The Dom Post reports that Prime Minister John Key told TVNZ’s Breakfast programme the suggestion he was becoming a lone ranger was “a load of rubbish”.
“In the modern world, any prime minister is going to be out and about a lot, and the reality is that when I go out and about usually there are two or three cameras and a lot of journalists with me.”
This followed a Sunday Star Times report that an unnamed National MP had said there was talk within Parliament that the party had been reduced to the John Key Show.
I think John Key misses the point of the criticism. The SuperCity results in Auckland, and to a lesser extent Celia Wade-Brown’s victory in Wellington have shocked the National caucus. They have ACT imploding on one side, and Maori party infighting on the other. Coupled with this the capital city has ditched a former National candidate as Mayor, and a city of 1.4 million people (a third of the population) has just elected a Left-leaning mayor who received a hero’s welcome at this weekend’s Labour party conference. National feels vulnerable.
The first big electoral crack in the New Labour government in the UK was conservative Boris Johnson’s election as Mayor of London in 2008.
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