John Key’s Willie

Matthew Hooton’s NBR column today begins by recalling Maggie Thatcher’s famous dictum -

‘I don’t know what I would do without Whitelaw. Everyone should have a Willie.’

Hooton’s thesis is that in NZ politics every PM needs a Bill Birch. His column, which is not on line, then canvasses who is John Key’s Birch. Obviously according to Hooton, Helen Clark’s was Michael Cullen.

Hooton runs his eye over Bill English, Gerry Brownlee and Stephen Joyce. He settles on Joyce. Perhaps Hooton should have considered further the characteristics of a Willie, as enumerated by Malcolm Rifkind in his review for The New Statesman of a biography of Whitelaw.

Rifkind commented:-

that behind Whitelaw’s affable and amiable manner was a clever, calculating and impressive politician. One of the best descriptions of him was by one of his former civil servants, who referred to him as “that large, emotional, sometimes irascible, apparently spontaneous but infinitely cunning man”.

Clearly Cullen met the criteria for irascibility and definitely for cunning. Do any of the Hooton threesome display the characteristics of being infinitely cunning. Further a Willy as Rifkind wrote should, to be of relevance, meet the following:-

Consider the advantage of a senior minister, no longer with personal ambition, able to tell the Prime Minister, without fear or favour, when he was acting foolishly, improperly, or in a manner that would do the government serious damage. That is the only justification for having a deputy prime minister;

On that score Joyce and English would appear to fail the test. Brownlee would appear more in line with the prototype, though this commentator is not certain that he meets the criteria for cunning.

Perhaps others have a different view.

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