By Brigitte Morten *
View – When I was eight, I said that I was running away from home. My mother told me she was going to call my Brownie leader to tell her that I would not come again, and even the numbers started calling. I went quickly and unpacked my bag.
Gareth Morgan has left the management but has a role as chairman of the policy committee.
Photo: RNZ / Rebekah Parsons-King
Gareth Morgan did, by telling the election committee that he would cancel The Opportunities Party (TOP), the equivalent of choosing the Brownie Leader.
Those in the party who did not want to see their chance of a evidence-based policy disappear have made commitments to push the party to the 2020 elections. What did TOP mean to announce that they did not see the request for deregistration? .
The announcement by TOP that they will continue is their best and possibly only chance to show that they can turn from a vanity party to a party based on the basis.
Morgan's decision to abandon leadership and allow former member Geoff Simmons to step forward would take into account the decision of members to re-join the party.
Many of TOP's reviews were about Morgan's autocratic leadership style. Although he continues to play a role as chairman of the policy committee, he will no longer be able to dominate decision-making.
Policy games are often not the best politicians. This is especially true when they are the face of a party rather than the team member. See, for example, Morgan's decision in the run-up to the 2017 elections to make TOP's first major policy announcement a new complex tax structure.
By involving Morgan in a more policy-based role, TOP can shed part of the baggage and be more than the anti-cat party.
But they also lose their biggest drawcard. For what is known, and there is little, of the new leader, there is a general opinion that Simmons is intelligent and personal. Unfortunately, intelligent and personable rarely corresponds to media broadcast time and voices.
Simmons will have to be prepared to make more powerful statements and make dramatic policy announcements if he has any chance to get the party over the bill and go to parliament.
The most likely way it seems like it can be a deal on an electorate. And the most likely party to offer it is National. While National consistently polls as the most popular party, they still have no path to other governments than the Greens or NZ. First something to ruin.
When asked about the rise of TOP from the ashes, National Leader Simon Bridges certainly did not make any exciting progress, but he also did not like to work together. An electorate seat deal with a center-left candidate is also not unheard of for the party. For a long time United Future MP Peter Dunne supported Ohariu in a deal to not promote their candidate.
The people who may be most worried about the revival of TOP are the Greens. TOP pointed out their announcement in two policy areas that green voters can attract: cannabis legislation and environmental protection. These could be especially attractive for those voters who feel isolated from the more socialist rhetoric of the left of the Greens led by Marama Davidson.
Taxes, which are also emphasized in the announcement, are likely to be a hot topic in the next elections. The Labor government has already said that in 2020 they will take over the recommendations of the tax working group to the voters. If TOP approves their policy right, they could find a clear path between the recommendations of Labor and National's presumptive resistance to tax increases.
TOP can suffer the same fate as many of their predecessors and fails once again to go to parliament, but at least they seem to demonstrate that they have learned some lessons from the last election. Only time will tell whether the threat that the party might disappear is sufficient to allow volunteers and resources to last the long two years until the next election.
* Brigitte Morten is a senior consultant for Silvereye. Previously she was a senior ministerial adviser to the Minister of Education in the previous country-led government, and an advisor and campaign leader for the liberal party of Australia.
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