over spend this year
$14,000,000,000 next
$5,000,000,000 the year after:
net debt for NZ Govt: $55,000,000,000
service costs at 5% $2.75B per annum
if the world goes to the crapper and interest rates go up.... 5% could become 15%.....
Labour's blow outs will add another $20B to the debt figure, so the madness is even worse
the real issue that needs to e argued is... can we enslave our G'children's children to repay this debt? On what moral grounds are you entitled to do that?
What if the creditors come a calling and cut up the credit card, demand the balance of the SOEs as collateral?
NZ cannot afford the waste we have in society today.
We need to improve the Nation's wealth by increasing the freedoms of the people to go about their daily business without the molestation of a ever more intrusive govt. People need the freedom to strive for more, and be rewarded from that effort, not burdened with 2-3 hangers-on per productive individual.
Keyster and his side kick the Double Dipper of Dipton need to sort out the deficit a damn sight quicker than 3 years and $25b later.
It's even worst than that Mort. Billy's Budget May 2011 projected debt serving cost of $3,231,738,000.00 ($3.2 billion) for FY2011/12 with average interest rate of 5.6% for 10-year bonds, this being 4.0% of total spending (the fourth biggest Govt item after SW, Health & Education), total nett debt to be at $54.9 billion. Projected Total debt to reach $72.9 billion with service cost of $4.5 billion (5.8% of spending) by FY2015 with 10-year interest rate of 6.0% (and assumes GDP growth of 4.0%, inflation = 2.0% and unemployment down from 6.9% to 4.5%, I'll leave the merit of these Treasury projections to your own imaginations).
Actuals from PREFU (Nov 2012 just six months after budget):
Nett debt to reach $59.5 billion for FY2011 (8% increase).
Debt servicing cost = $3.5 billion (9% increase).
10-year bond rate = 5.9% (6% increase).
At the current rate of increase we will spend more on debt servicing than Education by FY2016. And that's assuming the global economy doesn't go into "Financial Crisis-II the sequel: This time it's serious".
wow I thought I was being pessimistic, but it appears my glasses were more rosy than the Double Dipper's.... WTF!
Looks like PREFU actually means Pre(tty) F**cked up
That is just ridiculous.
NZ needs to tap into its mineral resources, if only to get 20000 people into jobs and off the dole.
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