I asked someone today what they think when they hear the name Judith Collins. Nastiness was the answer and I think this is how she will be remembered, not only by her political opponents in Labour but by a big chunk of her National Party colleagues.
Judith Collins has defined her political career with negativity through attacks on those she saw as enemies.
She won’t be remembered for pushing or championing any particular policy on any issue because she didn’t. Instead her political career is associated with appealing to the baser instincts of conservative New Zealand. She gained media coverage, and lots of warm applause at National Party conferences, when she was beating up on beneficiaries, gang members or boy racers. She loved the limelight associated with “punching down” – picking on the marginalised, low income families whose lives had been screwed over again and again by successive Labour and National governments.
Picking on the victims of government policy is cheap and nasty politics. And behind the scenes she was much the same with her intense political relationship with Cameron Slater as exposed in Nicky Hager’s Dirty Politics.
She loved the sport of politics, not the substance. She seemed bored with policy and her eyes only lit up when she was on the attack – hitting out at someone or some group she was determined to take down. It seemed always personal.
She was tribal National without a coherent, or in fact any, vision for what the country could be. This is a bit surprising given her political idol – the UK’s Maggie Thatcher – always had a clear policy direction to go with her personal vindictiveness. Thatcher drove neoliberal change to enrich the wealthy at the expense of the rest of us but Aotearoa New Zealand already had these policies in place well before Collins was elected. Perhaps Collins thought there wasn’t much left to do.
She loved Thatcher’s style but had no politics to go with it.
In a column last year I described her as a typical low-rent conservative and looking back I think I was being too kind to her. Even in her last toss of the dice in trying to derail Simon Bridges before he could challenge her leadership she was venal and unprincipled.
She brought out the worst in us and if we could learn a lesson from that it would be her most important political legacy.
“She loved the sport of politics, not the substance. She seemed bored with policy and her eyes only lit up when she was on the attack – hitting out at someone or some group she was determined to take down. It seemed always personal.” You have absolutely captured the essence of this woman. Great article! The expression ‘nasty piece of work’ was coined for Collins. In many ways, she shares personality traits with an American lump of lard who traded reality television and Beauty Contests for the WH in the most egregious blunder any nation could make. Has NZ dodged a bullet or will National present another despicable candidate in the future?
Howabout you throwing your hat in the ring for the leadership of National on Tuesday? You are far better than anyone they have got John, and you express my thoughts about Judith so well.
“She won’t be remembered for pushing or championing any particular policy on any issue because she didn’t.”
Sums her up perfectly.
She,s like the used car bought from John Key !!
Well said John. Collins, and those supporting her, have been prepared to risk the total melt down of National in their lust for power. This is something the National Party should be reflecting on when considering their futures within the party.
Love to hate
The thing is, once you are a part of a system for too long, you do become institutionalised in your thinking to a degree and Judith is no exception. Had she focused more on policy, and the issues of the day, she and her party would have polled higher. To be fair, issues such as the covid-19 pandemic, the government’s new abortion laws, and Jacinda Ardern’s huge popularity as PM in her first term, all conspired to give Judith Collins limited airtime.
As for Collins’ political idol, the former UK Prime Minister, Margaret Thatcher, a lot is to be said for lasting eleven and a half years in a leadership role amidst national turmoil and crisis, high unemployment, and strikes. The issues were actually there while Thatcher was still in opposition, although they weren’t being sufficiently addressed.
National are a basket case because of power hungry and corrupt MP’s like Collins.
Plenty here wonder why Labour and dare I say it ACT are so popular. The answer is simple, their MP’s are all united behind their respective leaders. They don’t have aspirations to knife their leaders.
Agreed.
To me she struck an almost clownish figure at times, a nasty vindictive clown. She had an almost Muldoonish quality as well , – without the welfare state or even any Big Thinking. Well,… she had her shot at PM, and that didn’t last long. For all the Dirty Politicking and all the build up about how strong she was, she showed herself the opposite. Weak, underhanded, unscrupulous and not fit for purpose in these difficult times. She was merely a distraction.
Judith got the job when no one else was interested.
Judith mistook it for endorsement.
Judith believed her own hype, and the praise from her closed circle.
Judith never accepted the polls.
Judith would never change to fit, everything else had to bend.
Judith just needed more time, but her clock had run out.
Collins prospered and then suffered from her long-standing, mutually parasitic and symbiotic relationship with Cameron Slater, “whaleoil beef-hooked off the starboard bow!” Collins was the the public face of vile Dirty Politics.
It’s good to see the back of her bile-infested leadership of the National Party. The MAGA cap scuppered the leadership of Todd Muller. Whaleoil put paid to Judith Collins’ leadership.
Good riddance.
Probably quite unintended but Judith demonstrated this week that far from women being equal in the workplace, they can never be. They are far too sensitive to cope with anything.
That a baffoonish comment said in the presence of a female (not at her) could cause such lasting trauma 5 years later that literally ended careers could easily be seen to prove that females are best avoided in communication with anything other than necessary professional conversation, with witnesses to corroborate, and that communication kept to the bare minimum.
Anything else may be misinterpreted to the detriment of all around!
We have a lot of very nasty people in our country I see many daily when I am driving to and from work and there lack of care makes a mockery of our team of 5 million rhetoric.
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